Menthe Wells – ‘embracing synaesthesia’

Associated media

Menthe Wells, an international museum-exhibiting artist based in California, talks to Sue Ward

Menthe Wells held an exhibition of sculpture and painting in Los Angeles in January this year at the LA Artcore’s Brewery Art Center.  Her art emphasizes symbols reflecting an ecological approach that embraces investigation of the relationships among art and landscape forms in nature. Menthe works in both painting and welded metal, using synaesthesia, or the use of one sense to evoke another.

Sue Ward: How did you get into art? Did you love it as a child and if so what were the influences of your childhood leading in this direction?

Menthe Wells: My style grew through many years of growing up in New York City, which were filled with a museum life of painting and drawing. My teen years centred on painting techniques through formal study and through the production of a group of paintings exhibited extensively at the Crespi Gallery, New York City.  As a small child, I had a featured day at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as a painter. My first influential experience was when MoMA administration placed an easel in the entry and I gathered a crowd watching me paint with two brushes, one in each hand. Influenced by   Lam (Hoffman and Albers’ student), Roy Lichtenstein, and extensive discussions on aesthetics with Jacques Lipschitz.

SW:  Tell us about your education, which I understand was arts orientated.

MW: I have formal arts education including a PhD focusing on synaesthesia (i.e. synaesthetics) University of Connecticut; MA Art, Fine Art, Rutgers University, and BS Art, University of Bridgeport, in Art and Psychology.  I became an artist, art historian, art educator, and through education and understandings of sensory relationships and issues of processing, a licensed psychologist.

SW: Do you see yourself primarily as a sculptor or a painter?

MW: I am both equally and cannot separate the two fields in my work.

SW: Where do you do most of your work, especially the larger pieces?

MW: I work in California in more than one studio area and have three studio spaces to work in for various size works in Los Angeles, Orange County and one very large outdoor space in the Temecula Wine Country. I paint in an enclosed, outside studio.  I also have multiple studios set up for painting and various media in each location. The welded sculptures are only done in California in an outdoor work area.

SW: In the past your work has been described as ‘soft sculpturist extraordinaire’.  What did this involve?

MW: I created sculptures built from fabrics as the core of museum and gallery events: larger than life, emerging as characters, ‘animated sculptures’ moved into Happenings, then Events, at the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum. A metamorphosis from art events written for galleries and museum experiences to television plays on a CBS network that reached three states (New England), later sharing on ABC (Southwest).  I wrote the Events, which emerged from early beginnings as Happenings. This experience was similar to Rauschenberg-like experiences in theatre. I had a large one-person exhibit at the Lutz Museum of 38 sculptures (juried invitational, six weeks).

The Events included: Roundabout Theatre Stage II Event, New York City,  State of Connecticut programmes implemented in museum programmes and universities with musicians (Hartford Symphony Orchestra). Events were featured at The Farmington Valley Art Center, the Ellsworth Gallery, the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum, Tucson Art Institute, St Joseph’s University, University of Hartford, Constitution Plaza Arts Festival, and the Hartford Seminary Foundation.

SW: How would you describe your art, as it seems to fall into many categories?

MW: The catalyst for thematic variations in specific fine arts in an extensive variety of media responds to my creative passion for expression.   Landscapes, a central focus of my paintings, use perception: involving the senses to translate the feelings of the landscape elements. Sculpture uses abstraction or figural expression. Welded steel is formed to express humour with calligraphic figural influences, and printmaking embraces new media. 

SW: Can you tell our readers the role music plays in your work?

MW: My concept for a Happening in art was to be the first sight-sound intermedia ever held at a museum, which was juried and selected by Roger Selby, one of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Directors. My concept was to create music with over a dozen musicians (who participated in training using a synaesthetic language) in the museum’s galleries while over a dozen artists used photography (with the synaesthetic language) in concert with the musician’s expression. I combined my vision with Selby’s vision as the year-long project grew, and as understandings for a ‘first time ever’ museum intermedia formed the plan for the Happening, which was to be archived in photographic studies and sound. I was carefully juried by the Wadsworth Atheneum Art Museum’s Directors (Selby and Elliott). I originated, directed and edited the entire ‘record the experience’ Happening, which I named Impressions and thenImpressions Workshop became the archived sight-sound intermedia photographic-sound record of the experience.

SW: Will you explain to us what you understand by‘embracing  synaesthesia’ as a new genre in which all the senses are used as a natural response to the environment?

MW: My art emphasizes symbols, reflecting an ecological ‘lens’, embracing investigation of the relationships among art and landscape forms in nature in painting and welded metal.   My paintings are characterized by an expressive force and underlying perception of movement in nature.  I portray movement in landscape rhythmically and conceptually.  The evident variables in the movement of line and images combine with colour fluidity in my self-discovery. 

Expressive assemblies of action lines, as natural synaesthetic reaction, combine neuropsychological and psychophysical phenomena, in ‘sitting’  lines, or spatial formless areas in paintings and sculpture.  One work, acquired by the Zimmerli Museum, used thematic movement.    

SW: You held an exhibition of sculpture and painting in Los Angeles on January 3–27 2013 at the LA Artcore’s Brewery Art Center. The exhibition included 40 paintings and new genre calligraphic welded steel sculptures. Which of these art forms do you think was the most successful with the general public?

MW: Of 160 people, whom I met during one day of the exhibition, the preference was equally divided between painting and sculpture.  Some viewers shared personal connections to what they felt in my art. Some shared reactions to mood, feeling and time of day in paintings. Others embraced the humour in the figural concepts (calligraphic line sculpture) or symbolism in  abstractions. Others felt musical sound in the sculptures (the sculptures have movement on touch).

SW: As you are now based in California can you tell us where you have held exhibitions outside the US?

MW: The exhibition in the Chiang Mai University Museum of Art in which I exhibited 19 paintings in 35 feet of space (2012) additionally exhibited three projections – two of which were synaesthetic projections.  There are future exhibits in museums in Korea and Japan planned for three years. A Polish museum foundation is acquiring my work. A European Cultural Counsel is working with me for continued thematic art exhibitions in SE Asia and India.  Over time, I have exhibited in Asia and Europe and other exhibitions are planned.  I am collaborating on an exhibit for Hong Kong.  I had a long-term Art Centre exhibit in England.

SW: Menthe Wells, thank you for talking to Cassone.