Chapa,"Too many curiosities"
Janna Slack
Within a few hours of meeting Chapa for the first time, I was immediately aware that "juxtaposition" is at the center of her life, her history and her work. Walking into her one bedroom Queens apartment, I was overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of belongings on display. Her work, mementos and collections were everywhere, on the walls, on shelves, all carefully curated and meticulously tended. Her plants?two avocados (a third had recently been "adopted out"), a tiny five year-old mango tree, mandarin oranges, and a grape vine?added to the brimming life and warm chaos of her home. Chapa, herself dressed in an apple-green blouse and green turquoise earrings, looked very much at ease in her surroundings, though more as the serene center-of-the-storm than as a part of the actual chaos. Her demeanor is so lovely, so welcoming, gentle, and calm that?had I met her elsewhere?I would never have guessed she lived in such a stimulating environment. As our conversation continued, I discovered that this tension between a tranquil surface stretched over a dynamic interior is a theme that has developed throughout her life?s story, and plays a central part in her work.
Prior to her decision to focus on painting, Chapa worked as (among others) a Russian interpreter for an engineering firm, a writer for a film magazine, and had been a promising Koto player, attending one of Japan?s most prestigious schools. Her life has taken her around the globe, but she always maintained her need to make art. That need led her, finally, to the Bunka Gakuin in Tokyo in 1999. At 54 years old, she had never studied art properly before?apart from the odd life-drawing class?but her talent was soon recognized by two professors who encouraged her to apply to the Art Institute of Chicago. Though she was accepted, the depths of the Windy City winter did not agree with her and she decided she preferred New York, officially moving here in 2001. At first, I found it difficult to reconcile such a varied, wild existence with the unaffected, laughing woman sitting across from me. In fact, she dismisses her fascinating life by saying, simply, "I have too many curiosities." As we discussed her work further, I began to see how the contradictions of her life are brought into harmony by the way she represents both brisk movement and tense undercurrents in her lovely, calm color palette.
Not that she thinks of her work in such analytical terms. Chapa?s creative process is highly organic. When asked if she has specific goals either for her paintings or her work in general, she can only defer and say that she is a "follower." She is hard-pressed to articulate the reasons for her artistic decisions because, she said, "Something tells me which to choose." The need to paint comes to her in the street, as she?s drifting off to sleep, or, in the case of one oil-on-paper piece she showed me, when she unwrapped a fresh stick of butter. When asked about her colors, she says that though she does have her own color sense, "one color decides the next color."
And, as a viewer, I found color to be the most compelling and universally important of the three main elements to her work. From her collage pieces and mixed-media "creatures," to both her abstract and figurative paintings, color is most integral to laying on the last layer of contradiction, of tension. She laughingly told me of how she always received bad marks in elementary school in her art classes because, while her teacher recognized her understanding of color, she was "always out of the lines."
The second characteristic are those very lines, in her shapes and compositions?which conspire to create such movement and visual dynamism that the viewer must work to understand why a serene, blue-green canvas could create such tension and excitement. In a sense, she is still "out of the lines"?such is her enthusiasm during the painting process. Two recent pieces standing on the easel in her living room (swirls and jagged lines of blues and greens) were inspired by the movement of fall leaves in the wind. Chapa told me how, when she was young, she used to love to chase the leaves as they turned in the wind and she vividly remembers being so touched she wrote a poem about the experience. The pieces, contrary to their soothing palette, are brimming with the movement of the wind, that specific feeling of life?much as her calm, kind, unassuming person somehow remained intact throughout her dynamic history.
The third most important element of Chapa?s work is her varied choices of materials and techniques. Mixing oil pastels with watercolors ("Oh yes?try it!") and overlaying paper onto painted canvas and scratching it off are just some of the ways she achieves the unique texture and mood of her pieces. She has woven her mother?s unsuccessful calligraphy attempts into collages studded with important dates, glued tiny pieces of corrugated cardboard onto large oil works, and tacked plastic netting onto pristine canvases. All of this?and this is the most theoretical thing I heard her say?is "to create tension."
It took me just a couple of hours to realize how Chapa?s 59 years have lent her work its special brand of chaos and calm?their feeling of experience. The beauty of her pieces does not come at the cost smart visuals or emotion. Her work is some of the most personal I?ve seen?indeed, her work is a metaphor for her very life. Though her art-school education began later that most, she said that had she come to it earlier, she may not have appreciated it. Her life has given her the swirls, colors, zig-zags, and figures that she paints now. Thankfully, one is hard-pressed to imagine another career incarnation coming too quickly on the heels of this one; as she told me, smiling, "I think I like it. Because I don?t want to stop."
