FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Conceptual artist Mel Chin will be bringing his blend of environmental commitment and transformational art and alchemy to the University of Arkansas in the spring, when from Jan. 12 through Feb. 9 he will teach an intensive one-month course in the Fulbright College department of art under the sponsorship of the McIlroy Family Visiting Professorship in the Performing and Visual Arts.

Links to sites related to Mel Chin’s artwork: Fundred Art 21 Eco Art Blog You Tube video

Chin believes that creativity and environmental awareness can transform politics, people and the places where they live. He conceived the FUNDRED DOLLAR BILL project as a way for millions of students and professional artists across the country to create their own works of art: hundred dollar bills. By the end of 2009, he wants to collect 7,000 pounds of these bills and then ask that they be used to support an environmentally friendly rebuilding of New Orleans.

Chin is featured on the PBS series Art:21-Art in the Twenty-First Century, the only television series to focus on contemporary visual artists in the United States.

He will offer a public lecture on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Center. A reception will follow.

Lynn Jacobs, chair of the art department, said that while Chin is on campus, both undergraduate and graduate students in painting, sculpture and other media will have a chance to work on a project that reflects Chin’s strong belief in social responsibility and cultural awareness.

“The nature of the project will be what emerges out of this group. The idea will be to develop a concept, create a piece — in some art form or other — and then document the experience of creating this work of art. Our students will have the benefit of being exposed to one of the leading contemporary artists in the country,” Jacobs said.

When he first visited New Orleans after the flooding, Chin said he felt “flooded” by the tragedy before him. But he eventually became detached enough, and angry enough, to return again, determined to help.

“The disaster was in the soil before the disaster,” he said.

He injects his art into unlikely places: entire neighborhoods, school classes, science and parades.

In a 2004 project with students at East Tennessee State University, he did not build a Weapon of Mass Destruction: he built a Warehouse of Mass Distribution. The WMD, a 71-foot-long, single-wide mobile home in the shape of a Peacekeeper MX nuclear missile, was finished with vinyl siding, aluminum windows and decorative light fixtures on the outside. After appearing in a parade, it was “decommissioned.”

Chin also promotes “works of art” that have the ultimate effect of benefiting science or rejuvenating the economies of inner-city neighborhoods. In Revival Field, Chin worked with scientists to create sculpted gardens of hyperaccumulators — plants that can draw heavy metals from contaminated areas — in some of the most polluted sites in the world.

Chin received a bachelor’s degree from Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn., in 1975, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 and 1990. He lives in North Carolina.

He will be the second artist to visit campus as a McIlroy Visiting Professor. The professorship was established by Hayden McIlroy Jr. and Mary Joe McIlroy of Dallas to enrich the arts for the university and the community.