James Melchert Interview
Conducted by Renny Pritikin in San Francisco, California, 2002.

MR. MELCHERT: After I left the graduate program, I took what -- some ideas that I had gotten from Roland Genzel and pursued them. He would make a collage just out of colors of -- he would tear up ads in magazines that had a lot of color, and he would use that to put together a small collage. And then he would base a painting on the collage, and so that's how he was working.

But I also took some painting classes then, in Missoula, while I was there that summer of '58. And instead of using oil paint, we were using cans of interior house paint, so that you, you know, were drying it - it means that it must have been latex; it could dry right away, and you could use a big brush and you'd do large paintings. Well, all of these things had a positive effect on my joining a larger community of -- I should say a larger sphere of activity than I had known before.

But Pete Voulkos was the one who really changed everything for me; the way in which he believed in doing things larger than you're used to doing, so that you become physically involved. You know, I'd go home at night and I'd just be physically exhausted, and I'd sleep wonderfully well. And it was energizing. I loved --

MR. PRITIKIN: But even abstract expressionism, that was one of their ideas, that the whole body be involved in painting. You didn't really get it until Voulkos had you doing that with ceramics.

MR. MELCHERT: And I think I got it through Voulkos --

MR. PRITIKIN: Right.

MR. MELCHERT: -- because he was the one who was looking at [Mark] Rothko, and [Franz] Kline particularly, and [William] de Kooning and others. And I found myself going beyond anything I had imagined I'd ever be doing -- and how my world expanded that summer. As a result, I taught one more year in this little college and then moved to California, expecting to start graduate school a second time at the Otis Art Institute, only to find that Pete had lost his job there and had been hired at Cal Berkeley. So we came here instead. And so for two years I worked closely for Pete as his assistant.

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MR. MELCHERT: I must say -- this is a confession -- when I realized that I needed to get out from under his influence, I felt a certain guilt in doing that. And I remember there was some show called "American Studio Potters" -- I'll put it that way -- at the Victoria and Albert in London. I've often thought about this. I made a little wall piece, a funny little thing. It looked like it was maybe leather. It had a little zipper on it and so on. And it reminded -- I mean, I think it stemmed from my having seen a little wall vase that my grandmother had. But at any rate, I made this thing, and it amused me.

And they asked for this show, and I thought, well, I'm going to put this piece in with some of the plates that I sent - a follow-up plate. And the director of the department at the Victoria and Albert, who was involved with education, where they had asked for this show and then they traveled it throughout the United Kingdom, he was intrigued by this piece, and he asked me if he if -- for permission to use a picture of it in an article he was writing. And when I realized that it would be published, it occurred to me Pete might see this, and what would he say? And I refused to give him permission.

MR. PRITIKIN: Because it was different than Voulkos?

MR. MELCHERT: It was so different -- and I knew he wouldn't approve. And you know, it's interesting; I always wanted his approval, but as time went by I made less of an effort to keep him informed of what I was doing. I didn't want that interference.
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