Daily Inspiration: Meet Tess Chatfield

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tess Chatfield.

Hi Tess, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am a first generation college graduate, having completed my degree in fine arts at the Columbus College of Art & Design, I have witnessed firsthand what education can do to change a person’s life and legacy. I am beyond passionate about creating accesible educational programming in the arts.

During my junior year of undergraduate, I dedicated my free time to applying for educational programs outside of my college courses to further the exploration of my work. I was accepted into the R.A.R.O. art residency program in Barcelona, Spain. The R.A.R.O. residency encouraged further exploration with my theming as well as experimentation with new materials to incorporate into my ceramic sculptures, with the expectation of producing a body of work over the course of six weeks for a solo exhibition at the Pentáculo Gallery. This experience was incredibly formative for cultivating the foundation of my practice.

My experience with R.A.R.O. was influential in my approach to my artistic career, inspiring me to pursue as many educational art residencies as I could. I have recently completed an art residency in Meteora, Greece, with the Eutopia Art Residency program. The Eutopia residency is a community-centered program that encourages connections to rural land and supports my career goals of exploring art communities abroad, gaining diverse knowledge about sculptural techniques, and broadening my artistic network. During this residency I worked on several sculptures that were shown at the Geological Formation Museum of Meteora.

In my current body of work, I am exploring the complexity of reliving memory through themes of nostalgia, yearning, and regret in tangible forms. The ceramic sculptures I create serve as a relief from addictive ruminating; Creating this body of work allows me to put my memories to rest, no longer reanimating them. Using clay, wax, and curated vintage items to express my themes through form, texture, and the process-intensity of clay sculpture. My current series is focusing on my time spent abroad with a group of artists in Barcelona, Spain. I have been meticulously picking apart and gathering information from journal entries during my time in Barcelona to fuel my inspiration and attribute each of the three sculptures with a memory from this time period, as well as looking at the Spanish architecture of the buildings I spent time in to inspire my design choices.

Currently in my creative career, I have been building relationships in the ceramics community in Colorado and California, specifically, Denver, Sacramento, and the Bay Area. I have had the opportunity to pioneer handbuilding ceramic classes and use unique techniques I learned during my art residencies at several studios, such as Seed Ceramics, Urban Mud, and, most recently, the Denver Clayroom. I have written and fine tuned my curriculum for advanced sculptural ceramic classes over the past several years, and I am seeing incredible success amongst my students and mentees, to cultivate a passion for ceramics and push the boundaries of this medium

My next venture will be obtaining my masters degree in fine arts, expanding my own knowledge for the goal of being an advocate and beacon for other first generation college attendees in an academic setting as a fine arts professor.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As an artists, I have been slowly coming to terms with taking no for an answer gracefully! For every 100 applications I have sent out for residencies, grants, MFA programs, there will always be at least a few no’s. I have been working on changing my perspective on this and turning the negativity of receiving a no to a positive reassurance that this grant, residency, or MFA program was not meant to fulfill me and my career.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As an abstract ceramic artist, I strive to capture the intimate feelings of nostalgia, yearning, and regret in relation to obsessively contemplating my past into tangible sculptures. Extracting emotions that surpass the specificity of my experience helps to soothe the desire to compulsively relive memories, creating vulnerable and nonrepresentational pieces as I focus on the obsessive and repetitive constitution of how I process my memories.

The sculptures serve as time capsules for chapters throughout my life, touching on the intricacy of human connections, yearning for a sense of belonging, and the rose tinted way reflection on one’s memory can be skewed.

Central to my artistic exploration is leaning into the desire of addictive ruminating and the effect this has on my sculpting in the studio. I use sculpture as a means to heal, to relieve my life of obsessively contemplating and replaying memories, as well as connecting people through the human experience of lingering feelings and the need to process.

My studio practice and time spent sculpting focus on unabashedly giving into this addiction to memory, to pour my contemplation into physical forms. The sculptures serve as blurred moments in time that anyone can put their personal narrative on to further relate to the piece, while the overarching feeling from the work is nostalgia and regret. The viewer can find personal value by reminiscing about their memories.

As a sculptor, I primarily use clay, candle wax, and curated vintage items to express my themes of nostalgia, yearning, and regret. The deep rust brown color of the clay and the intentionally chipped and cracked design support the deteriorated aspects that I associate with memory. Using meticulously carved textures, bold and repetitive shapes, as well as a limited and muted color palette, these technique choices antiquate the work and support the past tense expression of impactful memories, as the pieces look worn, exhaustive, and cohesive. I find ceramics to be an excellent representation of repetition of processing; each step of creating a ceramic piece is monotonous to the point of muscle memory, a labor of love.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I could not have built my career in the arts without the love, support, and unwavering confidence that I receive from my partner, Caileighan. Through thick and thin, Caileighan has always been a source of encouragement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tessmhchatfield.wixsite.com/tesschatfieldceramic
• Instagram: tesschatfieldart

Image Credits
Nicole Nagy