Chris Kallmyer: Music to Meditate, Music to Celebrate... a Life

When we saw Chris's unique artworks—gigantic wind chimes and doorbells made from salvaged wood and metal—through Blunk Space's show, their primitive, hand-hewn aesthetic, yet well-defined sculptural form, immediately caught our attention. Later, we found out that the artist has a musical background. When we learned he was nearby, we were already heading to his newly settled studio at the Silver Penny Farm in the gentle hills of Petaluma, Sonoma County, CA.

 

Chris Kallmyer trained as a musician, completed his MFA at CalArts, and was influenced by world music, including the Japanese environmental ambient genre and other experimental music. For a decade, he orchestrated experimental installations and performances with notable organizations like Walt Disney Concert Hall and SFMOMA.

The surge of the pandemic affected his life and his view of his career. In his studio, where the boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces blurs due to California's mild weather, the artist explains: 'My work has always been about interacting with people, whether it was a kinetic installation in the lobby of a concert hall or an intimate performance in a museum.' Chris's work invites people to pause and notice the subtle differences in each moment. Though it might look simple, it’s the result of precision and intelligence, like any other great minimalist design. That includes the tone of the sound.

'If the past was more about focusing on the public, the pandemic experience changed my interest to something deeper—to interact more individually.' That is how he started to make bespoke home furniture.

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We’re drawn to the primitive character in your work. For an audience encountering your work for the first time, which piece would you introduce as representing your world, essentially?

I've been making these large wind chimes the last few years. They are tall and architectural—made from local old-growth redwood and copper chimes. I'm a self-taught woodworker, so much of the carving and shaping happens intuitively—and in collaboration with the wood. If the fibers want to break this way or that, I follow them—and the works can take on their own personality.

If we're talking about the forms of these pieces, you can find my interests in Japanese aesthetics or my connection to Appalachian craft through my great-grandfather, who was a woodturner himself. Last year, I was in Ireland on a residency in Askeaton, Co. Limerick, and found a great kinship with Seanie Barron, the stick maker. His easy-breezy attitude and social/sculptural practice with something so utilitarian really lit me up. He has influenced the work a great deal since we met in Ireland. Here in California, I can freely mix and remix the forms until they become their own.

In the end, I'm interested in what someone makes of the work—and the role it plays in their life. The sculptural work is a tool for this kind of attention and can help spark a kind of presence in anyone who encounters it.

 

We are curious how your focus on music has evolved into the idea of making "things."

That's a nice question – it's been a slow evolution. Over the last 15 years, I've moved from a life as a multi-instrumentalist to someone who works primarily in art and design. I think it's important to consider that sound is hard to untangle from the other senses. And that musicians have always been about a look—a vibe—an aura—as much as they are about the sound itself. Think of Lou Reed or Billie Eilish!

So, when I started creating experimental music in specific architectural spaces—like my spatial installations in 2015 at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation—my practice began to incorporate sculptural and social materials like costumes, objects, and temporary structures. Now my studio is part woodshop and part metal shop; an old Hammond organ sits not far from my chisels. Through this kind of hybrid studio, I can position the musician in the construction of architectural space and public art—and I find this in-between space very interesting.

Where do you find your greatest inspiration?

 

I'm inspired by ideas that meander and cut across cultures. I'm thinking of Leonard Koren's book Undesigning the Bath, which was recently re-released by Blunk Space and Charles de Lisle. Another example is Manchán Magan's 32 Words for Field, which speculates on the multi-dimensional qualities of the Irish language. This book—and Manchán's recent writings—explores Ireland's profound resonances with Indian culture.

Outside of books, I'm inspired by the land here. We moved a year ago from Northeast LA to live closer to some of my family here in Sonoma. It's been grounding to live in a place where I've been coming for so long—where we can pull oysters from the bay and let the kids run around in the fields of the farm where I have my studio. It's a landscape that gives back and recharges my batteries—by grounding parts of my personal life, it has allowed me to take greater risks in the studio with more vulnerable work.

What are you into these days?

At home, I'm into these Hiroshi Yoshimura reissues from Temporal Drift. The whole Kankyō Ongaku movement of 1980s Japan is a real inspiration for their attention to environment and space. In the studio, I'm digging into bronze age agrarian/monastic bells and am working on a new method to make them here in California. This project was born from a partnership with the Art and Ag Departments at Texas A&M, where I'm in residence for the year.

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From Chris, we also learned the beautiful origin story behind the term Furniture Music, which he uses as a title for his recent sounding home good works and research-based projects. The phrase was originally coined by French composer Erik Satie, who once envisioned music that would furnish homes with atmosphere and aura.

With his contemporary reimagining, Chris Kallmyer is creating one-of-a-kind objects that generate warm tones, fostering a transcendent interaction between the individual and their surrounding environment, allowing each moment to resonate with meaning. Chris Kallmyer’s works are available by Commune Design.

 

- Written and Photographed by The JODE Team | Featured Artworks © Chris Kallmyer Studio