About
Mel Chin is an internationally recognized artist, known for creating artworks in a broad range of media and scale, including objects, temporary installations, and permanent public artworks. Since the 1970s, Mel Chin has produced artworks that combine cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas, including art that addresses political and ecological issues. Mel Chin's artistic process is highly collaborative in nature; he has worked with biologists, psychologists, geologists, medical doctors, and television producers.
Mel Chin's chief collaborators on the Joint Library project are Haun Saussy, formerly Chair of Comparative Literature and Professor in the Departments of Asian Languages and Comparative Literature at Stanford University; Robert Batchelor, Professor of History at Georgia Southern University; and artist James Millar.
Mel Chin's methodology also involves an extensive process of community consultation and participation. Through collaborative community forums, the artists facilitated discussions on a wide spectrum of personal and civic issues that served to inspire the artwork concepts for Recolecciones. In some cases, artworks are the implemented form of creative concepts delivered by talented students from San José State University and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. These discussions involved participants who voiced multiple points of view and exhibited a diverse range of race, age, and socio-economic background.
View a brochure about the artworks in Recolecciones [PDF]
Conceptual Acknowledgments
Lead Team: Mel Chin, Haun Saussy, Robert Batchelor, and James Millar. Other contributors to the conceptualizations of the artworks include over 100 San José community members: San José Public and University librarians and students of San José State University and the Cooper Union School of Art.
San José State University Team: Wendy Angel, Ed Clapp, Francesca Davis, Russell Fan, Carolyn Gerstman, Janet Kang, David Kempkin, Rachel Lazo, Sheila Malone, Masako Miki, Inna Razumova, Rob Spain, Scott Trimball, John Zimmerman, Minging Zhou
Cooper Union School of Art Team: Amelia Bauer, Alejandro Cardenas, Robert de Saint Phalle, Jorge Elbrecht, Nina Gallant, Aimee Genell, Francis Kerrigan, Sam Kusack, Alexander Monachino, Sarah Morgan, Michael Vahrenwald, Allyson Vieira, Donald Tobias Wong
Concept contribution for specific artworks: Alejandro Cardenas, Amelia Bauer, Mary Rubin, Barron Brown, Russell Fan, Robert de Saint Phalle, Biblioteca Latinoamericana Community