We recently connected with Pattie Chalmers and have shared our conversation below.

Pattie , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

What first comes to mind is my recent installation, “Every Day I Think of You”—a collection of 365 terra cotta articles connected through recollection of a specific person or people. The objects that make up this piece are specific to my remembrances but can become stimulants for a viewer’s memories. This connection to others through a thing’s capacity to contain a memory and our human ability to condense such a variety of experiences into seemingly mundane mementos continues to grab my imagination and led me to complete two other significant pieces: “What Remains” and “Things Fall Away.”

The piece “What Remains” is a portrait of my first boyfriend, who died of leukemia in his 20s. As the title states, the piece represents what remains when someone is lost. The objects become a halo for his absence, reminders of his identity and the conduits for memory. In making this work, I reflected on my memories but found in presenting it that I made connections with others through forgotten objects and the common theme of loss.

In “Things Fall Away”—I have portrayed my relationship with my father and his challenges with Parkinson’s Disease; the objects I represented in porcelain are the things we lose as we move through life. There is a distortion to my rendering, the way that memories distort, and with a lack of colour, these objects begin to wilt into the whiteness of the wall. Making this work allowed me to focus on my relationship with my father, but in sharing the piece, I find connections with others through long-forgotten objects and shared reminiscences.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up and went to art school in Winnipeg, Canada. I received my BFA in printmaking from the University of Manitoba after completing a Bachelor of Arts in History and Psychology and only two years of a Bachelor of Nursing program. After returning to school to take more ceramic classes and sharing a studio for a year, I moved from Winnipeg to Minneapolis to complete my MFA in ceramics from the University of Minnesota.

Graduate school was very rewarding, and my experience as a Teaching Assistant led me to an interest in teaching. Over the years after I graduated, I completed a three-year residency at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, and taught at both the University of Minnesota and Ohio University before landing at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, where I am now a full professor and the head of graduate studies the School of Art and Design. I am fortunate to be well supported at my University, And I have always made time to make work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I think the connection to others through my work is one of the best things about being an artist beyond the act of making. Finding common ground with a range of people is rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pattiechalmers.com
• Instagram: @ladypattiechalmers
• Facebook: Pattie Chalmers