Mercury Twenty Gallery Interview With Chela Fielding

He would walk the streets near his studio in New York City, pick up the trash that interested him, and bring it back to his studio to use in his works. That's often what I do. Pretty much all my materials come from dumpsters and the streets.

Tell me about a collecting expedition you might go on. Do you derivé, as they say, drift randomly and see what you find…?

Actually, opportunities come to me when I'm out and about in a normal day. I'll see a dumpster and I'll know I should jump into it… or not. I used to work for the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse--on their pilot project in Berkeley to reduce waste in the landfill. I collected the spring cleaning items that people put out on the streets. I would go out and pick them up and bring them back to the store for resale. That was a great job, I got paid to drive the work truck and go around picking up trash that nobody wanted anymore. I even got paid to paint the truck a beautiful yellow and I drew little birds and people on it. That's where I started to get just tons of great materials to work with.

I love The Depot, I used to go to it when it was on San Pablo and now it's moved to Telegraph. I just dropped in there the other day. You never know what you'll find there.

A lot of my work is dictated by what I find, like an old letter from 1913. I bring all the stuff together in my studio and hang out with it. Play with it. I put things together, they break or fall down, I try again.

So you went to Humboldt State. Did you study art there? What's the program like?

Along with art, my whole life I've been very athletic and I've played a lot of sports. Sports have been an important aspect of my life. I got into Humboldt State with my basketball skills. I wasn't on scholarship, but I was on the basketball team. But right away I got into rock climbing and kayaking and I didn't last long on the team.

The North Coast is an amazing place. You've got the redwood trees, the ocean, farms and dairies, co-ops, great people, small community. It's a great place and an excellent school. I was an undeclared major, I started to take a bunch of art classes—printmaking, film, painting

What was the relationship between the body and sports and your art at that time?

The paintings I was doing were quite large over six feet. They were very physical to make. I got up on ladders but I found that it wasn't enough to make a painting or weld a sculpture, I was interested in doing more to make my art dramatic and performative.

At Humboldt you studied sculpture?

And painting and printmaking. Film and theater as well. I got very into Super 8 and 16mm filmmaking.

There was a point that I almost majored in film. I was so inspired by some great professors like Ann Skinner Jones who taught me a lot about the process. I was filming people and things out on the street. Found images, in a sense. Everyday images around me. Again, I love to work with my hands, so I couldn't just be in the darkroom editing and be content to see the images up on the wall. I had to scratch into the film and do painting onto the film. It was an extensive process I went through.

I did have a show when I was there; a collaboration with Alicia McCarthy. There are so many farms and barns up in Arcata, we collected a lot of very old items—rusty farm and dairy implements, old photographs—and we filled a whole gallery floor to ceiling with them. We covered the floor with hay and kind of collaged the whole gallery with this stuff. We got a band and cooked a huge turkey and had a party. (Laughs) We also painted portraits of each other.

What is the meaning of the vintage objects to you? I know there is a recycling and reuse aspect to what you are doing, but how do you feel as an artist about the times past that you are referencing?

I love and respect rural life. I think it's about honoring the past, the hard work involved in living then. I have a dream of owning a farm someday and living sustainably; recycling kitchen scraps, making patchwork quilts out of worn out clothes, milking the cow in the morning, hanging your clothes to dry on the line, collecting eggs from the chickens. Railroading and hoboing is also part of it for me.

The studio you have now is by the railroad tracks, isn't it?

It's next to the train tracks in an old paint factory—unfortunately a lead paint factory. It's quite a large abandoned warehouse and I have the top floor. In Arcata the trains came by where we lived. I'd be studying until midnight but I'd drop everything and run out to see the train. I'd wave and eventually I met the conductor and he would let me ride in the engine while he did his midnight runs, it was very exciting.

My friend Heidi and I actually hopped a train once, and took it up over the Sierras. We went to the biggest train yard nearby, which was Roseville, and asked the guy what train went over the Sierras and he said "Track 44" and pointed, "Over there". We ran over and found the track and the train with four engines because it takes that many to get over the Sierras. We hopped on a grain car because we thought we could hide well in there if we had to. It was a full moon. We went all the way to Sparks and back.

That sounds daring and romantic. (Laughs)

(Laughs) I don't know if it was romantic. We were covered in dirt and going through tunnels. But we made a film of the trip.

Not too many people have hopped a train in this day and age. What did you do after you graduated from Humboldt?

I went into the Peace Corps. I knew I wanted to travel, and stay in a community for an extended period of time. I had done a lot of community sustainable agricultural work and ended up doing hillside farming in Honduras for two years. We did some art there, too. I did some murals in the Casa Communales, the community meeting places.

That sounds like a formative experience. What did they teach you?

Oh my god, so much. I lived in a village without electricity, made tortillas by hand, worked in the fields together with the folks. I learned that small communities really know so much about living sustainably.

There's a kind of aesthetic of necessity which it seems was always your interest as well. There's a particular beauty in cultures living close to necessity, in a society without a lot of excess.

When it's necessary to get full use out of materials and nothing is wasted, people will transform something out of what they have. It becomes something again; something new by finding a new use.

Then you came back to the States?

When I got back, that's when I got the job at the East Bay Depot. I was just walking down the street, and I looked in the door, started talking to someone and got hired on the spot—a found job, off the street! (Laughs) I worked there for 5 years. Then I taught in an after school art program K-5. During that period I was making new work and applying to graduate school.

