She Sells Seashells: Michele Mirisola 08F Mixes Media and Inspiration in Her Home Goods

She reimagines traditional craft invoking Baroque and Rococo styles with the use of seashells and contemporary materials such as epoxy clay, and recently created her first line of furniture under her own name. We asked Michele to talk about her time at Hampshire and how it started her on the long, nonlinear path to becoming a successful artist and business owner.

What originally attracted you to Hampshire?

My college counselor told me about Colleges That Change Lives and she thought Hampshire would be a good fit for me. I was artistic and had crazy colorful hair, but beyond that I wanted to learn without just trying to achieve a high test score. I read the courses offered and so much of it sounded interesting to me. All I knew was that I didn’t know enough and I was excited by all of the directions Hampshire offered. I was also ready for a break from New York City, where I grew up. I had never spent time in the woods or on a farm. My dad, however, insists that we chose Hampshire because it had the best baked goods during the campus tour.

What did you study? Did you come in knowing what you wanted to do? Did your course of study change along the way?

Studio art was a constant every semester and I got deeply invested in my painting classes. I always took literature classes and I studied fiction writing; it ended up being as important to me as painting. Having two different paths of study felt enriching. I also took the class Women’s History of Health, which had a lab element to it. It was totally outside the creative realms I was pursuing, but it stayed with me to this day and definitely influenced me to become a doula later in life.

What did you do for your Div III?

My Div III had two parts — a group of oil paintings of chairs and a collection of short stories about love and family. It was called “Remains: A Collection of Short Stories, Letters, and Paintings.” Legally, you have to use a colon in your Div III title.

I’m not sure if the two projects really fit together or I just wanted to do everything. I took apart chairs, painted on them, and put them back together. I then made portraitlike paintings of the chairs. I still like this act of making the thing, remaking the thing, and then making a painting of it. In my gallery show, the viewer could sit in some of the real chairs and read from boxes of letters I had written between the characters of my short stories. Both projects had an imaginary world that I brought into the gallery and made tangible.

I learned how to gauge success beyond good grades and accolades at Hampshire. I was taught to take my education into my own hands, and this is how I approach my career. 

How has your Hampshire experience impacted your life and work?

The friendships I made at Hampshire are still some of my closest relationships today. My committee member Matt Phillips 97F [former visiting professor of art and Hampshire alum] gave me my first glimpse of what it could look like to be a working artist, both with his own career of teaching and exhibiting his paintings, but also in one of the classes he taught where he brought us to New York City and into the studios of such amazing artists as Cecily Brown and Dana Schutz. It was my first example of a nontraditional career path.  

I learned how to gauge success beyond good grades and accolades at Hampshire. I was taught to take my education into my own hands, and this is how I approach my career. I learned to be scrappy, to make a gallery space in my studio before I got a real show, and to find shops that might carry my tableware and pitch my work to them. I developed the ability to be self-motivated, which is the most helpful skill to running my own business today.

How did you come to be a working artist? What did your journey look like?

After college and even through the first few years of Chell Fish, I always had a few jobs. I worked in small galleries, as a hostess, building boxes for a popcorn company, as a personal assistant, as a doula, in a jewelry production studio, at sample sales, as a nanny, and in a children’s bookstore. I took all the time I could get covered under my parents’ health insurance. I had a lot of roommates, or I lived at home with my parents, which I’m so lucky to have had as an option.

I always had a studio space and I prioritized that time even when I wasn’t sure what I was painting or why. I don’t subscribe to the belief that you need to make art every day, but I think you should give yourself the chance and keep working at it to see what happens. It was not always a linear path. Sometimes I had gallery shows and art residencies, and afterward I didn’t. Even today, I’ll take a good gig that comes my way.

How did you break through with Chell Fish?

Chell Fish started during the pandemic. I was building objects to make still life paintings of them, like the chairs in my Div III! I wanted to make a plate of oyster shells to hold raspberries, and so I did. The plate felt more interesting than the painting, though I still cherish that little gouache. I shared the plate on Instagram, got some traction, and started to make more. It was a moment when the app was really rewarding crafts and small businesses. I also had this huge chunk of time with nothing to do but build plates!

Over the past six years, Chell Fish has grown, but I still make everything by hand in my Brooklyn studio. This past year I made my first collection of furniture, which I’m so excited about.