By Sharon Resnick
Andrea Nelson doesn’t limit herself on what she takes in.
That’s why her studio corner on Soapsuds Alley is filled
with bones, bottles, plastic faces, postcards and pages from old magazines and catalogs,
even a 1940s police newspaper filled with gruesome crimes and young women in racy poses.
Plus a stalwart rendition of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Sometimes people leave things on her doorstep. Two years ago, artist
friend John Svenson gave her a dead bat, which she keeps along with the red-breasted
sapsucker she preserved after it flew into a cabin window.
A combination of curiosity and compulsion drives Nelson to make her
"lost and found assemblages" and collages. It’s certainly not money. She
rarely offers her works for sale.
"It’s a total side thing for me," she said. "I
don’t feel the need to make money off of it… It has a lot of personal meaning
and sentimental value. Some of my assemblages take years to complete. It’s hard for
me to part with them, but I also think it’s important to share."
Nelson, 32, displays her work at Extreme Dreams gallery and recently
exhibited at Fireweed Restaurant.
She’s "proceeding in the dark" when she creates, she
said. "That’s why I like it. It’s outside my head. The creative process
surprises me if I move forward. The product works for me, but I can’t say why."
Nelson is especially attracted to "bird things," colored
bottles and skulls. She’s always on the lookout. While living in Colorado, she
scoured old mines and dumps and dug through dumpsters in Denver.
She’s dissected Great Horned Owl pellets to retrieve the bones of
prey and is most appreciative of the perfect "tiniest little tooth" she found in
one of those pellets. Beaches and the side of the roads also have offered up interesting
finds.
A pile of old boots from Sawmill Creek near the McRae house on Union
Street and Sixth Avenue became the assemblage, "Budge McRae’s Honest Work."
"I dug the boots out of the mud, scrubbed them with a toothbrush
and while they were wet, nailed them flat to dry," she said. "A friend thought I
was nuts."
Occasionally, Nelson will buy items from an antique store, but most of
her purchases are at garage sales and thrift stores. She likes that most of her materials
are found and free. The thought that expensive equipment is needed to create art is not
only limiting, but contradicts creativity, she said.
"I like old things and the stories they tell," she said.
"Images from the ‘50s are so powerful because they convey that this is the right
way to be and the wrong way to be."
Every era has its opinions about how things are and you get to see how
ridiculous some of those opinions turn out to be, she said.
One of her most prized finds is a tiny porcelain doll less than two
inches tall she found in the dirt in Colorado. Research identified it as a "Bathing
Charlotte" doll of the 1800s.
The doll now rests on folded fabric against a rusty piece of metal with
many small holes drilled into it. Nelson remains curious about the reason for the holes,
but she knew not to put the porcelain next to the metal because of her "museum
knowledge."
Before starting her current job at the Department of Fish and Game,
Nelson worked two years at the Sheldon Museum. Previously, she worked for the University
of Colorado, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia and worked as a teacher, taking
live animals into schools. She’s also done archaeology and historic preservation
work.
Nelson holds a degree in English literature. She intended to study
anthropology because she was curious about what people were all about. But she became
disappointed with that field and felt she could learn more about people from literature.
She hitchhiked through parts of Alaska in 2004. She had always been
drawn to the state and had "a lot of drive to come here." A friend had purchased
a boat in Sitka and she spent time helping in the boatyard there before heading further
north.
"I had made an arbitrary goal to get beyond the Arctic
Circle," she said.
She got waylaid in Haines, awaiting mail. "While I was waiting for
it to show up, Haines made a good impression on me."
After a trip to Kotzebue, Point Hope, and Fairbanks, Nelson hitchhiked
back to Southeast. Returning to Colorado to pack her things, she got a job online with
Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association and was back within a month.
Ever since she was a child, Nelson collected oddities. She started
making assemblages in college. She called them shrines because she had been inspired by
the Catholic Santos tradition of New Mexican carvings of saints and other religious
figures. Joseph Cornell, the reclusive pioneer and most celebrated exponent of assemblage
was also an inspiration.
Religious themes are recurring in Nelson’s collages. One shows
Jesus playing pool. Another focuses on monks and monkeys.
"Religious icons are easy to play with because there is so much
symbolism," she said. "It’s easy to find power because the symbols are so
loaded."
Nelson’s mother is a graphic designer; her brother does
installation art and her grandfather was a painter. She believes creativity is important
because "it helps me access something that otherwise I wouldn’t."
"I wouldn’t call myself an artist," she said. "This
is just something I do. I think the term ‘artist’ is exclusive and that’s
not what it’s about for me. I think everyone is creative and labels like
‘artist’ don’t always encourage that.
"An aspect about art that is positive is when it inspires other
art or makes people feel differently."
