Mel Chin, 1991, 2 of 2

[Speakers (in order of appearance): Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Founding Director, Artists Documentation Program and Chief Conservator, The Menil Collection; Mel Chin]
CM-U: We are going to continue along now to the next piece in the series, which would be Uranus [Castration and Concealment from The Operation of the Sun Through the Cult of the Hand, 1987]. Mel, do you want to go on about that.
Mel Chin: The full title for this piece is Uranus: Castration and Concealment. And, you know, in the alchemic series, after you get past Saturn, the ancients didn't know about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. So I had to get to the spirit of what gave them their illusions and study the scientific aspects of now, and the mythology that would spawn, and the stories and the languages that would spawn, something like the correct material for this piece.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And I settled on fiber-related material, like silks, and cloth, and cotton, and things, as well as the mythology, because – first, the fiber, because Varuna was the goddess of the heavens, where Uranus comes from. And it means in Sanskrit, I believe, if I recollect, "the veiled one." It's the veil of the night that comes over. Here it is kind of using the black silk. It's penetrated through, and it's the shape of a sickle form. Later, by the time the Greeks come up with it, it becomes a male god that is castrated. The testicles, by Saturn – his Saturn sickle castrates the sun, castrates the father. The testicles fall into the ocean and they propagate Venus.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And Venus is sacred to cuttlefish and sea urchins. So these things give me some clues of what to make and the forms to make them out of.
CM-U: So, again, here is the forms coming out of mythology?
Mel Chin: Right. Right. And also the way this is laid into the wall is, Uranus is also – is not, you know, when you are looking at the sun's rays going this way, and all the planets are axial, Uranus is tilted on its side…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …facing – so it's spinning like this.
CM-U: Huh.
Mel Chin: It's a quite unusual rotation. So I saw this as a plane, and here things are split, and facing in and out of the wall.

Mel Chin: This piece was also to go – to discover a dimensionality that doesn't exist in a lot of these things. To go beyond the wall and create another space that…
CM-U: Because so far we've been in the space…
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: …and on the space – on the wall. But now we haven't gone…
Mel Chin: But now this one about half [sounds like]…
CM-U: Well, we started into it with Mars, I think.
Mel Chin: Yeah. We are sinking in. But here now we are creating a negative cavity that has a relationship because inside there is the same vault as we have above here. That's a vaulted casket where inside are little pins that are stars from – the same stars, of course – but according to Chinese celestial maps.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: So all of these little pinpoints above __________ [phrase inaudible]…
CM-U: What are those pinpoints made out of?
Mel Chin: They are actually fluorite [sounds like] museum nails. Because the old – in Chinese diagrams, it's a circle with a dot is usually how they draw their constellation. I like the brass head pins with the little marking dot inside because it would be – and I knew it would be obscure, but it's also related to how stars are illustrated in Taoist mapping.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: So those are laid into this Eastern heaven. Now, within these is stars that relate this in reverse, along the inside of the rotation of the earth, there is a set of stars like the Big Dipper and all that…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and these are where it's laid in here. Those pins relate to these rays…
CM-U: But these pins are not brass. These are…
Mel Chin: No, those are metal. Those are steel…
CM-U: Steel pins.
Mel Chin: …pins. Those pins are brass rounded by the same kind of steel pin. You've seen them before.
CM-U: And the blue fabric that's in there, is that silk __________ [word inaudible]?
Mel Chin: That's not really blue fabric. That's – there is a silk layer there, but it's also blue chalk.
CM-U: Behind the fabric?
Mel Chin: Behind __________ [word inaudible]. Blue pigment chalk. And I used mud as a – mud and glue, as the binder. Mud – actually it was Texas gumbo that I would have – I always bring up quantities of the black mud. Because the mythology also says the black blood that fell to the earth created the ash tree nymph, and the Furies…
CM-U: And this is ash, this __________ [phrase inaudible].
Mel Chin: This is ash wood. And then, to maintain the cuttlefish relationship, I went to one of its cousins, the squid. Bought five pounds of squid from the Essex Street Market – butcher market – and extracted the ink sacs, and derived all the black ink that is on the pins.
CM-U: Did you eat the squid?
Mel Chin: Uh, yeah, we had fried calamari. Not all five pounds, though. It was too much.
CM-U: That's a lot.
Mel Chin: It was a lot. Good, though.

Mel Chin: But how I saw this is also not just testicle but as eyes looking up at what – these Western stars, looking up at the Eastern stars. That there was the frustration or the separation, the castration from a body of ideas…
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: It's looking up for what, as I say, it cannot see. That's in another plane, another way of thinking. So it was showing the agonizing differences between communicating ideas as well, and how you are separated from that. But this is made out of Chinese paper and gauze and, you know, thinking about fibers, again, but also thinking about, you know, bandaging it as well. But I see them as – but knowledge itself is like – visual knowledge, or whatever, is like the orgasm of the eye. I could see them as this information exploding out into the pins. And there could be also just sea urchins.
CM-U: Um-hum. It looks like it was formed around a round form and then cut…
Mel Chin: Yes.
CM-U: …in half __________ [phrase inaudible].
Mel Chin: I think this – was it an apple or a balloon? In fact, I do remember, I carved a form. It must have been out of foam or some – or papier mâché. And then formed my material. Because I wanted to give it this extra cavity at the top.
CM-U: Um-hum. And the white is just pigment? Or is it just the color…
Mel Chin: It's actually the paper.
CM-U: The paper color?
Mel Chin: The paper color, yeah. And the…
CM-U: And what about the dots?
Mel Chin: The dots are the – again, the black blood, or the soil, the gumbo that was used to do the…
CM-U: Oh, I see.
Mel Chin: So I used the same types of gauze and fabric material to build up the casket. It's wood strips. It's cherry wood strips that's all tacked together.
CM-U: Is that a piece that's inserted in the wall?
Mel Chin: This – it was mounted into the whole box frame, but it is a domed, lidded box I made that comes into a shape and then curves around into its – well, this would be the bottom of the casket.
CM-U: Uh-huh. But I mean as it exists now, in the wall.
Mel Chin: It's…
CM-U: That's what it is. The wooden form. The casket.
Mel Chin: Yeah, the casket.
CM-U: Okay.
Bill Howze: Excuse me, Mel. Could you describe – just repeat what you said about how that was formed and, the shapes that were involved in it?
Mel Chin: The casket form itself? Whatever?
Bill Howze: Yeah.
Mel Chin: That I built like forms. It's very much [as] you would build a vaulted ceiling. And laid my material, my – I tacked all my material together. I built it very much like you would build a little model of a cathedral or a domed building.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: But it was a strange shape because it had – it followed along the sickle shape as its base. And I flipped it over and pulled off the base. I made a form that was curved for it to rest on to begin with 'cause I knew the dimensions of this curve before I started. That was established simply by the dimensions of the gallery that it was first going to go into.
CM-U: Um-hum.

Mel Chin: So it was one of the first – no, I was working on Mercury. It was one of the first works that was started. This is about the beginning of the work, and this is…
CM-U: That reminds me of a question I wanted to ask you before. We understand the order of these. It is very well set. But did you make them in that order?
Mel Chin: No, not necessarily. No. I started them – well, let's say I did not start them in that order. When it came to finishing them, I very much worked toward that direction. 'Cause Pluto was the last one to finish because I wanted to consider again my psychological condition that I was putting on the piece. Though it was very hectic and very rushed near the end, with hair dryers blow drying the paint, and things not falling together at the last minute. The ideas behind the construction was to develop these different personalities that will pull out of myself into – try to project it into the pieces.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I don't think, due to my last minute methods, I don't know how well that was followed; but there was a conscious effort that they be given, each to have, I would consider, some kind of erotic presence in terms of having a personality. When things – I feel when things have personality, then they have essential presence as well.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: As opposed to – and I don't want each one to have a different way of being. So…
CM-U: Did you embed these in your wall at your studio? Or did you wait…
Mel Chin: No, I waited…
CM-U: …for some you saw it was when you did it [sounds like] in the gallery?
Mel Chin: The first section was put up in my studio because I, you know, I could have handled it. But this one, I had to wait until it was built. __________ [phrase inaudible].
CM-U: I guess, in terms of aging, I guess we would continue – we would expect to see continued fraying of the fabric.
Mel Chin: Somewhat, yes.
CM-U: And that seems like that would be in keeping with the nature of it.
Mel Chin: That is. Here the veil has been cut open and revealed. The concealment has been opened, and…
CM-U: So the jagged edge is very much a part of it?
Mel Chin: Right. Right. And it's just stuffed in there a way, and it's not – it should be – you should be careful in terms of – if you were to pull it out and try to remember where [sounds like] it went in. It's been rearranged several times, so – that's one of the things, since it is – I used a lot of the drywall as my material…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and that has the propensity to, you know, fall apart on you as well. But I thought that that could eventually be rebuilt. You could rebuild the wall, too.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: If you are careful. We'll discuss that.