I got into grad school at the Massachusetts College of Art which turned out to be a great opportunity for me to get away from the Bay Area, my home for so long, and really focus on my work. My two sculpture professors there Jill Slosberg Ackerman and Judy Haberl, worked very similarly to me, using found objects, furniture, photographs, water and ice. They were very inspiring role models for me. They did it all: teaching, making their own art, and raising kids.

How did your work develop there?

Right away I was dumpster diving, collecting as much material as I could. I did an installation where I built a shack within the walls of the gallery. I hauled in two yards of dirt. I put old photographs and letters that I found in the dirt. I put up lots of old-man clothes all over.

I started to add performance to my installation. Once a week I put on the old man's clothes that I found and perform simple actions—I'd type on a typewriter, I pumped up a flat tire and let it deflate over and over. I spent most of graduate school exploring experimental performance, but at the end of my two years, my thesis show was all sculpture, with one monitor that showed all my performances.

There is something spiritual about the way you are communicating with the past. I know people who put on other people's clothes to feel connected to them.

One of my best friends up in Arcata was an old man named Bill who was kind of a hermit. He had worked in the saw mill and cut off a finger. He grew potatoes in his yard, he wore suspenders. His family was all gone and he was a loner but I thought he was so amazing. I felt a connection to him and that a light should be shined on him. I took a lot of photographs of him. I like to create a history of forgotten people.

Your new show is called Misremembering You. What will it be about?

Again, bringing lost and unknown personalities to light. I've been looking at old photographs, these funny high school type portraits, and drawing from these photographs and painting them. There are two pieces I'm working on and struggling with. They are on pieces of wood that are then attached to wheels. One is upside down and the wheels are on the wall, the other is sitting on its wheels. I'm playing with different formats for painting, not on a regular canvas.

It sounds like a wheelbarrow. A painting you can wheel around.

Wheels are all of a sudden in my work. Another one is a sculpture on wheels, that's collaged and layered with color and paint and sketches and photographs and I write my thoughts as well. There's a handle in the back even, so you could push it like a cart.

I was thinking about adding a performance to it, that's where my athletic energy could come into it. I was thinking I could walk my painting down the street and around the block. That's how I would show it. I may do that or not but it's interesting that I'm building pieces that may imply that or even inspire that.

I like the loop idea there. You're taking things that you find on the street, bringing them into the studio, making something new out of them, then taking them back into the street.

Did you see Chandra Cerrito's last show with Claudia Tennyson's work? She had all these potions she made, and she was there in the gallery like a bartender mixing drinks for people out of these potions. She's part of the art. I've been following her work for about six years now. She also does this thing where she goes to someone's house and fixes something. You don't know how she will do it, you just trust her to come in and do it how she wants to. Maybe she'll mend your ripped couch by embroidering an anchor or something. I'm very interested in the performative and hope to add that dimension to my shows in the future.

What's your day job now?

I was a museum tech for a while, installing and moving art shows at the Berkeley Art Museum and the Oakland Museum. I loved working with all the fascinating art but I was on call all the time and that didn't really work for me. For the last year I've been a house manager for a group home for people with schizophrenia in San Rafael. The people are amazing—the ages range from about 20s to 80s. I'm there to help with their daily routines and activities.

What kind of credentials do you have to have to do that job?

Having a master's degree, even one in art, was significant. I think they wanted someone with a different energy from a mental health professional, so I got the job. I manage the residents meds and I organize all their health appointments, so it's been a huge learning curve, and lots of responsibility but I'm good at it and I'm loving it!

It's a 40 hour a week job but with one overnight, so I get Mondays off. Plus it's just 9 to 5 and I can get back to work in my studio after that. I don't have to bring any work home or any stress. So it's worked out very well. Six weeks PTO, too, so I can do art residencies.

I did a residency in Nebraska at Art Farm, which was an organization that recycles old barns. They moved them onto their property and the residents fix up the barns and you get an art studio to work in while you're there.

The next one I'm doing is a National Parks residency at Whiskeytown, which is up near Eureka.

So the painting that you showed at M20 last month caused quite a stir with its flurry of flying penises and a big white horse. It was called "I Want You, Tom" and everyone wanted to know who Tom was. So I'm glad to hear from you that Tom is the horse. That clears things up. (Laughs) How about painting, Chela?

I've always loved painting. I did big five by six foot paintings early on with lots of layers of dogs, horses, and people with big feet. I'm letting myself go back there but not on canvas. I'm incorporating paint into the sculptures and just mixing all media.

I like that you're painting on found wood. What's your technique with that? How do you prepare it?

Not much technique. Sometimes I gesso it, but not always. I use both acrylic and oil on the wood. I like to keep the wood raw sometimes, other times I'll gloss it over. Often the wood is dirty and I might leave some of the dirt on.

So you are from San Francisco, you told me you went to New Traditions Center in the Fillmore for K-5 and Urban High School. I just wondered, with your urban upbringing and all, how did you get so country? (Laughs)

My parents were very outdoorsy we went camping and backpacking all the time. My parents actually met in the Peace Corps in Peru and married there. Until I was about four years old we lived in Costa Rica and then we came back to San Francisco. So though I've lived in SF and Boston I've also lived in Central America and on the dairy farms of Arcata. I'm almost more country than city.

Future plans?

I really want to get my work out there and connect with the art community. I'm excited to be a part of Mercury 20 and working with a group of artists. I'm a fairly new member and just getting to know everyone but the bits and pieces are coming together.