Chum Art
Words by Lauren Bulla, Photographs by Jo Cosme
*Content warning, mentions of mental health, thoughts of self harm, and suicide.*
Harry Malesovas is an interdisciplinary artist primarily focusing his creative energy on ceramics. He is currently based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, having moved there, after obtaining his BFA at the University of North Carolina Asheville in 2020. Harry deals in the absurd, the spooky.... actively giving one’s innermost thoughts a place to live via clay and glaze. CHUM Art focuses on the otherworldly, the freaky and the nuanced with artworks that will compel you toward them as quickly as you may want to back away. Teeth gnashing and appendages outstretching in your direction. All of which seemingly ask you, who do you think I am? Who are you... even. Many find the process of looking in the mirror in order to meet oneself, an otherwise intimidating process. Harry uses his creative skill to face these thoughts... and demons, head on. Lacing his individual experiences into his interpersonal relationships, we see his sculptures come alive with emotion via heavy themes and bright colour ways. All which creates a powerful juxtaposition, drawing engagement all over the nation, and the world. I sat down with artist Harry Malesovas of CHUM Art for an exclusive interview, discussing his creative process, what it means to face your fears, and how to conjure up follow-through in a world that feels so fixated on stifling the creative process.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Harry Malesovas. My sculptures are typically absurd and humorous monster-like characters composed of a menagerie of images. Those which are pulled from my life ranging from inanimate objects to my friends and family.
What does your work focus on mostly?
Mostly my work aims to bring to light feelings that are universal - that most of us squirrel away inside. I try to use my work to bring up my own anxieties and fears as well as my hopes for the future and the many joys I have. For a long time, I repressed most of my emotions besides happiness. I didn’t want to burden others with my feelings of depression and anxiety, so I bottled it all up until I truly was at a breaking point and began developing feelings of self-harm. By that time, I started going to art therapy. The hard thing was that I didn’t really even know how to talk about how I was feeling. It seemed like the sum of the whole was greater than each individual feeling I had repressed, creating a daunting feeling of like, work.
This task of not only unpacking all that was going on inside me was heightened by first having to learn how to even discuss my emotions. Yet, I did, and with my art therapist’s help we slowly started working out each issue I was dealing with. Making small steps with pen and paper and drawing what was going on in my head slowly helped break that barrier I had created in my mind. Eventually I got to the point that I could use the skills we developed to cope with my feelings on my own. My work is really built on that idea, that all the small facets of one’s life are what makes up that inner you.
Why the materials that you use?
I use clay cause it really allows me to have so much freedom when it comes to composition and expression. The forgiving nature of the material allows me to sculpt images at a whim and erase it, should it not look the way I want. That’s great for me because when I am working I come up with my initial ideas for the piece, like a general theme or images I want to use. Then as I work other images begin to assert themselves onto the piece until the body of the sculpture I am working on is filled to the brim with images. If there are things in there that don’t quite work I can just erase them off my sculpture at a moment’s notice.
There is a mask motif that appears throughout your work. Can you give us more insight into its significance?
The masks came about when I felt like I was wearing a mask every day. When I would interact with other people around me I would force a smile and pretend I was happy to the rest of the world but on the inside I was struggling. After I had come to terms with this and started feeling comfortable in expressing myself, I began to use the monster mask as a way to express the inner self that may feel differently than the face we show the world around us.
How would you say your style, personally, intertwines with your work? Would you say it’s the same?
It’s funny, I wear so much black in my wardrobe. My wife gets mad at me if I buy another black T-Shirt. But in my work on the other hand, I use so much colour. I love it. Vibrant psychedelic colour makes the issue of exploring difficult topics like depression, anxiety, ect. so much easier when the work itself is fun and approachable. I feel the same way about the way I portray my characters. I think the cartoony caricature-like style of my work is drawn from growing up watching cartoons. I still watch cartoons, but I think the amount I watched as a kid totally impacted my style. I mean I really learned how to draw from watching cartoons, reading comics, and trying to make my own characters. These guys I make, while dealing with some real shit, look so silly that it makes it a little easier to interact with the hard things they are going through. I guess my personality is that way too. I can talk about some serious stuff while still being kinda goofy and light-hearted.
Who’s music do you enjoy, dead or alive?
I have been on a real metal/hardcore kick recently. When I am in the studio, I listen to Sanguisugabogg, Deftones, Poppy, Knocked Loose Peeling Flesh Ect. However, I also have been listening to a lot of the Carpenters and Doechii so I am pretty open music wise. To be honest though I love audio books. I just finished Frankenstein.
You mention mental health plays a big role in your creative practice. Can you tell us more about that?
For me I thought I was completely alone when I experienced suicidal thoughts. I would be driving down the highway and see a pole and think. Yeah, I could just hit that and life would be over. After having thoughts like that though I would think “what’s wrong with me?” Like no one has ever had that thought before. When I started going to therapy however, my therapists let me know that I wasn’t so special...
And the things I deal with are completely normal. But if they are so normal why don’t we discuss them? Why do people take their own life and it’s a surprise to their friends and family? I make my work to take down the barriers on the discussion of mental health. I am willing to show the world, “ yes I have these feelings and others do too, let’s talk about it!”
How can art be a tool in aiding struggles with mental health? Do you find it helps or hurts your practice?
Look, sometimes it isn’t a tool that helps right away. I just finished a piece about anxiety and its funny cause the whole time while making it I was like “I feel weird, why do I feel weird”. Then it dawned on me, like oh, I am sitting here thinking about what makes me anxious in my life and using it for fuel to make a piece. That being said, a lot of times in allowing myself the space to process each work and really think about the meaning behind them, they do allow me to better understand myself and how I want to move forward in my life.
I made a work earlier this year about depression and specifically how I was depressed going to work every day. I was making the work from a dark place but as I made the piece and created each small portion of detail, it really made me realize that I have a lot to be grateful for and that my gratitude can be the very thing that can pull me from my darkness, which then fuelled the sister piece I created next to mirror that work. Long story short, I think if you are in a place where you can look at hard things objectively, the act of really diving into your own emotions and being forced to ruminate with them can allow you the space to process things that you have previously been repressing.