Mel Chin: One more thing about body relationships again. Here are the – I'm not going to drop my pants, but the height of the testicles relate to where mine fall. So there is a reality, again, about human measurement, and the human body being a measure of this work, and its relationship with the hand and the rest of your condition.
CM-U: So it's a relation to the human body. The human scale.
Mel Chin: Human scale.
CM-U: And the same with the arc?
Mel Chin: The arc, I think, has a relationship to, again, these kind of spreads and things (holds arms out wide). It's just like that piece.
CM-U: Mercury.
Mel Chin: Yeah. So I believe it might be a bit higher than – I think when I originally put it up, I tried to reach as high – it put it out of the reach of my hand.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: It was as far as I could stretch. Just so that you can't grasp what's above you.
CM-U: Just beyond.
Mel Chin: Yeah. Put it beyond your reach. So…
CM-U: So, again, it's a sense of the placement in relation to man and relation to the other objects?
Mel Chin: Right. Right. And it's – again, this scale is – if, you know, put each unit as far as you could stretch, which I brought it into like, nine inches. My hands are a little bit shorter now, but if I pressed it as hard as I could to get that as my gauge…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …as a marker for the compressed units.

CM-U: Okay.
Mel Chin: Okay?
CM-U: Let's move on to the next one.
Mel Chin: Yes. Neptune is Filtration and the Purification of Desire [from The Operation of the Sun Through the Cult of the Hand, 1987]. Because Neptune and his trident, fighting with Athena and his desire for land. But the use of bronze here came from two sources. Is that if you were going to make a fitting trident head, what would you make it out of? It would of course be bronze, and I looked at the Poseidon, or some people call it also Jupiter, or Artemision in Greece from 473 B.C. This was one of my favorite statues. But he's not holding a trident. He's not holding anything. And I said, "Well, we will make something."
Mel Chin: But then, so I was encouraged to use the bronze, but the actual bronze that was settled on was around the same period being made in China. And I took the formula for this from the sixth part of the artifices record [sounds like] from the Book of Rites for the Zhou Dynasty. And they would recommend, when you are making a sword or a mirror or anything else, they had prescriptions of metals.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: I used that 80/20 – 80 copper, 20 tin mixture, specified it for this piece. Because it is – you know, what they were talking about, by following these prescriptions, you would keep order in your heaven with all the ritual. The Book of Ritual, you do this, you do that, you do this to preserve order. So, to me, it was a very much – it was very important that this be made out of that bronze because also you will see the Han dynasty tridents, and then you can imagine what they are made of. It was – I liked that relationship with history…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and ritual into this piece. The other medicinal aspects of this piece, the cured [sounds like] desire factor. I would have loaded – well, just, first of all, what's loaded inside these hollow barnacles – actually a straight pole that was covered with barnacles, was found around Galveston. Again, on these trips back and forth to home – my parents live here – I would bring back something. So on this trip, the barnacle pole was collected. I think I was on a fishing trip, and I was thinking about this piece. I said, "What could I possibly – what could I possibly make the trident out of?" And I think I must have just leaned over the pier and looked at this – the post that was covered with barnacles – I said, "That is what the Neptune piece will be cast. What I'll commit this precious material being especially ordered to."
CM-U: Was this a stanchion holding up the pier?
Mel Chin: Yeah. Well, I saw it, and then I went and found – I went to a junkyard of pier and boat parts and things; and they just had some laying around in the mud. And I looked for one that was heavily encrusted like what I had seen.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And we cut it. They thought we were pretty nutty. My brother and I – we went out and got it. Fetched it, and then wrapped it up carefully, washed it, and then took it back to New York City, where I prepared it for its molds. They were wax – waxes were pulled off of it, and then that's what I assembled this into.

Mel Chin: This actually was cracked when it came out of the foundry – this I took to a foundry, because it was a large pour. It's about two hundred and something pounds of bronze. It's very thick. And I wasn't there when they pulled it out. I wish I was. I would have recommended patience…
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: …because they were so unfamiliar with – you know, every bronze is different. And I think it suffered a great shock. It was not as resilient as the silicon bronzes that they are used to pouring, and it was cracked.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: So it was – they made welding rods out of the material, and they might have used some of their own welding rods to piece it back together again. But after they pieced it, I came back with a grinding and cutting tool and recarved by hand barnacles where there were…
CM-U: Can you – do you remember where the break was?
Mel Chin: Um, the breaks were in the background [sounds like]. No, I don't. Actually I don't. 'Cause I tried to do a good job of hiding their work. So that it was chased [sounds like] by hand in order to make things resemble the surface. So this took a great effort to get back in shape.
CM-U: Is this a continuous hollow? Is it – it's a solid form all the way around?
Mel Chin: It's all hollow. Yeah.
CM-U: It's a hollow form, all the way around – in the round?
Mel Chin: It's hollow. All of the piping. And there were, I think, about two hundred and seventy – I don't know how many sponges, but it was really dried, salt-soaked sponges…
CM-U: And these are natural sponges that you stuffed down in…
Mel Chin: Right. From the Mediterranean, yes.
CM-U: Again, for the reason, the form comes from some…
Mel Chin: Yeah. Form comes from something. And also, to me, is the desire of those sponges…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: …it is just to – yeah, what sponges are about is something – where they are from. And to take them from the Mediterranean, and then they dry them in the sun with salt and everything. And then stick – stuff them in there.
CM-U: Is it important to you that the sponges retain their shape? Parts of your pieces that are not visible, is it important over time that they remain to be sponges and not just a thick powder.
Mel Chin: Powder. If they powder – in this case, I would say, if they powder, that's what happened to them. But it's the idea that the sponges were there. Or, this is the loading of the piece with an idea.
CM-U: So sort of what you're saying as we've been talking today is that the loading of the piece is something the artist does up front as he makes it. As he creates it. As he conceives it. And…
Mel Chin: Uh…
CM-U: …in terms of preservation, we said with Mercury, we would want to replace it with pine. We couldn't introduce another material.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: But if the appearance changes slightly, or the form changes, that's okay?
Mel Chin: In certain relationships here, the sponges were only meant to be barely seen, you know. So here they are sitting up there, around there. And they're there, I guess. I think I would like to have them just peeking at the top…
CM-U: Over the edge slightly?
Mel Chin: Over the edge like they are now. They have traveled. Maybe some have ridden up some, or whatever. But that – I'd like to preserve this.

