It's 9:10 a.m. Your Chem 5 exam is in five minutes, and you don't have time to race back to Harvard Square from the Science Center to buy a pen, a pencil or any sort of writing instrument. You are desperate. Your lab partner suggests the Science Center stockroom, a subterranean cornucopia of school supplies.

That's funny. You never noticed the weird geometric paintings hanging on the walls the last time you purchased computer discs there. Earl W. Matthews, proprietor of the Science Center stockroom, says few shoppers notice that it's his artwork on the drab, cinderblock walls.

Before your exam, check out these walls. They're covered with large, brightly colored paintings full of geometric shapes. And from the ceiling hang abstract mobiles of red, blue, and green--all created by this unassuming 28-year employee of Harvard.

With Buddha-like calm, the 52-year old Matthews has been manager of the Science Center stockroom since it opened in 1974. "I wasn't here too long before I saw the walls needed brightening," he says. So Matthews started bringing in his own multi-colored artworks--nearly a dozen--to decorate the coldly modernistic setting.

Always willing to chat about his art, Matthews keeps a photo album of his other work to show those who are really interested. But he is surprised by how many people come to the stockroom to buy computer discs or other office supplies, and don't notice the artwork. "It's amazing how little people see," he says.

A one-time champion boxer, this fighter-turned-artist runs the stockroom by himself, providing students and faculty with an inexpensive and aesthetically pleasing alternative to shopping in the Square. An artist without an agent or a gallery, Matthews' one man "show" in the stockroom is a well-kept artistic secret in an unusual place.

The Fighters, The Painters, And Me

Matthews came to Boston as a professional boxer in 1955. An All-Navy champion feather-weight, he fought professionally in the area for six years before working for Harvard. Matthews started boxing after watching a few matches when he was stationed in Guam. "I didn't think the fighters were that good. I thought I could do better, so I started training," he says. Matthews left Kansas because he had an uncle who was an ex-boxer here in Boston, but he wasn't able to make the money he wanted as a professional.

"As a fighter my biggest drawback was [that] I was a boxer, not a slugger. The crowds wanted knock-outs, blood and guts. I would go the distance and always out-point my opponent. Finally I hung up the mits. There was no money and I felt my health was more important."

Matthews says he has "always been interested in art--my school books were covered with drawings" although he did not start painting seriously until 1958. "A lot of athletes I've noticed end up as artists," he says. "I guess they like to work with their hands."

At his easel, Matthews has painted in many styles, ranging from figurative portraits to Jackson Pollack gesture paintings. But in the past fews, years he's been working on abstract investigations of the square, some of which hang on the stockroom walls. "What brought about the geometrical painting was a color theory course I took at the Art Institute. You can go on forever with this work," he says.

Disturbing Color Schemes

What confronts the customer at the stockroom counter is "16+5," a disturbing combination of bright purple and yellow, dull gold and dark purple lines. Five large squares emerge from a combination of the sixteen, hence the title.

Farther down the wall, the other large canvas, "Blue and Orange Combination" hangs majestic, a balanced four squares dominate the work. The different color placement and combination give the paintings wholly different movements and feelings. The repetition of the square--both within works and in the shapes of the canvas--make the paintings vibrate. "It is the color mixtures that gives a sense of movement and space," says Matthews.

Jared A. Silverman, a first year graduate student who had never been to the stockroom before, noticed "16+5" as he waited to purchase a printer ribbon. "I like the geometry of the paintings but I find the color scheme disturbing. The dark--is that black or purple?--is very disturbing. I would have hung the blue and orange one here instead," he says.