I attended the memorial gathering (virtually) for Jim Melchert today 8/6/23. I remember Jim most vividly from the time spent at Tile Guild in Los Angeles working as his assistant on a tile mural project for MIT titled Coming to Light. Jim changed my notion of what an artist is and does. He personally introduced me to Pete Voulkos, John Mason, Walter McConnell and others. One of my first memories of Jim is of him making abstract forms with glaze by balancing a piece of plywood with a set of 4 or 9 tiles on a broom handle and swirling it around after pouring blobs of glaze on them. My first thought was “can he really do that as part of a 100,000.00+ commission for M.I.T.? Jim demonstrated to me that he could and would do anything that occurred to him and then subject what he had done to the most intense critical eye I had ever seen. Jim was the most sensitive person I had ever met especially to his physical surroundings. He noticed things that I took for granted. He used the inspiration of those observations to generate and develop abstract imagery.
Another example I will never forget is when he asked me to capture the exact tracing of how the air hose had fallen the night before, a wide looping line taking up something like a 12′ -14′ diameter area on the floor. I meticulously traced it out and laid out tiles for him to glaze. Jim fired that pattern over 5 times and ultimately he completely reorganized it and transformed it.
I once asked Jim if art could be made by simply tapping on a table at lunch. He responded by tapping out a percussive beat, saying “maybe if it became this, or,” changing the rhythm, “perhaps something like this”. Maybe obvious questions and answers from a student just learning how to be an artist, Jim was patient and generous.
Beyond his example as an artist I also owe to Jim the opportunity to work for Marion Stroud (Kippy) at the Kippy Kamp for three summers 1993-95 another life altering experience.
Ultimately the most important lesson that I learned from Jim, more demonstrated than verbalized, is that art is about opening possibilities in art and in life.