Mel Chin: This material is marijuana or hemp from someone's property in Tennessee that I saw they had a big, big marijuana plant, and I said, "Well, what are you going to do with that?"
CM-U: They believed you were going to make rope out of it?
Mel Chin: Well, they – I – yeah, they're friends. And we negotiated that after they took all the crop, that they would send me the whole tree through UPS. And so that came in the mail. And this was rolled down the thigh [sounds like] as Paleolithic man did…
CM-U: And rolling of…
Mel Chin: …yeah, rolling of – yeah, rolling the fiber __________ [word inaudible] to make the original twine…
CM-U: Yeah.
Mel Chin: …to attach [sounds like]. Why? Because it was known that the Greeks did burn in Ma [sounds like], as with Chinese, it is a very important medicine as well. And we're trying to give medicines to ease the desire factor.
Mel Chin: The other part is the Gorgonian fan coral…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …which comes in beautiful fans. The – it is from the legend of – it was known in the sixteen – at least in the 1612 edition, which is the only edition. The only real lexicon of alchemy is Martin Rulandus's Lexicon Alchemiae that was done in 1612. I went to the Library of Congress to look at a 1622 edition in Latin and German. It was done for the King of Austria at __________ [word inaudible]. It must have been that, something like that. However, you know, looking at translation, I came upon the – I was looking for sea-related things, but they had to have a relationship to the pharmological aspect that I was looking at. And the fan coral was more precious than gold during the…
CM-U: For its medicinal properties?
Mel Chin: To cure insanity.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: I think it had to have something to do with – like there are some current political figures in America that have some thyroid problems. I think they are insane, too, but – I won't give them that much credit. But that is related to iodine deficiencies and things. And it probably did have a real effect. You would wear this stuff around your – a locket. Shave it and make a soup…
CM-U: Like a tea, or a soup?
Mel Chin: Yeah, a tea.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And drink it. Also, it was also the concept that the Gorgon, that the Medusa, whose – one drop could kill all or cure all…
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: …which is also a concept in alchemic literature of elixirs of life, which comes from the Chinese up into Arabia and to Twelfth Century Europe. But this is also the Tree of Life and its relationship to the veins and under the skull cap. So there was all these things pointing toward it as a filtration device.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: Uh, and not so much unlike [Marcel] Duchamp's filtration cones in the large glass [The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23].
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: But to form these was a problem because the cones – I wanted to make cones out of it, but if you know this material, it's brittle like stone. The legend is, Perseus slays the gorgon. His head falls in the sea, and the sea nymphs drag it through, and these formerly pliable plants become stone-like when exposed to air. It's the gorgon's head caused these things. And all the people I talked to about this Gorgonia said, "Oh, you can't form it because it's too hard. It will just crack. So it's impossible."
Mel Chin: I decided to return it to the sea, so I made a salt bath and soaked them. And sure enough, these samples that are pressed flat became very pliable.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: And it didn't take long before they would start getting hard again. And then I made these forms and cones. I'd wrap it in a cone and stuff them together and clamp it and let it dry. Or let it, you know, turn dry. And they maintain their form…
CM-U: Is this the color that they came out?
Mel Chin: Yes. It's a black…
CM-U: Was this the natural color?
Mel Chin: Yes. Yeah.

CM-U: I see some pigment on the twine. Did you – is it wax?
Mel Chin: Yeah, this – there is some wax, as usual, to – I was using a lot of beeswax and stuff…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: …to try to help preserve the hemp, to make it less brittle and not fray apart. And this, more is just a collar around the cone.
CM-U: And so there is no preservation otherwise? There is no treatment otherwise on any of it?
Mel Chin: No, no. Well, the only treatment is the wax on the bronze. It was, again, a light, light coating.
CM-U: Butcher's wax?
Mel Chin: Yes. You know, these also can be adjusted. There seems to be a chunk, and it's fallen off on the inside. I haven't noticed that before. We can lift that off and pick it up, or just leave it, as far as…
CM-U: Oh, you think it came from up here?
Mel Chin: It was probably part of the whole…
CM-U: On the inside, maybe?
Mel Chin: Yeah. That's the only – and this tying has come loose in certain areas.
CM-U: I see that, yeah.
Mel Chin: I have to finalize [sounds like] that. And you know how I would do it is use a tweezer and just thread it through and try to – you know, they are not really functioning so much as a tie onto the thing other than a collar.
CM-U: So at this point they are really very – seemingly permanent? They are very stable, very hard.
Mel Chin: I think they are very, yeah. Yes.
CM-U: Yeah.
Mel Chin: They have not changed in the time since their…

CM-U: The colors are very beautiful, actually.
Mel Chin: Yeah.
CM-U: The natural __________ [phrase inaudible]
Mel Chin: Well, the color, the patina was a – I had to invent this. Well, I didn't invent it. The patinas always exist. But I wanted to simulate this – the Greek bronzes that I liked, too…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …here as a Chinese bronze. And also the Shang bronzes. You see a relationship to this encrustation. And I liked this blackening look. It's always a sulfuric – what was it, this – there's two treatments on this. The copper – nickel. Of course the copper for the green, I didn't like the bright green…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …that you would get like that.
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: I wanted – so it was a little more sophisticated in terms of blackening it first, then spraying it like salt and time would naturally mottle it the way you have these little pockets of green.
CM-U: Well, I guess some of the green, over time – or at last a potential hazard is that bronze disease will develop on it if it's in high humidity. That's certainly a possibility.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: And the result of that would be pitting, as you know…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …into the metal. That's something that…
Mel Chin: That, I would be willing to allow to happen because this is, you know, this piece is about the acidic desire that is eating away at it. And I thought these barnacles, their emblem is functioning of the wood [sounds like] as well. And in a weird – I guess it is a very stationary kind of position to have, but it's – their active look, or whatever, propelled me to using them.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: To give it this trident form.
CM-U: Here, again, we have the piece embedded in the wall.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: But there is something very disarming, of not having the staff, you know.
(laughter)
CM-U: …there's like a – it's recognizable.
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: And there is something very disarming about not having a support for this one, for some reason.
Mel Chin: Yeah. And this one does have…
CM-U: It's very moving.
Mel Chin: Yeah. I like – it's best not to have it for this one.
CM-U: All right.
Bill Howze: Mel, could you repeat what you said about the hemp and rolling it?
Mel Chin: Oh, the – in terms of – just for demonstration, the hemp was – well, we would strip it off – the, the bark of the trunk…
CM-U: Plant.
Mel Chin: …that was – plant – and then I would just hold it, and just roll it…
Bill Howze: Can you turn so I can see it better?
Mel Chin: …just like this. So this is the thing. It's this twining motion that you push down, and then keep working…
CM-U: And then you – and then it stayed together by the wax that you…
Mel Chin: Yeah. No, I didn't need the wax.
CM-U: No, just by itself. Just by rolling.
Mel Chin: It was wet, and it would just trap itself. You know how you make twine is, you do one and…
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: …and you attach the other, and then it spins itself. Just like making rope. But this, I just wanted a single strand.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I felt that that was the most primitive. I was getting in touch again with the most primitive – like, from the flint tool idea, to the first rope.
Bill Howze: And what about the height of this piece?
Mel Chin: This piece was more to the point of my eyes just looking into the points of desire. These shapes, obviously, and getting into that area. So that you start seeing what's in them.
CM-U: Okay.
Mel Chin: Okay.

Mel Chin: Um, Pluto is Projection and Permutation [from The Operation of the Sun Through the Cult of the Hand, 1987], is – uh, there's three levels that you'll see in here. There's the helmet of gold in the inside, the ceramic shell coating it, and the coal on the outside. It connotes the blackening, the whitening, and the reddening, the processes of alchemic hierarchies to get to the gold. And then the inside shell is made out of – is alchemic gold that Barron and I constructed out of looking at texts. And, again, trying different formulas and using the projection powder of magnesium, different things, to add – to get the final look, the feel of real (laughs).
Mel Chin: One extra note about this that you might want to see – look underneath this thing…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: …is the grate of arsenical copper, poisonous copper, that was made as one of the attempted golds – but unsuccessful. But I saw it as the fire grate…
CM-U: Hmm. Yeah.
Mel Chin: …as the grate that this poisonous labyrinth – it's based on the labyrinth of Knossos, the labyrinth that you go through in order to get to the final product. The helmet – the clay helmet I made, and it was glazed at Sarah Lawrence College – 'cause I knew Sandra Jensen's daughter was there, and she was taking ceramics. So we called around, and we took it up there to get it glazed, and they fired it in the night, you know.
(laughter)

