OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

OPP: That's clear in your use of materials as well as language. You have extensive—almost aggressive—materials lists for each piece. Many viewers don't read material lists—some don't even read titles!—and many artists would simply say "mixed media." Why do you choose to be so specific?

 CWC: The material lists are as important as the titles. They are ingredient based poems. In L'ours I sculpted decoys of Lucky Charm's cereal from polymer clay and resin. The well known jingle in the Lucky Charms commercials functions like an incantation: 'Hearts, stars and horse-shoes, clovers and blue-moons. Pots of gold and rainbows and the red balloon!' The sing-songy repetition of the jingle works to make us internalize the idea that indeed Lucky Charms cereal IS magical and delicious! The work fluctuates between moments of experiencing Teddy Grams, Honey Combs and Cheerios as concrete objects and believing in their function as symbols, bridging disparate perspectives on how myth functions. Joseph Campbell’s belief that myths are archetypes of the collective unconscious tangos with Roland Barthes’ view of myths as propagandistic tools of potential fascisms.

Each material functions like a word in a Mallarme poem: both have an expansive and collapsible quality. The state of this quality is dependent upon formal play. Sometimes the Cheerio symbolizes the idea of the self proposed by Jung because of its structure and other times it symbolizes the promise of a wedding ring because of it's correlation to nearby forms. Sometimes a Cheerio is just a Cheerio. I'm interested in using materials symbolically, because symbols are three fold in meaning, namely: personal, universal and cultural. This allows for inclusivity; many entry points and interpretations of the work are encouraged.

OPP: Looking back at older work, I see what seems to be an intentional and recurring use of childlike aesthetics and references. Some of your earlier work, such as the intaglio print anatomical studies and the hand-embroidered self portraits as first ladies, has the quality of childlike scrawl. Then there are the sculptures made from Teddy Bears you bought at Walgreens, the hand crocheted life sized costumes based on the outfits of the American Girl dolls and your video Christmas 1990: Becoming Molly McIntire (2010) that reveals a very personal experience of the American Girl cultural phenomenon. But this isn't your average nostalgia. What is it?

CWC: The work that deals with looking back involves a process of investigative interrogation disguised as nostalgia. I don't associate these bodies of work with nostalgia because they do not look fondly to an earlier time. Becoming Molly McIntire is filled with pathos. Absence and presence is visually deployed through the weight of the hand crocheted costumes of the American Girl Doll historical characters. Ominously they each hang as victims and oppressors, providing few options regarding our culturally constructed notions of identity. The embroidered works and anatomical studies akin to the sculptural works you mention deal with an idea of subverting the gesture both literally and metaphorically via action. Rather than deploying nostalgia, the maker is interrogated. I was trying to force myself to be honest about my relationship to the enacted roles we perform. Memory was a tool in doing this because memory allows the individual to time travel, and it collapses our linear notions of time by stretching and folding it. I can simultaneously be 26, the age that I made Christmas 1990: Becoming Molly McIntire, and five, the age that I received Molly. This process has a Shamanic quality associated with soul retrieval.  

OPP: Do you remember why you wanted Molly McIntire so bad? What did she mean to you then? Do you think of that desire differently now that you look back at it as an adult?

CWC: I am a trans person, and I grew up in an extremely heteronormative environment where this identity was not an option. Molly was an archetype that I could successfully perform via drag. She was the only tomboy option out of the available dolls. I wanted her so badly because she wore shorts and because she was nerdy. She allowed me to be a misfit and socially “appropriate” at the same time. Dolls, of course, represent our notions of the ideal and, at that time and until very recently, I was very concerned with performing the role of the dutiful daughter. Making this work allowed me to breakdown the hegemonic roles within my family structure in order to love more fully. Looking back as an adult, I think I confused wanting to be Molly with wanting to date someone like her. I would switch back and forth between these states fluidly in order to bask in desire.

OPP: The mention of your desire to perform the role of the dutiful daughter makes me think of your videos The Message (2009) and Johnny Seagull Johnny Clyde (2010), both made in collaboration with your mother. Both explore the expectations placed on us by our families and the surrounding culture to perform gender in a prescribed way. But your mother represents a different position in each of the videos. In The Message, she encourages conforming to norm of “Southern femininity and grace and genuineness” and in Johnny Seagull Johnny Clyde, she reveals her own resistance as a child, admitting that she wanted to be a boy. It doesn’t really matter if either of these roles she plays are true to life, but I find it touching that she participated in the creation of this work. What was it like working with your mother in this way? Is she simply a performer in the videos, or was she also a part of the conceptualizing of these videos?

CWC: The summer prior to attending graduate school, I lived at home with my parents in Virginia. Before that, I lived for several years next door to Patsy and Calvin, my grandparents on my mother’s side, in Tyler, Texas. During my short return to the nest, my mom kept on saying phrases to me that ended up in The Message. It was intriguing because my mother’s suggestions regarding my conduct were the exact phrases that Patsy would say to me. The function of this matrilineal knowledge fascinated me. I asked my mom if she would make a video with me regarding all of the things that she would say. She agreed, and we made it in two takes. For the first take, I was in the room and we both started to laugh uncontrollably whenever we looked at each other.  So for the second take, I turned the camera on and left the room and waited until she told me that she was finished. For both videos my mother is not reading a text. She is giving directions or reciting a story.  

In Johnny Seagull Johnny Clyde, my mother tells a story about a gender queer identity that she constructed as a child growing up in East Texas. She repeatedly told me this story as a child. About a year after making The Message, I called my mom while she was driving to meet my sister for brunch and asked if she would be interested in making another video with me about her Johnny Seagull Johnny Clyde identity. She agreed and told the story on the spot as if she were reciting or reading a text. With her permission, I captured the sound for the piece on my cell phone's speaker and I recorded the sound on my computer.  I had found and viewed the original super 8 film footage for the first time in VHS form the same summer we made The Message. I was delighted and amazed to see my mother in drag. The myth became reality.

OPP: In your statement, you say,"Ultimately my work explores where culture ends and the individual begins." Is that a fixed place? What have you learned about that place in the process of making your work?

CWC: For me, the place where culture ends and the individual begins is the body. This space houses locations that are both fixed and transitional. The body is the mediator between hegemonic external norms and one's internal desires and motives. The hegemonic trappings of the normative oppress, not because they exist, but because they are reinforced daily as superior and correct ways for one to navigate the world. The internalization of texts and images raises the question “Where does the self begin and culture end?” This process of internalization culturally embeds and implicates the body. I believe these ideas are best explored in the structure of the pieces in the Tranny Chaser series. The blankets encased in scatological opulence of cultural detritus operate in a geological fashion: a hot magma centrifuge surrounded by a hardened cooling crust. They are heavenly bodies navigating space. They belong to the same universe while maintaining autonomy.

To see more of Caroline's work, please visit carolinewellschandler.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the emotional and existential significance of participating in mediated culture in her embroidery, video, sculpture and collage works. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006), where she will begin teaching in Spring 2013, and is currently a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT Residency in Chicago. Notable exhibitions include Losing Yourself in the 21st Century (Maryland Art Place, Baltimore), MP3 (The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago), Please Stand By: Stacia Yeapanis + Readymade (Baang & Burne Contemporary, New York), Over and Over Again (BOLT Project Space, Chicago).