A Conversation with Mei Chen
Electric hands making electric sculptures – this is the only way to describe artist Mei Chen, who creates, sculpts, imagines, and dreams up eccentric mini-hand sculptures to be used for earrings, keychains, necklaces, charms, and more. Mei grew up in Boston and was originally trained at Northeastern University as a marketing major, though she has been creating works of art since she was a child. Aiming to introduce diversity, inclusivity, and delicious flavor into the consumption of the art world, Mei drives her practice on the hope that her mini-hand sculptures will reach out and touch all those who see them. I had a chance to speak with Mei on diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in her work.
Abbey: What initially got you into sculpting?
Mei: I never grew up doing art really because my parents are Chinese/Vietnamese refugees from the war. When they come over, they were concerned about me and my brother having a steady income. They never encouraged us to follow our dreams, but they pushed me to pursue pharmacy. I was like, “OK, but I am terrible at math and science, so I am going to fail out of school. I wound up convincing my mom to let me go into school for marketing and graduated in 2018. I didn’t start doing art until I was 18. I had art classes here and there, but nothing that I truly pursued. For a while, I pursued theatre in high school because I never thought of myself as a visual artist. I started doing needle felting – I did want to do polymer clay, but it was too expensive; at the time, I really couldn’t afford the materials. Needle-felting was cheaper; you just buy unprocessed wool and stab it. My first introduction into sculpture was needle-felting at my mom’s nail salon and I would purposely make really cute things, like carrot cakes. One of the ladies who came to my mom’s nail salon was an elementary school teacher and she asked me to make hipster woodland creatures as a theme for her school’s year and I said yeah absolutely. I made her a deer with a scarf and a Starbucks cup, and then I made a fox with a bow tie. It was so funny though because I gave them all enormous asses – like absolute dump trucks, I thought it was so funny to do that. Down the line, when I could afford it, I started doing polymer clay. I was always very inspired by this artist named Tina Yu, and I’m still so inspired by her! She is so insanely talented. She does amazing beautiful but disturbing things, and I think that is such a delicious combination.
Abbey: I love that combination, it makes for beautiful art. What led you to making hands with your clay?
Mei: What led me to hands is that polymer clay is really good for practical things like food – a lot of people use it for food. I would make a lot of food like little ice creams – I worked at Dave and Busters and I would make little clay things and bring them to work. I made this waitress booklet with a puppy coming out of it and it was crushed immediately! I ended up making a reinforced Viking but it got decapitated, so I was a little discouraged. I was just having fun and making things for myself. I started making hands because I find them very challenging. I think peak artistry is being able to make hands and faces. Making human body parts takes a lot of talent and the ability to trick the human eye into thinking it’s real means you’ve made it. So I started making hands and they were so bad at first, but I was never totally discouraged. I just told myself, “OK, if I do anything 100 times, there will definitely be improvement.” So I just kept doing it, and I actually hit my 100 hand mark last month!
Abbey: That’s awesome, what an awesome accomplishment.
Mei: Yeah! Thank you! But so much of my inspiration comes from artist Tina Yu. Her art is stunning – she can paint and sculpt, which makes them so much more incredible. She did this incredible hand with the dragon from Spirited Away with the little girl’s face on one side and the dragon on the other – I never really watched those movies, but it was so good. So when I started making my hands, I would start getting annoyed that people would say they were so cute. I would tell them like hey, if a dude made this, you would not be calling it cute. But because I’m a woman they would just tell me they are cute. Someone told me to just stop making cute things so I ended up making a hand with a bloody heart in it. I stopped doing art for a little while because work got too stressful, but when I picked art back up I just pursued this very organic way of creating and just kept going with that.
Photo from @MeiChenArtist on Instagram
Abbey: You said so much that resonated with me just then – beautiful but disturbing, disturbing but beautiful – so amazing! I am so down with the artistic choices you’ve made to introduce some sick things into your art. Your online presence is so bubbly, and you’ve got some incredibly sick pieces. You’ve got some with these amazing evil eye charms in them and others holding plants, and another thing I love about your online presence is how candid you are about mental health. How do you make decisions surrounding diversity and accessibility in your artwork?
Mei: So I didn’t go to museums until I was around 16. No matter how many I went to, I felt uncomfortable. It felt weird, like I didn’t belong there. I felt like there was a huge gap in diversity and inclusive artists at the museum and I felt like I didn’t belong! Which I hated because what I love about art is how equal opportunity art is. Nobody cares if you have a college degree in art. Seriously, you don’t even have to have a specific skill, which is why I love art so much. Which is why I hated museums so bad because it was this place where the collective art would come together and I still felt like they were gatekeeping what kinds of artists could be on display, and I didn’t like that. But it wasn’t always the driving motivation behind why I created art – it was something that lived in the back of my mind, but I really didn’t start pursuing becoming an artist until last year. It never occurred to me that I could create art for a job, and while I made things, I thought to myself, “how can I make this accessible and diverse?” I try to not make my pieces too expensive, but I do want to be fair with my prices, so I do feel the prices I set are normal for hand-made earrings because they really are mini sculptures. But when I first started making them, I was watching a video about Black ballerinas who had to put makeup on their shoes because nobody made shoes that matched their skin tone and it made me so sad that nobody was making diverse products. But one company wound up making shoes for Black dancers and I’m sure when they saw the shoes they felt like, ‘wow, these were made for me, someone thought of me when they made these,’ and that is what I wanted to make with my hands. I want people to look at my hands with the different skin tones and think, “wow, this was made for me, someone thought of me,” so every time I make a new design, I try to make multiple skin tones. I don’t want anyone to feel left out or excluded when they are looking at my artwork.