Mel Chin: And then the coal. This is the anthracite coal that was used to make the gold.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: So I – this was saved as the material. As we were making the gold, I asked Barron to preserve for me these pieces, 'cause they would go back. I like this, because if you were to reverse this whole thing, then you would have, again, the fire – I guess the fire grate would be back in place…
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: …but it would be the crucible, and the gold within.
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: So it's a reverse. The earliest drawings just show coal in a crucible, but then it became the helmet of invisibility, and the actual discovery of the planet Pluto was Clyde Tombaugh and the blink comparator, sitting in a chamber that would restrict his vision, and project images back and forth, a million images, until he saw a faint movement in the sky. That's the discovery of Pluto. So its invisibility is legendary as well.
Mel Chin: This helmet, also, you can get in and look out at, back into the white [sounds like]…
CM-U: You mean you can look through it?
Mel Chin: Yeah, you should be – you can get in there yourself, and stick your head into it. (CM-U ducks her head into sculpture) Hi. (Chin waves) I'll get back. And you see through this chamber…
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: …your vision is restricted into back into the white [sounds like]. To your first __________ [word inaudible].
CM-U: It is very – it's focused and restricted, you know.
Mel Chin: Yes. Yes. And it should give a certain kind of feeling as well.
CM-U: I mean, it does.
Mel Chin: Because of the mass of it as well. And also, the danger of the arsenic that surrounds you. The collar of arsenic.
CM-U: So one false move and you're into arsenic city?
Mel Chin: Yeah.
CM-U: It's really quite wonderful in the inside of the piece where you can see this very clearly. So we'll get that later.
Mel Chin: Yeah. And the gold was pieced together with silver solders, and then pounded. See all the little strips of gold that…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: And it's maintained its color. I mean, it was one of the best formulas for it. Pretty much. There is some oxidation here, probably from the silver solder as well.
CM-U: How many times did it take you to actually get the gold?
Mel Chin: (draws a deep breath)
CM-U: Lots?
Mel Chin: Lots.
CM-U: Twice. Twice? That's all?
Mel Chin: No. Lots.
CM-U: Yeah.
Mel Chin: I think we tried – they are very difficult to do.
CM-U: It's very difficult to do.
Mel Chin: I would make up formulas. Chin's famous 1, 2, 3. That didn't work.
CM-U: Well, after all, they've been trying it for centuries. (laughs)
Mel Chin: Yeah, that's right! But once – but there are so many formulas available. I think that Barron was the one who finally – we were using a formula. I had to get back to unload this piece, but Barron was – called and said, "I hit it."
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: You know, finally. He kept trying. But it was after the essential ingredients, projection powder was actually a magnesium oxide. It was quite beautiful. We would be throwing these powders in there. Probably dangerous, too. But the flares of color, you could see how people were so involved.
CM-U: How enchanting all of this was as they were doing it.
Mel Chin: It was quite wonderful. Yes.
CM-U: Yeah.

CM-U: Why is this – tell us about the height of this again. I mean, you need to get down to get into it.
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: And you can't see it from eye level.
Mel Chin: I – the height of this, I made it shorter than myself. I wanted to be a little more egalitarian, allow it to be more average height. I was thinking more of people that were shorter…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and so they could get into it as well, to experience it. So basically it shouldn't be so low or so high that you can't get into it. It's the idea or the possibility of peering through it.
CM-U: Well, it's wonderful on the inside.
Mel Chin: So…
CM-U: Do you anticipate any changes in the coal or – I mean, we've had one small fallout…
Mel Chin: Yeah. Because of the grate, it probably comes out. There has been some fallout from this side in travel. But Barron has been very careful to go back and fill all…
CM-U: Is there a coating? Did you do anything?
Mel Chin: There is some asphalt and rubber – Black Magic, I believe, was used as well. It's just a compound to stick a lot of these things on.
CM-U: To secure them?
Mel Chin: So a lot of these pieces of coal are secure. And one thing about the aesthetics is that I – different people were used to put this up, and I would make them switch sides so that it wouldn't be all lop-sided in terms of someone…
CM-U: You mean different assistants were helping you do it?
Mel Chin: Yes. Yes. So I tried to switch that out as well. In fact, like I said, this piece, I worked the least amount on in a way, other than coordinating it. And it's like projecting its final incarnation. And…
CM-U: Was that because of matters of just timing or…
Mel Chin: It was a matter of timing, but I just felt like I knew this piece already.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And I wanted all these hands, like in the construction of Agamemnon's Tomb, I believe, or what is it? In Mycenae. With all the – you know, the idea of workers on this, and the effort it takes. I did help do this frame. I framed out this part…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …with the larger chunks, and to suspend this middle chunk. __________ [phrase inaudible; might be sort of hold] this large lump there because there might be – I think there's a hidden wire to hold this middle chunk up.

CM-U: Before we leave Operation of the Sun…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …I think let's just talk generally about some issues that we've touched on.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: Because I think your feeling – well, I don't know; perhaps your feelings about restoring different pieces would be different, depending upon the materials. But certainly in the case of The Operation of the Sun, the materials, the actual materiality, the choice of the materiality is very pertinent to the incorporation in each of the images. And in terms of restoration, ah, in the future, do we use synthetic materials? Would that be an intrusion? Should we try to do, stay with the materials that are here?
Mel Chin: I would first try with the materials that are available. I…
CM-U: That you've already used, you mean?
Mel Chin: That I've already used. I have preserved, like, some cartons of coal.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: There is some more of the hemp. You know, I've made attempts to make note of what these things are, so there's extra of the material. So, you know, should it ever be in one spot or wherever, that should be made available. And enough notes, I think, exist on this piece so – and I'm sure Barron took some notes as well during the construction, that he would have a lot to say about what I used.
CM-U: Do you generally try to keep your notes with the pieces? I mean, it seems like it would be helpful.
Mel Chin: Yeah. I, unfortunately, feel like I am fairly just haphazard about it, but there are – I have been able to compile, like, booklets and things. Or files on some works. So they do exist.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: Operation of the Sun, over the years – unfortunately, there are a couple of lost notebooks that were critical, that was left in a cab, or something like that…
CM-U: Ohh.
Mel Chin: …but that happens.
CM-U: Yeah.
Mel Chin: But in the ones that are around, there seems to be a lot of drawings, over and over again while I'm trying to distill the pieces. To bat them down, you know. To reform the ideas into their final…
CM-U: But I've also had the sense, as we're talking of different pieces, that natural aging of these materials is not something that offends you particularly.
Mel Chin: No. I expected that, you know, materials do have a life of their own. Sure, if it crumbles, and the idea no longer exists visually, then I was hoping that there may be some documents like this to help it along.

CM-U: As long as you are alive, do you feel – I mean generally – well, let me phrase this differently. I mean, generally our policy is not to ask the artist to do the restorations, but certainly to participate in the decision-making of what the restoration should be.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: Do you tend to like to do them yourself? Restorations? Or does that sort of sit with you?
Mel Chin: It depends on the work. I think there are certain things that – with this one, since it is the Cult of the Hand, perhaps the hand should have some say in it. I guess that, by extension…
CM-U: The Hand, your hand.
Mel Chin: My hand. And the extension. Like, if there was certain – there are certain aesthetic or subjective sentiments going into, you know, the construction of where something, the way something looks. Like even like, how would that be retied?
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: As I'm around, and probably when we take this down, I'd probably be very careful, if I were to look at it again.
CM-U: One of the aspects of my work that interests me particularly, and I've been thinking about a lot, is how the restorer – like the artist, but certainly to a lesser degree, or a different degree, a different way – uses the hand to try to preserve what the mind has created. And it's trying to decipher what is the essence of that to preserve finally. I mean, it may not be just – I mean, sure, you know, tack – putting one of these back in, or tacking down a little bit [sounds like]. Those are the easy issues. But it becomes more complicated when the piece is truly in danger, and you're wondering, "What is the essence of this piece to preserve?" That's why I think it's so important to talk with you about that.
Mel Chin: Um-hum. Yeah. This is one of the more difficult ones of a lot of the pieces 'cause so much emphasis was saying – to me, what causes a lot of the pieces to take their form was not just the material. Because the material has a say so, but it's one part of the say so, the philosophy guiding it, as well as its original form, and the treatment, and all these things. They all combine to make the statement. So here the materials are very important, and it makes it very – it's just, you know, "What do you do?" I haven't figured that one out yet, but the preservation of the original stuff, or the matrix of this thing, is important.
CM-U: Well, that's good. Let's keep those issues in mind as we look at some other pieces.
Mel Chin: Sure.
[Break in video]

