Artist Snapshot: Chance Muehleck
Origin Story: My mother was an artist who painted neckties to make ends meet, and my father hustled the stock market by day and the pool hall by night. They had one child and gave him a funny name for reasons they could never agree about. I was raised in the Bay Area on a steady diet of Creature Features and frozen pot pies. I also had access to my mother’s library and record collection, which might explain why I swing so wildly between cultural poles. We had a cat named Moony who was like a sister to me. But not in a creepy way.
Pipeline Accolades: Script Pipeline TV Writing Finalist (Killing It)
Accolades: Finalist, Warner Bros. TV Writers Workshop; Third Place, CineStory Foundation Fellowship; Semifinalist, AFF Screenplay Competition (Madrigal); Winner, John Golden Award for Excellence in Playwriting; Nominee, Best Mirco-Short, FilmQuest (Below)
On Being an Artist: Being an artist in the U.S. means never having to say you’re sorry but always feeling guilty anyway. If you dare to call yourself an artist (as opposed to a craftsperson, or an entrepreneur, or a “content creator”), you’ll likely get looks of bafflement and suspicion. That’s been my experience, anyway.
I make things I’d want to watch, read, or listen to. At the same time, I try to maintain an awareness of how art can operate in the world. Oscar Wilde said that all art is “quite useless.” What he meant was that art doesn’t have to fulfill a utilitarian purpose to achieve its goals. It can be beautiful for beauty’s sake—which, as a point of view, strikes me as inherently political.
It’s a can of worms that I open regularly. I am fun at parties.
Fueled by: Uncertainty. And a rotating menu of beverages.
Currently: I’ve been commissioned to write a play for an outdoor venue in New York. My deadline has moved, however, because my computer crashed and I lost the draft I was working on. So, currently, I function as a cautionary tale.
I’m also developing my audio drama, Dreamland, for television.
Someday: Just your average, everyday mogul with a weird genre habit and a minimally flagged Wikipedia page.
*Feature Photo: Chance Muehleck / photo by Brian Wengrofsky