Photo from Mei Chen Artist’s website
Abbey: That’s really wonderful, and such a great motivation for diversity in your artwork. From a creative perspective, when someone creates art, on some level, it needs to serve the artist. Thinking on that, how does your personal identity play a role in uniquely creating these pieces with diversity and inclusivity still in mind? How do you know when a piece is authentically Mei Chen, but also serving a wide audience?
Mei: This is a pro and a con, but I have this specific life where I really do fit into a lot of minority groups. I’m a woman, Asian, disabled, and queer, so it’s just I have a lot in common with a lot of people. I also grew up working through a lot of trauma and going to therapy, so I feel I have the empathy to relate to most people. I do feel like once you’re in any kind of minority group, you are automatically traumatized as a child – there’s just something that happens to you or happens close to you that’s really messed up, and I feel like that empathy comes through in my pieces. I try to make things that are close to me but also close to others. I try to make some pieces that are specifically pretty that some people want to buy, but occasionally I’ll make something that I like to call “spicy.” Usually, the spicy pieces may not sell as well as other pieces, but those are usually exactly for me. I am a very sex-positive individual, but I don’t like to advertise it too heavily on my website or with my products. But I do think that I am able to make something that is true for many people. For example, I made earrings that included medication. I wanted to introduce an opportunity to include that inclusivity into my work and normalize very normal things, like taking medication for mental health. It also acts as a reminder – you won’t look at those earrings without remembering! I also get very excited to make Asian earrings. My family was a large source of getting in touch with my culture because of growing up going to Catholic schools, and I never had people who had the same culture as me. And being Asian is such a large spectrum, I only have two other friends who speak the same language as me. At this point, I have a community of Asian friends who have gone through similar experiences as me. The same goes for the pride earrings I make – I want everyone to be proud of who they are and see that in my products.
Photo from @MeiChenArtist on Instagram
Abbey: I can absolutely see that and relate to it on so many levels. In a lot of ways, we are really discussing smaller niches of entertainment and enjoyment in your pieces, but I feel like the smaller the niche, the cooler the products, you know?
Mei: For real! I make YouTube videos while I do my artwork too, and they really are just for me. They have almost nothing to do with my art and I get to treat the videos like they are podcasts, and I really want to do an episode on carnivorous plants and infectious ants.
Abbey: That sounds very cool! I feel like sometimes creating things that serve us as creators is so fulfilling, even if it isn’t a part of the larger mission. But obviously, you sculpt, but do you have other avenues where you can express yourself and your identity otherwise?
Mei: So two years ago I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2, which involves hypomania and depression. It gets worse as you get older, and growing up I would become momentarily obsessed with my hobbies nonstop. I would essentially have a new hobby all the time, probably every few months. It worked out well because much of my work back in the day, like drawing and painting, has paid off in influencing my work now. I’m not great at drawing at painting, but I love to bake – I’m an amazing baker – and I just love pursuing and learning about new activities and hobbies all the time. Of course, I love podcasting because of my YouTube channels, and I’ve recently been sewing which is a very fun pastime. I’m not great at it, but again, if you do anything 100 times, you are bound to improve!
Abbey: Sewing is so time consuming! It really is nonstop. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your career moving forward, and possibly what other kinds of avenues you want to explore with sculpture?
Mei: Well the end goal was never art, but it has become something that is my entire life at this point. My trajectory has always been to move to Berlin – I have always wanted to move out to Berlin with whatever it is I’m doing, but now I really could go out there for art school. Right now, I’d love to get into a formal training program to work on my technical skills in art and continue creating things that excite me and are thought-provoking and continue to be inspired by wonderful artists around me. I would also love to try out new art forms and materials, like I’ve never used metal as a sculpting tool. The bottom line is that right now, I really don’t know what comes next. There is so much out there, and so many options I’ve never had or worked with, so my goal is to go to school now and whatever comes after that, we’ll find out.
Abbey: Well I am excited for you and I am excited to share your work and philosophy with others. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview, and thank you for the information!
Mei: Thank you for having me!
If you are interested in Mei’s work, check out her vibrant personality on her website, which includes her Etsy Shop, her YouTube channel, and her pages on Instagram and other social media.