CM-U: After looking at The Operation of the Sun, and just sort of talking about what restorers in the future would do when you weren't around to do your own restorations, and we said that the choice of the materials, or the replication, or the actual duplication of the materials that you used would be appropriate, I can't help but think how different that is from the tradition of the visual artist, where, when we go to restore something, what we try to do is to restore the appearance, the external skin of it…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …rather than the material per se. For example, on an oil painting, we rarely would inpaint, which means put paint in the loss, with oil paint. We'd use another material that was, we thought, longer lasting, wouldn't yellow, wouldn't change. But in your pieces, as we've said so far, that doesn't seem to be the criteria. So, in a way, I see working on your pieces as quite different from the traditional work – to working on the traditional visual artist.
Mel Chin: Yeah. It seems like it gives somebody a job over generations to keep fleshing those hides and to keep mixing up the glue. Maybe a permanent employment service like that would be good. But I think that, in some cases, you know, I think I weigh things intuitively too – you know, what is the concept, or what am I trying to translate. If it gives – if you can replicate the appearance of this – is that's what important? [sounds like] And this is a hard one for me because I was so much into those materials…
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: …and what their potential, or their power to translate, to have their voice, have their say. And you've left me with a real question in my mind, what to…
CM-U: Well, I have to say that my own line, in my own work, my own development right now, has led me to, uh, reconsider the tenets of my profession in terms of using materials that are only reversible – that is one of the tenets of conservation. And in keeping with that, we try to use materials that we can remove.
Mel Chin: Uh-huh.
CM-U: And so you could have a traditional oil painting, if we go back to that…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …and we decide we need to put a second canvas on the back. So we use wax to do that, with the idea that you can heat it up and take the canvas off someday.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: But what happens is, we are introducing a completely foreign material into a work of art. There was no wax in the oil painting to begin with. Okay? And that has sort of been a traditional – has become sort of a traditional approach to the problems. Since I work on contemporary art primarily, which is so concerned with the surface – and what I put on is very visible; I can't hide things behind a varnish – my own mind is turning around and thinking that it's more important to use materials that are not so much reversible – because in fact, I don't believe anything is truly reversible…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …but that are compatible.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: And so maybe that's sort of what you are saying.

CM-U: Maybe, with your restorations, it's in keeping with an idea of compatibility. Even though my choices are because of not wanting it to change visually at all, the impulse for your saying that might be because of all the meaning that are within objects' materials [sounds like].
Mel Chin: Yeah. I think if it would change to the degree where it would expose itself, then I think that's quite problematic. But as we talked about the aging of the bronzes, the pits and everything, that is something that time is offering and adding a greater vocabulary in the material itself.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: So, uh…
CM-U: You know, sometimes one of the things people say is that – you get a work of art into a museum, and they say, "All right. Is this the stage, this moment it enters the museum, the moment your piece has entered The Menil Collection, that state of the object then is what we are going to try to preserve for eternity?"
Mel Chin: (chuckles)
CM-U: Okay? I mean, this is one tenet where they say, "Well, what – you know, at what point of the object are your trying to preserve the age of the object?" But with your objects, we've been talking about just the natural aging of them, and that that's just part of the life of the materials.
Mel Chin: And also the life of the person who made them. I lean toward Mr. Rider [sounds like] that would say, "Well, it's not done 'til it's done." And so what if you bought it seven years ago, and it's still in my studio 'cause it's not done? And if you dare change it, even though it's – uh, the face is melted off that portrait and is now at the belly, if you alter it, it is no longer my painting.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I feel that I would like to come back – if I decide that, while I'm still alive, I think it might be against all the rules of documentation and what have you, if there are any rules to begin with – while you are alive, and you change your mind and things, that you can come back. And you make mistakes, 'cause it is the record of a human being's existence. And mistakes are equally there for the record. I think that, should I want to change one of the paintings and make it articulate…" If I felt that it should articulate – after many, many years it's not doing its job after – then I would probably come and do that, you know, or…
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: …what do you feel about that?
CM-U: That gets a little complicated because – let me tell you a story. I started by saying I wanted to tell you a story.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.

CM-U: I was once at – an artist was doing an exhibition, not here at The Menil Collection, but at the Rice Museum [Rice University Institute for the Arts] where we used to be. And he was a sculptor. And there were figures. And there was a finger missing. When they unpacked the sculptures, there was a finger missing on one of the forms. And so the artist recast a finger. It was polyester resin, and he recast a figure, but he didn't have time to paint it. And so – and he had to leave town and wouldn't be back until the night of the opening. So he came up to me very reluctantly. I mean, I was offered as the conservator who could do this, and so on. And he came up to me very reluctantly and said, "Well, look. I guess – I have to leave town, so I guess you have to do it. And I used oil paint, and this is what I did, and these are the colors I did. And that's, you know, do that." And he left.
CM-U: And I knew full well that if I did what he said, it wouldn't have matched because I would have had one new finger and four aged fingers.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: So I dismissed everything he said, and I went about and did it in the way that I felt was appropriate, knowing that I could remove that if necessary…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …if he – at some point, if he was truly horrified. And I was very nervous about it. But I was – I really was convinced that this was the right thing to do. When he came back, he looked at it; and he came to find me at the opening and thought it was fabulous. And he said to me that he was very glad I had done it because if he had done it, he said, he would have done exactly what he told me to do, which would have been, repaint the figure with the materials he did. Then he would have noticed that this finger didn't match the others, so he would have had to paint the rest of the hand.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: Then he would have realized the hand didn't go with the rest of the skin tones, so he would have been into, in essence, reworking the piece.
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: And I think that's the danger that we see – and also the pressure we see that you put on an artist, to ask him to come back…
Mel Chin: Uh-huh.
CM-U: …I mean now, yes, we can ask you about Operation, but twenty years from now, when you are working on something completely different…
Mel Chin: Would I really want to come…
CM-U: …if we asked you – first of all, would you want to? Which we don't have to answer now. And second of all, your aesthetic might be so different at that point that in a way we become the preservers of this, at this moment.
Mel Chin: Um-hum. Well, I feel, as far as the conservation measures that you are talking about, that's in keeping and in line with what I would expect a conservator to do. To do it. And I would take their suggestions, that if a finger were to break off of one of these things. Not this kind of figure, but some aspect.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I think you could probably do that better than I could, and I would take that.

Mel Chin: But I was more or less thinking about – I guess it was out of the range of the discussion – actually reworking the conceptual constraints of the piece. Or understanding it after a long period of time, and saying, "Well, it never really worked that well. Can I come back and do it?" And then that would alter the whole – it would be altering…
CM-U: It would alter the whole lot [sounds like].
Mel Chin: The whole body, yeah. And it – I don't see it was a danger in that respect, as other than just a lot of work for someone who was born old like me. But, yeah, that's something to…
CM-U: That's an interesting concept.
Mel Chin: Yeah. But I think that's in keeping with one's existence, that you do these things. I may horrify myself, and then the piece doesn't work, then we'll just get rid of the piece.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: It lasted as long as it lasted. I mean, these things __________ [phrase inaudible].
CM-U: Have you done that? Have you started [sounds like]?
Mel Chin: Yes, I have. In fact, one of these pieces in this place opened at a gallery in New York. I won't say which one.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: And I went in the following day, after I thought about it, and looked at it. I brought someone with a truck and a hammer. I destroyed it on the gallery floor and hauled it back. And brought it back. I said I'd be back in three days. It took three weeks, but I brought it back totally different.
CM-U: And would they – and it was in an exhibition at the gallery [sounds like]?
Mel Chin: It was in an exhibition, but they had an empty spot for about three weeks. When it came back, it was much better. But it was about the constraints of time and deadline, and opening; and it was much more – I wanted to do so much on it. But they were happier. I mean, they couldn't – they couldn't see why I was so upset; but it was something that I said, "Well, let's – you take one slide of it, but that's it. This piece ends now." And so it was destroyed and taken apart. The components were the same, but…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …it was, I think, radically altered. And then I said, "Now, this is the piece."
CM-U: So that means you still might, twenty years from now, think of changing it?
Mel Chin: Yes. I think that I should…
CM-U: That happens.
Mel Chin: …I would like that. I think that happens. I think that, uh, you know, it may or may not happen, but I'm saying that condition – I would like to think that's a possibility. That we do evolve in the mind – and go into different states of mind, and we can say that we are constantly being the ultimate critic of our own work. As you should be. That – if we are talking about the essence, sometimes in many of these pieces, perhaps in my mind, the essence was never quite reached. And, too, you let things go because of economic and time and all that. But what would it be like if you had all the time and – you know?
Mel Chin: You only have the time you've got, I guess. But I always think about – oh, of course people are horrified whenever I bring it up, like, I shouldn't remake those things. Or remake that thing. They say, "Don't do it. Go on to the next step." Which, I do forge ahead with other things. You're right. I may be into other things. But I do feel that – I would feel comfortable to think that there's the potential to come back. Or it's given that that's okay. In my case, I'd say it would have to be okay because that's the way it is. Yeah.
CM-U: I understand that.
Mel Chin: Yeah.
CM-U: I do. I mean, I understand that even from work that I – restorations I deal with. There are oftentimes I think, "It's not done even though it looks okay." In my own mind.
Mel Chin: Yeah. Well, in this, of course you have the critical opinion of the people of the gallery, where it's, "This looks fine. Well, what's wrong?"
CM-U: Yeah.
Mel Chin: Well, it just isn't right.

