The Artists: Writing with Fire

Virginia native Cha Cha Hertz, as she sees it, went to college on roller skates. She stole them from a roller rink years back and fit them with some skateboard wheels. Her story being the last covered in this series is almost kismet as she is a master of several artistic trades: photography to calligraphy to papermaking to painting to graphic design. At this current juncture in her artistic life, she is a metal worker who loves the art and the material. However, she didn’t always love it, and there’s a chance she might love a completely different form of art in the future. Cha Cha’s way is to forever be a student of art and life. By doing so, she gets to choose what is lesson and what is recess.

Cha Cha, the metal worker

“I like the physicalness of moving,” Cha Cha says. “That’s what draws me to metal work is the physicality. And, the fact that steel, bronze, aluminum — they’re all so permanent. They could last for hundreds of years or thousands. I like the permanence of them.”

This, of course, comes with a trade-off. Working metal can be grueling on the body, but when Cha Cha falls in love with something, she doesn’t take half-steps.“Working with metal, you need to wear safety gear,” Cha Cha explains. “I wear steel-toed boots, leather apron, gloves — it feels like I’m suiting up for skiing. I have a face mask and mask that filters particulates, mask for when I’m spray painting, eye protection, ear protection. The metal has toxic stuff so when I’m playing with steel, for example, as opposed to bronze which uses chemical patinas, then I would spray paint and build, much like canvas.”

“It beats the crap out of me,” she continues. “The older I get, the harder it is. Using power tools for long periods of time, a lot of time you get your fingers, your hands will go almost numb. And it can cause nerve damage. The older you get — you don’t really see a lot of old blacksmiths. And there’s not many women doing it. The women have to work smarter. When I went to my very first blacksmithing conference, I met this woman who was quite impressive, and I asked her, ‘How do women do it?’ And she said, ‘We have to work smarter than the men.’ Gravity and leverage is your friend. Power hammers and forges and plasma cutters — you have every possibility open to you. I go in for like five to sometimes ten hours, and I just go until my eyes hurt.”

A different kind of journey

In this cover series, many have started in other professions and carried over into art. Cha Cha, however, wanted to be an artist from the jump: “I was always the class artist,” she remembers. “I was a military brat; art was a self-soothing thing for me. I would copy and draw and sort of document where I was. In high school, I won state, local, and national honors. I started getting my picture in the paper, and I started identifying as an artist because people would see my picture in the paper and say, ‘She’s an artist.’ I went to college on roller skates, and I graduated on roller skates. I would roller skate to all of my classes, and I did all of my photo documentation on roller skates.”

Cha Cha didn’t have any of the struggle jobs that are typical to most artist stories. No waitressing or night jobs working in power plants. Which isn’t to say that she didn’t have her own kind of struggle. On her first interview for a photojournalism gig, for example, Cha Cha told the story of how “a big fat male chauvinist pig took a hit of his cigar, blew smoke in my face, and said, ‘Honey, you’re not worth my time.’” Cha Cha recalls, “‘You’re just going to run off and get pregnant on me. I want a man who’s married and has children.’ So, I moved to Colorado because one of my friends said ‘Come to Boulder. I have a job and a place for you to live.’ I started freelancing immediately. I’ve never had a real job. I did freelance calligraphy, graphic work.”

The encounter marks a win for those who believe in the phrase, “rejection is protection,” a flashpoint through and through. If Cha Cha had been awarded the job, she would have found herself on the corporate ladder, trying to move up instead of out.  However, as a result of rejection, she came to Colorado where she was given a path to follow and a name she still claims to this day.

Cha Cha Bowties

Surprisingly, Cha Cha’s name isn’t inspired by the music of famed Cuban musical artist Tito Puente. Further, she barely knows the steps to the dance: “I know just enough to get out of the conversation doing the 1-2-3,” she says. “I had a therapy dog that I used to take to hospitals and nursing homes, and I taught him how to do the Cha-Cha with me. He would stand on his hind legs, go backwards and forwards, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.”

