Name: Mel Chin
Age: 62 is the new 82
Occupation: Becoming an artist
City/Neighborhood: A wannabe Witness Protection Program
Your first major retrospective just opened at the New Orleans Museum of Art. What was it like to see that kind of survey of your work assembled in one show?
“Don’t look back” was the code of a few artists in my generation, and I’ve tried to avoid retro behavior most of my life. However, as a rite of passage in a world preoccupied with the mythology of rugged individualism, it occasionally happens. The evidence of 40 years of critical decisions gives me a way of looking forward and allows me to contemplate what I could become.
You created two new works for the show. What are they?
A handmade “Fundred Presentation Pallet” made of book-matched, quarter-sawn oak, bronze, and silk. Something deemed honorable and strong enough for 7,000 pounds of drawings by the people of America. I propose these “Fundred” drawings to be exchanged for funds allocated by Congress to prevent lead poisoning of children on a national level.
The other work is an internally illuminated diorama of “Revival Field,” using actual plant specimens, soil, and plot-marker stakes from the original implementation. I guess this is looking back in a way — in a natural, historical, dioramic way, which I haven’t done before.
What project are you working on now?
A Bank of the Sun in the liberated zone of the Western Sahara as a response to climate change; and two films starring the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
What’s the last show that you saw?
Linda Larsen’s paintings and prints at the Flood Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina.
What’s the last show that surprised you? Why?
Like Chomsky’s observation that if you’re surprised you’re not informed especially when learning of political treachery, I try to take the same attitude toward art shows. I am looking forward to a future of revelations by the works of my peers.
Describe a typical day in your life as an artist.
There are no typical days or nights, especially with erratic patterns of slumber. Days of waiting, Internet surfing on a slow bandwidth, doodles with used, non-drying printer-ink, shopping for the perfect tape dispenser or screwdriver, all convey a state of procrastination. Then, like a maelstrom, an idea activates an inescapable intense sea of effort in the studio, even all important paperwork and communication is swallowed in a vortex that can take days and nights; or a postulation appears, hell-bent toward reality therapy that I know, upon conception, will consume years.
Do you make a living off your art?
I think I’m good with: “Get rich or die trying.”
What’s the most indispensable item in your studio?
The trash can and the axe.
Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?
Ideas are being stimulated by confrontations, compelled into action by conditions of immense tragedy, or by uncovering strange infinitesimal obscure quirks that demand materialization in some shape or form.
Do you collect anything?
I collected dirt samples — like a pack of soil from Rimbaud’s grave, and water samples — of the Hudson River and from the “Spiral Jetty,” and oyster shells that “lean” one way. I am returning to mycology for more evidence of fungal traces in patterns of spalting wood and the tongues found on shaman art.
What is your karaoke song?
Either “Suspicious Minds “ or Lightnin’ Hopkin’s “Short Haired Woman.” Elvis’s song is one that reminds me to follow a path contrary to its message, and it is easy to find in most parlors. Lightnin’s blues is much harder to find, but I like it for its sound economic advice and descriptive power.
What’s the last artwork you purchased?
The last work purchase was by a painter named Mickey who created a portrait of Mr. Elwood Kirkman, a corrupt banker and real estate developer in Atlantic/Ocean City. I did some surgery on him. Now the work is an Unauthorized Collaboration entitled “The Face of Fidelity.”
What’s the first artwork you ever sold?
Can’t remember the first, but I do remember selling portraits of riders for a nickel each, on a Houston bus from Meyerland (a southwest suburb) to the Fifth Ward, to anyone who would buy them.
What’s the weirdest thing you ever saw happen in a museum or gallery?
It wasn’t that weird because it happened in Texas. First, the normal fist-fight, then, the abnormal bread-fight resulting in the complete destruction of Miralda’s fantastic multi-colored bread line at the CAM in Houston.
What’s your art-world pet peeve?
Art-world pets.
What’s your favorite post-gallery watering hole or restaurant?
There is a mountain spring coming out of a pipe on 19W North, along the Cane River; I’ve stopped there for a sip after a flight from NYC.
Do you have a gallery/museum-going routine?
There are no museums close by. I wait for friends to come by and describe what they have seen. I try to take notes.
What’s the last great book you read?
“The Last Novel” by David Markson.
What work of art do you wish you owned?
“The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu” by Zhao MengFu.
What would you do to get it?
I’m already doing what it would take to deserve it, living in occasional isolation along rivers and streams, simultaneously conceptualizing the transformation of suspect political systems through strategic and culture-driven action. But, deserving has nothing to do with it.
What international art destination do you most want to visit?
I want to visit them all since I have been to only a few; Le Palais Idéal by Facteur Cheval in Southern France was probably the first. It would be excellent to see all the great cultural constructions and acquisitions that belief and power have manifested. At the same time I want to visit international ship-breaking yards from Texas to Turkey, Bangladesh, China, India, and Pakistan. I’m not into the festering mess that results and I am aware of the sad reports of barefoot human tragedy, but I’m curious to witness the scale of what can be destroyed (transformed) with intention in contrast to what can be created. I imagine how ship-breaking can be applied, physically, to the massive floating islands of plastic in our oceans or, conceptually, to ships of social injustice and oppression that still sail.
