"Paydirt"
Mel Chin
Mel Chin describes the origins and motivations behind his nationwide art project Paydirt in a keynote address at the 2008 National Art Education Association Convention.
The high lead content in New Orleans’ soil—among the worst in the country—was exacerbated by the havoc wreaked by the 2005 hurricane. Discovering that “the disaster was in the soil before the disaster,” Chin felt compelled to do something. Speaking before a crowd of thousands of art educators from across the country, Chin recalls his disillusionment: “I remember standing in the ruins of the Ninth Ward and realizing as a creative individual that I felt hopeless and inadequate. And I was flooded by this terrible insecurity that being an artist was not enough to deal with the tragedy that was before me.” Thus Paydirt and its sister initiative, the “Fundred Dollar Bill Project” was born.
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Mel Chin was born in 1951 in Houston, Texas, and currently lives and works in North Carolina. He received a BA from Peabody College in 1975. Chin uses technology, collage, sculpture, and large-scale installations to create a body of work centered around environmental, political, and social issues. Working as a conceptual artist, he inserts art into unlikely places and forms, including video games, destroyed homes, toxic landfills, and popular television.