Instead, her paper-made “Cha Cha” bowties grew in infamy in the mid-1980s. Warhol-style pop art was slipping into the mainstream, and Cha Cha, at that time, was not in love with metal work. Instead, she was in love with paper sculpture. She started making paper appetizers at parties that people would then pin to their outfits. Bow ties were the next evolution as they were a popular fashion accessory at that time, but so was “lampooning.” An element of pop art was calling attention to the popularity of something and teasing at the fact that they were trendy — like MAD Magazine or “Weird Al” Yankovic . Normal bow ties, while appearing boxy and monotone, also have a softness of fabric to balance the look; they’re meant to be a part of the whole ensemble. The paper bow ties, however, call attention to themselves by emphasizing the boxiness to the look and sporting an off-the-wall coloring or pattern.

They became so popular, the brand name of the bow ties, Cha Cha, became a moniker she’s claimed ever since. People started referring to her as “Cha Cha” and not her given name. In a way, her art named her. “Cha Cha fit me,” she says of the name. “I have an effusive nature, and I felt like Cha Cha fit me as opposed to the other name because I don’t feel I am that name. It just sort of fit between the name and the bowties. People started calling me Cha Cha. Most people totally embrace it. Children love saying Cha Cha.”

Discomfort needed to create art

A defining moment came when she first interviewed for the Boulder Arts & Crafts Gallery, an organization of which she was a member for 35 years. She didn’t make the best first impression though, “When I went in for my first interview, I had to interview in front of 75 artists, and it was very intimidating.” She says the interview was for papermaking and she didn’t make it the first time, so she came back with something else, and would do it again and again until she made it in. Inevitably, it was her tenacity that won them over. The situation, like many others in Cha Cha’s life, had an element of discomfort, which is something that she has learned to thrive off of. “When it comes to making art,” says Cha Cha, “you should always be doing things that make you uncomfortable and embrace it because that’s what makes you grow. If you’re uncomfortable, you’ve got to find a way to get out of that. And, part of that is: I like the problem solving of making art.”

In addition to discomfort being a key element to creating her art, Cha Cha also sees the human elements that are needed to make art special as the very reason artists don’t need to fear artificial intelligence. AI is incapable of making the distinction of comfort and discomfort. The technology serves immediacy, not the complexity of the human condition. “I don’t think that AI will ever take the place of artists,” Cha Cha explains. “I think it is a tool. It depends on how you use it and also how you relate to it. People are intimidated by it because it is fast and immediate, where a lot of artwork is a process that is not fast and immediate, and you have to keep working on it to get the effect that you need. I think it will replace some things, but you know, nothing is permanent. Everything changes, and if you see yourself saying, ‘Well, I remember,’ then you sound like an old fart. You got to embrace change because that’s the only constant in the world. If you don’t, you’re screwed.”

How life is art

For Cha Cha, everything she does feeds her art. It’s all connected.  She’s big into kayaking, for instance, and much of the art in her studio is inspired by the nature she sees, like the painted sticks that reminded her of snakes. The fantasy birds she makes often start with birds she’s seen while she’s afloat on the water. Further, whenever she learns a new medium, she adds that to her toolkit. As someone who is fond of culinary arts, Cha Cha likens mixing media to making a good stew. “Each medium is a different spice,” she says. “How do you explain cinnamon next to chili powder? It’s like making a stew. You try different flavors, and it all comes together in a really good stew. It’s the same with art. When you come up with a concept, and you’ve been doing art for long enough, you can draw from all those different concepts, and you can see it in your mind’s eye. And, oftentimes, I have no idea what I’m doing, and it stops talking to me. And I have to walk away, but it all eventually comes together. With abstract pieces, sometimes you’ve just got to do something silly like turn something upside down.”

Cha Cha’s fluid approach to completing her work rings appropriate. Never in the conversation did she ever mention an admiration for strictness of rules and often refers to what she does as “play” as opposed to “work.” And, even though she is in love with metal, she feels glass is going to be her next calling.

Much like choosing her name and going to college on roller skates, she makes her own rules. In other words, she embodies the art of living. As ethics professor and philosopher Pedro Tabensky puts it:

“Lives, like paintings, are composed. Lives are not well lived when they are lived, as it were, by following a given manual. Instead, skills guide our paths through a penumbra of uncertainty that always threatens to upset whatever provisional balance we might have achieved thus far. We cannot fully know in advance what sorts of surprises are looming behind the veils of darkness, but an expert in the art of living will best be equipped to integrate unforeseeable circumstances into the overall composition of her life.”