Mel Chin: I guess – I remembered one painting. That big painting at the Museum of Fine Arts [Untitled [Terra Infirma], 1981-83, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston]…
CM-U: Sure.
Mel Chin: …the pool, uh, the pool has to be hand-melted [sounds like] – it takes thirty minutes to draw, slowly draw the melted pool around. I had done it about four times. I remember when it was ready to go out of the – the truckers were there to pull it out and take it to the space – I stopped them the moment they were ready to come out of the door. I said, "You can't take it out. It's Mr. Jiggs."
CM-U: It's Mr. Jiggs?
Mel Chin: It's Mr. Jiggs. Because, you know, the cartoon character. What is that, the, uh, Bringing Up Father or something? It was the old – oh, it's Thirties style, or Forties style cartoon. Does anybody remember that? It was in the Sunday comics. It was Bringing Up Father. One of these things that dates back from the Thirties. It was an old cartoon. The pool of wax – I had not seen it in the light at this angle – had melted into that cartoon figure's face.
CM-U: (laughs)
Mel Chin: No one could see it.
CM-U: How bizarre.
Mel Chin: It was bizarre, that Mr. Jiggs was there. And of course I made them lay it down, and I sat back down and re-melted the face again. You have to just hold the lamp, and heat the wax, and pool it back to get rid of Mr. Jiggs. Because it could not go with a Mr. Jiggs.
CM-U: Have you seen it since? This is the piece called Study for Houston?
Mel Chin: No, it was actually Untitled.
CM-U: Untitled?
Mel Chin: And it was accompanied by a Latin prose poem.
CM-U: 1984?
Mel Chin: Eighty-two, '83.
CM-U: Eighty-two, '83?
Mel Chin: But Mr. Jiggs got melted out and it was okay. But…
CM-U: Have you seen it since it's been at the Museum of Fine Arts?
Mel Chin: No. No, I haven't seen it. They don't have it up now, do they?
CM-U: I don't think so.
Mel Chin: I think they've pulled it and put it…
CM-U: We've had it up here –no.
Bill Howze: It was at DiverseWorks [Artspace, Houston].
CM-U: It was at DiverseWorks. Right.
Unidentified: It was probably during the accessioned museum thing [sounds like]
CM-U: Oh, that's right.
Mel Chin: Yeah. That was recent.
CM-U: The new accessions.
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: I knew I'd seen it hung there somewhere. So you were still reworking the work when they came to pick it up?
Mel Chin: Yeah. If you see Mr. Jiggs, you've gotta get rid of him.
CM-U: Can't tolerate Mr. Jiggs.
Mel Chin: Not when he's looking at you. No one else saw it, but I think that's on tape. Now, we did – there is a film that was made about the making of that painting.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: But, uh…
CM-U: Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that. 'Cause you did that…
Mel Chin: I have a tape.
CM-U: You made it?
Mel Chin: Well, it was shot by [filmmakers] Lalo Obregon and Tony – what was her name, Bill? Tony? Haftner. Tony Haftner. And they shot it. And then [Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, projectionists] Margie Glaser and Ralph Kaethner re-edited the footage 'cause they left all the tapes. It was shot – it was all about working at Studio One [Chin's former studio, an alternative space created by William Steen in Houston]. They worked getting that piece together.
CM-U: Um-hum. Hmm.
Mel Chin: But I think I said, "We can't let it out." They were shocked.
CM-U: Well, it's hard. We'll talk more about that.
Mel Chin: Yeah. Uh oh, do I…
CM-U: Let's talk about this next piece.
Mel Chin: …do I see Mr. Jiggs here in this, too?
CM-U: Oh, I hope not. (laughs)
Mel Chin: No, he's not there.

CM-U: This is The Extraction of Plenty from What Remains: 1823 [1988-89, Collection of the Artist]…
Mel Chin: Right.
CM-U: …and Mel made it, '88, '89, in – parts of it in Houston?
Mel Chin: Most of all of it in Houston.
CM-U: Most of all of it in Houston?
Mel Chin: Yeah. Right. In fact, yes, it was all done in Houston. It was for the Directions program at the Hirshhorn Museum ["Directions: Mel Chin," Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, February 1-April 23, 1989], and it was a commentary on the Washington – it was for Washington, because it was at Washington, and the configuration here is the full-scale replicated White House columns cracked off at what I call a signature line of ten U.S. presidents, five (points at left-hand column) – the silhouettes of their signatures on top here. Carol, you can see Ronald Reagan's loopy handwriting on the other side. And it's – they are made out of – it's a wood internal frame. It was made horizontally by constructing an elaborate plywood and wood frame that was covered with traditionally the tar paper, the metal lathe, and the materials used were, like, crushed sandstone, little bits of – but not very much. It's hard to crush it.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: Uh, sand. Different types of plaster like Hydrocal, and a lighter weight plaster called Structo-Lite. Those are just common work – you know, industrial names. And it was mixed up, and my brother and I constructed these columns in my parents' garage over an extended Christmas vacation. I told the curator I was going down to collect some banana trees to do the basket, and that began this long, extended, '88 to '89 piece of –

