Award-winning conceptual artist Mel Chin, currently an artist-in-residence at McColl Center for Visual Art, will speak at 12:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 29, in the Cone University Center, McKnight Hall. His talk “For a Few Dollars More” will address a variety of recent works and the value and intentions behind them.
Born in Houston, Texas, in 1951, Chin is known for the broad range of approaches in his art, including works that require multidisciplinary, collaborative teamwork and for works that conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas.
His ongoing “Operation Paydirt/Fundred Dollar Bill Project” is a national, artist-driven, multidisciplinary project to help support a solution to lead-contaminated soil in New Orleans (see www.fundred.org). The estimated cost to treat New Orleans soil is $300 million; the Fundred Dollar Bill Project aims to symbolically raise that amount through the collection of three million “fundreds,” original, hand-drawn interpretations of U.S. $100 bills.
UNC Charlotte students and faculty have been working with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to participate in the Fundred Dollar Bill Project and to raise awareness about the national problem of toxic levels of lead in soil. Thus far, students and teachers from Garinger High School, Myers Park High School, Northwest School of the Arts and Sedgefield Middle School are participating, with the goal of drawing more than 3,500 “fundreds.”
Chin insinuates art into unlikely places, including destroyed homes, toxic landfills and even popular television, investigating how art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. He developed “Revival Field,” an ongoing project that has been a pioneer in the field of “green remediation,” the use of plants to remove toxic, heavy metals from the soil.
From 1995-98, he formed the GALA Committee, a collective that produced “In the Name of the Place,” a conceptual public art project conducted on American primetime television.
Chin worked with software engineers to create a video game based on rug patterns of nomadic people facing cultural disappearance. His 24-minute, hand-drawn film “9-11/9-11,” a joint Chilean/USA Production, won the prestigious Pedro Sienna Award for Best Animation, National Council for the Arts and Cultures, Chile, in 2007.
Chin’s work was documented in the popular PBS program “Art of the 21st Century.” He has received numerous awards and grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital and the Penny McCall, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller and Louis Comfort Tiffany foundations.
Admission to the Nov. 29 talk is free; the donation of one “fundred” is requested.