UMM lecture to highlight artist’s ‘infectious’ theories

MACHIAS – Mel Chin, the contemporary artist known for taking on political and social issues in his work, talks about art in terms of viruses. The artist, he says, has a job much like a virus has a mission. Make the piece, the theory goes, and let it do its job of “infecting” the world with ideas and insights.

“The Job” is the title of a lecture Chin will deliver Thursday, April 24, at the University of Maine at Machias. As part of the Libra Distinguished Lecture Series, Chin, who has received many grants and fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, will meet with students at UMM to discuss his philosophy, as well as current issues in the field and collaborative techniques of making public art.

To illustrate the role of the artist in society, it’s likely Chin will refer to “Revival Field,” his environmental, outdoor sculpture that originated in 1990 at Pig’s Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minn., where plants were used to leach toxic materials from polluted soil. The piece gained national attention in the early 1990s not only because Chin lost and then was reissued an NEA grant for the project, but also because of the project’s combination of nature, art, science and environmentalism. Four similar installations have been created in other parts of the world, and each offers a conceptual model for artwork with scientific and “green” benefits – data and solutions for healing the land – that continue after the work itself has been dismantled.

“What ‘Revival Field’ offered was a project that absolutely had to have connection, activism and a cooperative method,” said Chin. “The most important thing was to rethink ownership of an idea and spread it around. The concept for doing this was out there but the project provided a means to start it. The scientists continue it without me now. This was a case of installing the work and then harvesting it.”

By harvesting, Chin means caring for the physical site but he also means developing the ideas behind the work for extended efficacy, an approach central to finding meaning in his own career. Born in 1951, Chin studied art at Peabody College in his hometown of Nashville, Tenn., where his parents raised six children and ran a store. Chin was precocious and began drawing as a small boy. After college, he quickly established himself as an artist of broad-ranging talents and interests – a painter, potter, sculptor and activist.

One of his most ambitious projects was “In the Name of the Place,” a collaboration between art students from California to Georgia and the producers of the famous 1990s TV series “Melrose Place.” Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for an exhibition on public interaction, the concept was to insert artwork into the background of sets on “Melrose Place.”

The effect, said Chin, was a commentary on the various issues raised in the course of the show. It was not done to be subversive, he argues, but to “add a deeper layer, to enhance and complement” the show. After the art aired on TV, it was included in a public exhibition at the museum where a scene of “Melrose Place” was filmed, adding yet another dimension to the fusing of art, TV fiction and reality. The organizers then held an auction in Beverly Hills, where the artwork was sold and the money donated to educational charities in Los Angeles and Georgia, where Chin was teaching at the time.

“Art is only one of the methods of ascertaining, understanding and critiquing your reality,” said Chin speaking of a more current artwork called “Render.” For that solo project, which was displayed last month in New York City, Chin painted black velvet with a segmented image of a weeping George Bush and a surrounding wall of flesh-like fabric representing a woman’s face shattered into the shape of the West Bank and Gaza. In a review of the piece, The New York Times called Chin a “canny strategist” whose work has regularly relayed conceptual ingenuity with “hard-hitting content and formal beauty.”

Given the scope of his work, Chin avoids labeling his art environmental or political.

“I’m using the tools of art and social relationship,” he said. “I am using the full spectrum, I hope, not just painting, but using art to generate ideas and make a statement about my own inadequacies as well as my aspirations. If there were a traditional definition of artist, what happens if it limits the possibility of commentary on what is human? I liberated myself from that a long time ago. The definitions are fine. But I think it’s more about expanding and mutating the definition of yourself. The practice of making art can be considered the creation of tools to re-examine our lives. We are so distracted from so many things and self-critique is very difficult. Maybe art can be one of the things that is helpful to have a moment for that kind of introspection.”

While Chin still spends time in New York City, he relocated his studio more than a decade ago to a complex of old buildings in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. The move was as much about finding inexpensive studio space, where he can comfortably work on large public art projects, as it was about finding a quiet forum in which to create art.

As with many American artists, Chin has found inspiration in Maine. He is a governor on the board at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where he taught in 1995.

“Maine was part of my conceptual history,” said Chin. “So I feel like it has been a catalytic component in my evolution. That fits within my definition of art: It helps to create the place for [artistic] language to be understood and spoken and articulated and formed. Maine is a part of that.”

When he talks about “The Job” on Thursday in Machias, Chin expects to address another topic, too.

“Maybe I’ll be speaking about liberation. Isn’t that a beautiful word? That’s the job.”

He is hoping, of course, that the discussion will be artistically infectious.

“The Job,” a free public lecture by Mel Chin, will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24, at the University of Maine at Machias. The event will be preceded by a complementary tea at 4:30 p.m. in Kimball Hall. For more information, call 255-1200.