Mel Chin: How it was formed was, uh, I – there was hooked on two sawhorses very much like you would just lay a horizontal lathe, and pipe fittings were screwed onto the plywood forms. My brother would spin it while I would lay up the plaster. And there was a single board that served as sort of the mold, or the jig – not a Mr. Jigg, but a jig – that would be pushed against, to the side, and so that all these…
CM-U: The carving?
Mel Chin: …the carving would be brought in. The surface is a quality of the columns. It is very much like the actual White House columns. If you were to visit, you would see all these strokes and cracks and pits. So that was consistent with the stone-like quality, or the re-plastered quality of the White House. I did a study on the White House. I visited the White House and measured the columns, and was chased out by the Secret Service.
CM-U: They didn't like you measuring the columns?
Mel Chin: Well, I was taking photographs. It was very funny. I was there during Nancy's Christmas decoration opening house. The place was packed. And I reserved – I had a special appointment with the White House curator, and had to pass through gate security. I had a passport. A U.S. passport. I didn't have a driver's license. It took me thirty minutes to get clear of security. A friend who wanted to come in and just – acting as an assistant – got in in thirty seconds with his Gold Visa card, without a driver's license. So I felt that had something to say about American – where American security, national interests are.
(laughter)
Mel Chin: But when I got through, we had the – it was funny because we walked through the whole White House from the back entrance, where everybody is looking – and they kept saying, "Would you – you want to see Nancy's…" I said, "No, we want to just…" And we just exited to go to the north portico, and there we were. And there was a Marine guarding – you know, there is all roped off, and they were restoring the White House – It was a perfect time for this – Washing off the whitewash. And stripping it down, so all the quarter-inch layer of paint was off. And through my friends, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, I was able to get the type of paint they were repainting it with for the past year. It was Duron white enamel. Whisper White was the White House official paint.
CM-U: Made by what?
Mel Chin: Duron Enamel Company [Beltsville, MD].
CM-U: Duron?
Mel Chin: And Duron Paint Company in Washington. So – D-U-R-O-N. And you get it by the gallon. Whisper White is the official White House color. So, anyway, I was out in the north portico, and I talked to the Marine guard – 'cause I was there with the curator. I said, "Can I get beyond here?" And I was telling them I was just studying architecture.
Mel Chin: So I had my, uh, cane, which actually a yardstick with a handle stuck on it to help as a measuring device, and my camera. And we started to document the columns. The moment we started, though, the Secret Service, the wired guy, came up and started yelling at the Marine very loudly and very, very strong language, as to, you know, who gave him authorization to allow anybody past this line. And I immediately stopped what I was doing 'cause I knew that he'd be coming to pull away my camera, whatever. And I just confronted him immediately. I said, "Well, is there something we could talk about, or whatever?" His only question is, "Why are you taking so many goddamned pictures?"
Mel Chin: I said, "Well, I'm an expert of American colonial architecture, and it is very rare to see a smooth Roman ionic. Don't you think so?"
(laughter)
Mel Chin: He didn't think anything. He just looked at me and says, "I think you're taking a lot of goddamned pictures." I said, "It'll only be five more minutes." And he just turned away and let me do it.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: But he was, uh – and I'd only taken three pictures. But he was on top of it because it was probably – he felt I was surveying the parts of the White House that should not be surveyed. He was doing his job. However, with the information intact, and meanwhile my assistant steals a paint chip off the side of the White House as it's peeling away – while we were discussing – good assistant! We leave the grounds, and we…
CM-U: And how did you get the curve? Just by measuring and drawing?
Mel Chin: Well, I projected…
CM-U: From photographs?
Mel Chin: …the slide…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: …and then also looked at the American Vignola and tried to get [what] the entasis, the entasis where it would be, because you would calculate the scale of the White House. It was very – I got White House plans, all that stuff. Even so, I think there may be some critical factors as far as the loops and everything, that, you know, some things should have been higher according to the classical dimensions. 'Cause I couldn't get a form and actually measure it.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I was not allowed to do that.

CM-U: What about – it looks like the columns don't actually – they, too, look like they're floating. Is that just an illusion, or are they doing that?
Mel Chin: No, they are sitting on pads, and that…
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: …this is just one, logistically, of how do we raise and lower it? We should have it so you don't lift on the sensitive plaster ring…
CM-U: I see.
Mel Chin: …below. I think there is terms for all these things, but I can't remember them now.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: One thing about this column. I know it was this one because this is James Monroe and James K. Polk at the top here – when I was forming this near the end, and finishing the signatures, I replaced some pipe fittings with larger diameters to make it easier. They were already at their full weight, about fifteen hundred pounds, and they were getting hard to turn in the small diameter pipes. So I replaced it with larger diameter pipe, but it was, like, uh, fittings that weren't as – they were cast, and not malleable fittings. After a couple of turns, after finishing it off, the fitting snapped while I had my hand under there. And it just went straight down. And now, luckily, I was just pinned and not – it could have just sheared something off at that much weight. And under the tight conditions of the garage. It was done in my parents' garage.
CM-U: And did the metal – did the form crack as well?
Mel Chin: Yes, it did. It did. And then we had – that was five days before pickup.
CM-U: Oh.
Mel Chin: So we had to lift it back up. And it was done under very difficult conditions for plaster. It was wet. There was, like, a monsoon or something at that period. And there was a lot of problems with the plaster not connecting.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: Using different plasters, and running out of materials, and money to buy the correct kind. I had a lot of problems with this plaster separating. Using bonding agents, whatever I could, to do it. To put it back together again. There is also a hollow section in it because I made these at first at a tapered fit. Then, realizing that, no, that it's not a taper. No, the entasis happens like ten foot two, and then it curves in slightly. I had to rebuild another section…
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: …so there's a double wall construction in this. So there's many layers of plaster and additions. Like you're just learning and doing it as you go along. But it was completed, and then painted. They were brought over wet to the Hirshhorn and stayed in the basement where I noticed some of the flaking and whatever. But it's been pretty much stabilized now.
CM-U: Where were they? From the Hirshhorn, did they go in storage or go right to the Walker?
Mel Chin: They went into storage in a warehouse in New Jersey.
CM-U: Uh-huh.
Mel Chin: And stayed there until the Walker. Now the warehouse has been sold, so it no longer is under the – it was under the generosity of a friend who had owned the warehouse.
CM-U: Um-hum.

Mel Chin: The basket, the cornucopia form, is made out of Honduras mahogany. A Honduras mahogany frame was made first, and that is the strong ribbing. And then the fabric is banana trees, whole trees that were cut when it was time to cut them. And to preserve them, they were – uh we bought a washing hand wringer…
CM-U: Hmm. Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …to wring out the incredible amounts of liquids in the leaves, or because the first thing that would happen to the stalk, which I was basically using, would be that it would rot because of so much moisture. They were wrung out, and then tacked to my parents' rafters – you know, outside on the roof – to dry in the sun. So all these strips of banana were there.
Mel Chin: That was then woven around this mahogany framework. The mixture on it is goat blood, coffee, and mud, or topsoil, actually, from my parents' garden. Because I thought the issues there were land, blood, revolution, and as well as the crops that are a part of it. And the coffee, especially, was mixed in. And the blood was collected at a local slaughterhouse, where they were illegally slaughtering goats, and collected on site.

CM-U: You've talked on other occasions about the experience of going to the slaughterhouse…
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …to collect the blood. And the experience of the separation of yourself from…
Mel Chin: Uh-huh.
CM-U: In the process of collecting the blood, you separated yourself naturally from the horror of what was happening. Or maybe from the artistic process, being involved with the horror of what was happening.
Mel Chin: Yes. Well, yeah.
CM-U: And how that had an impact on your work.
Mel Chin: Well, the psychic impact there was actually, I was conscious I was making art. But I – it was more not so much the slaughterhouse, but it was how you can transform your rationality and your repulsion and all this into a whole 'nother venue. And it felt very much – I began to project [sounds like] as if I were at, in war, or just doing violence…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …'cause how, to get the job done, I had to be like the person who was throwing these living animals that had their throats slashed at me, and be very cruel and very nonchalant, maybe. Not even cruel. It was not even – I think that would put too much emotional impact on it. I had to be nothing, other than just like him, doing a job. And yet I was shaken because, as I said, I'm doing this for art. But then I realized, under the right circumstances, or wrong circumstances, you – a human being is able, compelled to do most everything that they stand against as well. And, let's say that I might have known this intellectually, but to be in a situation while making a piece of art where it brings it forward to the surface so much, that was disturbing. So that, yes, I could possibly kill – or be a killer, or do this, and I would not even think about what it means. Because I have this other thing riding over it.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: In this case, could it be patriotism to go take another…
CM-U: Loyalty.
Mel Chin: Loyalty. What __________ [word inaudible]? Well, all these things come into play. And then I realized that there was no feeling at all. Perhaps that was the scariest thing, or the most psychically disturbing in the process of collecting this material. What I had to do is, what happened was, I was collecting the blood, which was pooling about an inch thick on the floor with a pile of animals dying around me. It was just trying to collect the blood as it coagulated so quickly of course, you know. The head killer, who was not very far, in a very tight and hot room, cut a goat and just laughed and threw a goat all the way across – a living animal. All the way across the room, and it fell, and he was shooting for the basket.
CM-U: So you had the basket there? You were…
Mel Chin: Yeah, it was right…
CM-U: …just collecting…
Mel Chin: …it was right – it was all clean and, you know, nicely woven; and I was trying to paint some blood on. He just picked up the animal and just threw it in there. And you hear the ribs of the thing crack. And he laughed. And this is somebody that you don't mess with, I had a feeling. Especially as he's hacking at these animals' throats and everything.
Mel Chin: But I looked at the animal, and it was just – that image on the wall (points) – that is what I was trying to describe. How memory can be affected two ways. That those – the panels I call biographic diptychs – show the fallen column…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and the goat in the basket. To me there are two ways of thinking about how you remember – the accident of the column dropping and falling and cracking and paring [sounds like], it was very clear and precise and clean, in a way. It's just an object that cracks, and you repair. And using the porcelain is about the fragility of it. With the drawing of the goat in the basket, however, that's a memory that is very foggy and very distant, yet it's more like it's a memory that smolders – it has a longer effect, a more nightmarish – or it can be peaceful, it can be not – it can be something entirely different.
Mel Chin: However, the goat did die right in the basket. And it bled. And then I said, "Well, to get out of here, I've gotta do it." And something just changed. I just started grabbing the animal from him, and was spraying the blood over the piece. So as the animal would die, I would drop it down and get another one.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: And that's how it was done very quickly. And then I gathered more blood and took it home, and mixed it up with the coffee and the mud. And there were some glues and things used. Like Elmer's or whatever. Just as another binder. I tried to – I was using the blood as a binder as well.
CM-U: __________ [phrase inaudible]
Mel Chin: Yeah. Well, we put it out in my parents' patio. They were very tolerant. They thought that something very serious was happening here when I brought in this bloody mess. And it was very – goat blood smell, which is very pungent-like, and it needed to dry. It was very wet. And we put fans right in its mouth, and shut the door, and went in and let it be. It was outdoors. Then the next day I did – I added more of the mud and the coffee and the blood that was left over, and just wiped it all over the surface.

