Chela
Gays Mills, Wisconsin

Sarah Burnham Mertz (aka Chela) is a multi-faceted artist who has spent her whole life making art without being concerned about the on-going shifts of the avant-garde.  “I don’t do stuff just to be popular,” she says. Rather, Chela considers her art explorations to be an “incredible journey that I would like to share with others.”

She was born in 1939 in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in the Twin Cities. As a child she loved drawing and painting, encouraged by her parents and a family friend who, she says, offered support and enthusiasm “that has sustained me throughout my often lonely and groping path as an artist.”

At age 19, she left for New York City to study Modern Dance in the style of Martha Graham but “I realized I was not going to become a Martha Graham,” and she returned to the Midwest to major in art at Roosevelt University, in conjunction with the Chicago Art Institute. Following graduation she did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley and then returned to the Midwest where she worked at the University of Chicago Press in a variety of positions.

In 1973 Metz began combining her art work with art teaching, starting in Chicago at a small school called the Art Tillers. At the same time she purchased a Dickerson etching and lithography press and, using Stanley Hayter’s book, New Ways of Gravure, taught herself etching and began teaching etching in her home studio. Since then she has invented and/or developed several print making processes and taught at Viterbo University, Northeast Iowa Community College, Upper Iowa University and the University of Arizona, as well as in a variety of institutes and programs in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona and Illinois.

A year of traveling in Ireland and Europe, 1979 -80, confirmed her ability to do oil glazes and also gave her time to observe the gargoyles and other features of Gothic architecture, which, along with characters from Mayan and Aztec art, have influenced some of her work.

 She completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona in 1988 and began to develop an interest in art as a tool for therapy. She recently worked as a teacher of expressive arts therapies for the Boscobel Area Health Care Center.

 She has participated in art invitationals in Iowa, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Illinois; has had one-women shows in California, Illinois and Arizona; and has been affiliated with galleries in Berkeley, California; Dublin, Ireland; Tucson, Arizona; and Chicago and Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Chela speaks of “losing control” during the artistic process: “Sometimes artists admit to not being in control, becoming immersed in the process of integrating emerging images, thoughts and feelings, as they interface with the right side of the brain, trying different formats and different ways of seeing and sensing. For me and others, this is an exhilarating and breakthrough experience.”

 For example, in what she calls her lift-ground drawings, she will use a mechanical pencil (with no lead) to imprint a beginning design on paper, while not looking at the paper.  Then she will begin to fill it in as her creative insights suggest and themes begin developing. She doesn’t force the images but works in response to them, and to her intuition as she examines them.

Her work derives from dreams, shamanic journeys and the ongoing personal mythology called "The Love Pantheon of Beings and Their Offspring.” Other theme-inspired challenges that have pushed her explorations include Death Histories, Dream Drawings, Animal Inter-Antics and Botanical Prints. She has also developed a series of Bone Dolls, combing animal bones and soft sculpture.

In 1989 she returned to Minnesota to restore her family home and care for her aging parents, planning to move eventually to Southern Utah. But, in 1992, enroute to Utah, she stopped “on a whim” in Gays Mills, where she met kindred spirits and an atmosphere she liked. So, two years later, she settled on 35 acres of forest outside of Gays Mills, “whose rugged Ocooch Mountains attracted me because of their peaceful natural beauty and the abundance of wildlife.”  And, having moved to Southwest Wisconsin, she decided to “honor a new direction with a new name,” and adopted the name Chela, by which she is known throughout the Driftless arts community.

With her partner Christine Peterson, she founded "Bushmasters, C&C," joining art and gardening and developing the “Plant Prints” botanical series of etchings. In this experiment she combines the freshly picked plants with various printmaking techniques and actually PRINTS the plants into pure rag papers by squishing them through her etching press under great pressure. The printmaking techniques include chine colle, offset, as well as monoprint, staining and painting.

 Art is a process of discovery, and Chela delights in her own discoveries, as well as in the discoveries she helps encourage in anyone who sees her works.

Chela can be contacted at mertzsb@mwt.net.

www.chelasart.com

Interview by Sharon Murphy
Photographs Courtesy of Sharon Murphy and Sara Burnham Mertz