Chelsea Wrightson
Chelsea Wrightson is an Albuquerque, NM based multimedia artist and mother whose practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture and ceramics. Wrightson creates works that reflect her experiences of interconnectedness in our expanding universe and consciousness. She creates compositions that combine imagery from her vivid dreams and meditative visions. Her work moves towards symmetry and balance yet she celebrates mistakes because she sees them as a portal; without them, she would have no cause to continue dreaming. Wrightson has exhibited works in Albuquerque, Taos, NM, Seattle and New York.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
I began collecting my plastic waste for the purpose of using it more than once. As it started to pile up around me, I noticed how my trash had beautiful contours and curves that someone carefully designed for planned obsolescence. I started making fossils by pouring plaster into my trash to create castings. The dried pieces reminded me of ancient architecture or molding in art deco buildings which gave me the insight to compose the works symmetrically. Custom fabricated wooden frames allow me to adhere the fossils in place and pour more wet plaster around to lock the forms into space and time. I use textured spray paint, popcorn spackling, color pencils, and airbrushed oil paints to create different textures on the plaster altars. In the new iteration of this work, I cut down and grind up worn plastics to insert into the drying plaster so the works become a complete integration of trash into the art.
When Covid began I was unable to work on these altars due to studio closures, so I took graphite and color pencils home to work on compositions. A sister series emerged: candlelit visions of geometry that chart the effects of the brain with limited sensory stimulus. Quarantine felt like entering a cave; while my eyes adjusted to sudden total darkness, my brain constructed its own lights, shapes, and colors to focus on in the absence of clear vision. What forms out of the dust on paper are contracts of interconnection.
The works in your Altars of Imperfection series incorporate poured plaster castings from a collection of disposable single-use plastics. Would you tell us more about their inclusion in the work and what they symbolize?
Altars of Imperfection became a way for me to meditate on my participation in our waste stream. When I started this series I definitely had the “out of sight out of mind” mindset. On a molecular level, plastic is one of the strongest human inventions and has inserted itself into every ecosystem. It’s in the air, water, and soil. My thoughts began to shift from thinking plastic is the enemy that needs to be eradicated to thinking that it is an internal part of me. Like uncomfortable emotions, it is a shadow side that needs to be understood.
Humans weren’t always this way, we aren’t naturally wasteful. The rise of capitalism/advertisement created a mindset that we will derive happiness and pleasure from more consumption. Plastic and capitalism are in direct parallel — they have both been so deeply ingrained in the American system that they are inextricable without massive radical changes. Our temples of trash and our legacies are being built into the landscape in real time, with small consideration of the lasting effects of either. Including my plastics into this work helps me hold space for my personal accountability, envision different realities of being, and express the kinds of marks humans leave on the earth and our spiritual psyches.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
Carl Sagan once said “the cosmos are the opposite of chaos. It implies a deep interconnectedness of all things. It is the intricate and subtle way the universe is put together. We were created as a way for the cosmos to know itself.” I have been diving heavily into physics, quantum theories, and the symbolic language of how we describe the seen and unseen worlds. I believe our understanding of inter-being has been driven into binaries but the universe is more complex than that. Humans are more complex than that. Since the rise of colonialism, industrialism, and capitalism we have been heavily influenced by scarcity, individualism, competition, materialism, consumption. By creating these bodies of work I seek to reconcile my relationships with living beings and the giving earth. I focus on listening to the past to channel new futures where collaboration, sustainability, empathy, care, mindfulness, abundance, resourcefulness and reciprocity are able to flourish.
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?
I love artist-run spaces, sadly some have closed in Albuquerque since Covid (s/o to @Relicabq) but @momo_Taos has a beautiful selection of local artists and craftspeople making contemporary works. @levygallery and the @harwoodartcenter show a diverse group of contemporary artists from the southwest. Online I’ve been enjoying curatorial pages like @Mothflower, @airinspace.art, @subterraneanthunder, and @maakemagazine.
Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?
My work is in connection to mystic artists Agnes Pelton, Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and the Transcendentalist Painting Group of the Southwest in the 1930s. I also love the color understandings and ethereal compositions of Miyoko Ito. I’m often reading several books at once and am currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot and The Tao of Symbols by James N. Powell. They each have a way of explaining the interconnectedness of the universe, whether it be through botany, quantum physics, or symbols. I am also inspired by Houston based artist Dario Robleto. His conceptual works slip so effortlessly between the scientific observable universe and the poetic, spiritual one.
Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?
I am currently working on the continuation of this body of work to exhibit locally in Taos and Albuquerque. I was recently in a documentary presented to legislators entitled New Mexicans Taking Action on Plastic Waste and the director created a separate video of my interview. Both videos can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/user106607381
Chelsea Wrightson’s work is included in our show “Transcendental States,” September 15th - October 15th, 2021. Visit her work at chelseawrightson.com or on Instagram @c.wright.son