Mel Chin: The banana fiber, see, has some kind of wax to it that keeps it from sticking very well.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: But it has held up quite well under the conditions that it's been under. Well, as far as when it flakes off, I do see how it turns very bright and white [sounds like], you know. That is something where I think it should be coated again, or covered with a matched mix or something.
CM-U: A matched mix of mud…
Mel Chin: I think it would be hard to get the goat blood, in other words.
CM-U: Yeah, I don't think we could expect someone to do that.
Mel Chin: Yeah.
CM-U: What are all these materials related to? Or why did you choose these particular materials for this piece?
Mel Chin: Well, the theme behind this piece is, you know, The Extraction of Plenty from What Remains: 1823. The 1823 is the date, or the year, of the signing of the Monroe Doctrine, which I felt began a whole list of policies toward the area of Central America. The choice of the blood, the fruit basket, the horn of plenty, came from a goat, Amalthea, the goat god.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: And when it was broken off by Jupiter, I believe that that's where the legend, "Nothing but fruits poured forth." The whole region is very much shaped – from Mexico down, that whole Central American region was very horn-shaped, and it has been the source of fruit. Bananas – United Fruit – and a whole history of U.S. involvement in directing their life and their economy as well. So – and all of this was a commentary on how the horrors of war and U.S. involvement have been one of the main, you know, prime motivators of those wars in the continuing struggle of Central America.
Mel Chin: And I saw these columns squeezing at this cornucopia that had nothing more to give, other than its blood, its land, and its fruit. And there's very little but blood. And the issues there are agrarian and control over their economic destiny and sovereignty. And how that's largely ignored by these policies from these presidents.

Mel Chin: Now how – they go from James Monroe to Ronald Reagan; and how these signatures were selected – conceptually, how I saw it, that these columns had to break off somewhere. It would be – it's these presidential signatures that are the weaknesses on our policies toward other people. Toward whole other countries. And they are the actual structural weaknesses in our government. And they are the leaders that put their names onto these actions, whether it's covert, overt, that have such profound effect. And the effect is that it is squeezing these very poor countries to maintain our control over them. So, I guess, that's what the piece is largely about.
CM-U: So it should be noted that the edges are not just kind of ragged edges.
Mel Chin: No.
CM-U: They are definitely the signatures or forms…
Mel Chin: It's the silhouettes of the tops of their signatures. So it's – the capital of these columns is the tops, the caps of the signatures themselves.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: How they were selected, to keep it with the crack in mind, you know, like a randomized thing, rather than selecting, like, signatures that would appear more cracked-like out of the – how many presidents have there been?
CM-U: Thirty-eight.
Mel Chin: I know more – thirty-eight? I decided to call Walter LeFeber in Cornell University, who wrote a book called Inevitable Revolutions [: The United States in Central America, 1983], which sort of served as a textbook for my research on this piece. I called him at home. I said, "Could you list off…" I knew I had room for ten to make it, you know, ten of the worst, or ten of the most important – not necessarily the worst [sounds like]. What comes to your mind when I say, ‘American policy X toward Central America?'"
Mel Chin: And he just listed them for me.
CM-U: Hmm.
Mel Chin: I just took exactly what he said, and I said, "Thank you very much. I'll send you a picture of the piece, or whatever, when it's done." He said he goes to Washington, and he'd take a look at it, you know. And so his collaboration was by giving me a list of names, rather than me subjectively looking at the visuals. And so they are, from James Monroe, running around to Theodore Roosevelt, and continuing on, Eisenhower, Carter, Ronald Reagan is on here as well. So it crossed – it was his opinion rather than my own, since he was the – he is the…
CM-U: His choice?
Mel Chin: Yeah, his choice.
CM-U: Uh-huh.

CM-U: With regard to the materials and the aging of the mud, for example. The cracking of the mud. Unlike what we've said about Operation of the Sun. It seems like this is – you've made this in kind of a worn, aged state, and that it might be desirable to preserve it at this state. I mean, that, as you were pointing out, there is a break in the basket from storage.
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: That that's something that maybe should be repaired. Or if the mud falls off, it should be re-adhered...
Mel Chin: Um-hum.
CM-U: …as opposed to allowing…
Mel Chin: __________ [phrase inaudible]
CM-U: Am I putting words in your mouth? Or is that __________ [phrase inaudible]…
Mel Chin: I think, in this piece – yeah, I think it was started – yeah, it was. It was not necessarily made aged. It was made the best we could do under the conditions. But it's more about, uh – yet it is at – this is at its finished state…
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: …and it should be – to answer your question very simply, yes, it should be kept in this – in this case, this way, you know.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: And there is problems when you have to squeeze the basket to release the basket. So you're putting…
CM-U: Hmm. You mean in order to release it from these columns?
Mel Chin: I think if you will pull it very quickly out. But, see, I compress it to squeeze it in, to give it just a slight pressure.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: You know, the columns just touch at the base, and it's fitted within. And so it has that ragged look now that was intended.

Mel Chin: Well, one of the aspects of this, to make it a little more uncomfortable, I felt, was the – when I talked about the erotic presence of the work, this was intended also as a hermaphroditic, uncomfortable hermaphroditic condition of the smooth white columns and this very uneasy basket between. And how I view this, as this is the giving, feminine side. If you look at it from – let's go to this side – then you would, from – then it would have the appearance of the classic herm with the phallus sticking up, so it has a remark of the classic Greek…
CM-U: So you mean the tip of the basket, coming out the other side, is the herm?
Mel Chin: Yeah. The herm – if you look at it just like this, you see it.
CM-U: Right.
Mel Chin: And it's meant to be, like I said, an uneasy collusion of these two materials and forces. And they are very separate from each other as well. How you neuterize the country as well.
CM-U: Um-hum.
Mel Chin: I mean, I'm reading maybe more than I should into the piece. But I was conscious of the power of this piece, and its attraction, as I like to think of works being a trap or a lure to bring one into the understanding of what it might be. The intention was there.
CM-U: Um-hum. At this moment, the piece is still owned by the artist?
Mel Chin: Yes. Maybe forever.
CM-U: Think the State Department might buy it?
Mel Chin: I was going to give my – put my call in immediately and see…
CM-U: Right. Make sure they're the first bidder.
Mel Chin: …if they could put it out in the White House collection of…
CM-U: Yeah.
[Break in video]
Mel Chin: …__________ [word inaudible] and chopped up fiber thing to try to match some color [sounds like]. Remember that…
CM-U: Yes, I remember you telling me.
Mel Chin: It was just trying to get it – and it's very much like what you're saying. Try something to do it. But eventually I'd rather it be a new skin than reformed. Anyway, it doesn't seem like it's gotten any worse. It looks like…
CM-U: Huh-uh. It really doesn't.
Mel Chin: It's just one of those things.