Megaliths and ‘meep moops’

Sculptors Mark and Teagan Chatterley fit two worlds into one

You should never say never, but it’s a safe bet that no two artists have ever kneaded their brains together the way Mark Chatterley and his daughter, Teagan, did to create their joint exhibit, Chatterley²: “Intuitive Play,” on display at East Lansing’s (SCENE) Metrospace through the end of the month.

Mark is well known to art lovers in Greater Lansing and far beyond as the creator of monumental human and animal figures that look as if they’ve been unearthed from a billion-year-old asteroid.

But this show gives you Chatterley times two — or squared, as the title has it. In “Apartment Living,” one of Mark’s typically grim and stony figures is honeycombed with dozens of recesses, each one inhabited by a shiny little creature Teagan calls a “meep moop.”

Mark delighted in the tiny tenants his daughter created.

“You never know what’s going on in the apartment above or below you,” he explained. “You hear strange noises.”

Another huge figure, “Sacred Place,” looms over you like a grim god, with a silently screaming “meep moop” where its heart would be.

“There are a million ways to interpret it,” Teagan said. “You can look at it as this large creature with a small creature inside. Or maybe your external presence is larger than your internal presence. Or maybe you’re feeling an emotion in this sacred space.”

Both artists had thought about collaborating for many years, but neither mentioned it to the other. It took a nudge from a third party — Laurén Gerig, director of exhibitions and outreach for Michigan State University’s Department of Art, Art History and Design.

“It was a slightly crazy idea,” Gerig admitted.

Of course, Gerig was familiar with Mark’s impressive 40-year career, and she also knew of Teagan’s design work and her “meep moop” figures.

Although Gerig had never seen, let alone mounted, a father-daughter exhibit, she had a hunch that Mark’s austere monumentality and Teagan’s whimsy would collide like two types of matter in a cyclotron, stirring emotions and stories in the viewer’s mind that no solo artist could evoke. 

Gerig learned, to her delight, that the duo had never collaborated before.

Teagan told Gerig she had wanted to work with her father for years. Mark had no idea she would be so into it.

“I didn’t think she would want to deal with her dad,” he shrugged. “She has her world, and I have my world. We don’t want to influence each other, ‘You ought to be making this stuff.’ It was nice that she’d want to take a chance.”

They got together and made a set of drawings, but they weren’t satisfied with the result and worked out a more spontaneous and fluid working method.

Before long, strange images flashed back and forth between Mark’s Williamston studio and Teagan’s studio in Grand Rapids.

“One of us would say, ‘Hey, I made this today,’ or ‘What do you think of this?’ We were adding things throughout the process,” Teagan said.

To guess which figures were created by the father and which by the daughter, the viewer needn’t look further than their surface textures.

“I’m old and crusty, something that’s been dug up,” Mark joked.

“I can speak for him on this,” Teagan intervened. She has long admired her father’s “crater glaze,” a signature formula that bubbles like lava in the kiln to produce unpredictable, dramatically mottled, ancient-looking textures.

“His intention is to make pieces that are timeless,” Teagan explained. “There’s no clothing or hairstyles to make it approachable through the ages, and the crater glaze really speaks to that.”

“That’s pretty much it,” Mark replied. “I couldn’t have said it better.”

Typically, Mark began by building a figure, layer by layer, from the ground up, and creating hollows where Teagan’s “meep moops” could take up residence.

Forming a recess in an already hollow clay shell less than an inch thick was a technical challenge for Mark.

“It was kind of like balancing eggshells,” he said.

The hollows are not just a practical way to combine the work of artists who work on vastly different scales. They also evoke the protective, father-daughter bond that gives the entire show a palpable warmth.

“I wanted to have a special place for Teagan’s work, like a religious shrine,” Mark said. “Although what religion would worship these things, I don’t know.”

“I didn’t know what I would be creating as I created it,” Teagan said. “I don’t sketch things out. I let the clay speak to me.”

Teagan’s “meep moops” blur the line between otherworldly, disturbing mini-monsters and adorable, marketable figurines, and that’s no accident. Her master’s degree is in the field of designed objects.

“I spend quite a bit of time looking at products,” she said. “My brain is constantly conflicted between fine art and design. The textures, the shininess and the colors are hinting at both of these worlds.”

“I like the way Teagan is playful,” Mark said. “I’ve been trying to lighten up with my work, so it’s a good combination.”

In “Show and Tell,” an unusually whimsical head, even for Mark, sticks out its extra-long tongue to reveal an oddly familiar passenger — a “meep-moop” with indigo eyes and a bristly moustache.

“I asked her if it was a portrait of me, but she didn’t say yes or no,” Mark said.

Teagan just laughed.