The work of artist and TTU MFA Candidate James Chase explores ideas of collection, repetition, and memory. Discarded wooden slats and blocks are collected and repurposed to form the structural and visual elements of Chase’s work. Trained in printmaking, Chase creates traditional prints but has also developed an approach to printmaking in which older prints are cut up and reassembled to form a new composite image against the background of the found objects. For Chase, the collection of found objects is a means of mentally mapping out time and place. The layering, stacking, and painting of materials references the accumulation of memories (and the objects that represent them) and the ways in which memories can be altered, replaced, or forgotten over time. The use of bright colors and abstract geometric forms on found objects results in an image that is familiar but unrecognizable – a reflection of our ability as human beings to relate and remember as well as our inability to ever fully relive a memory or experience reality from another’s perspective.
James Chase is currently an MFA candidate in Printmaking and Graduate Instructor of Printmaking at Texas Tech University. Chase earned a BFA in interdisciplinary printmaking and photography at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. Chase has exhibited throughout the U.S. and is the recipient of multiple fellowships and awards including the Texas Tech University Graduate Scholarship (2011-2014) and the Helen DeVitt Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award (2014).
The Landmark Arts Studio Gallery is located on the first floor of the Texas Tech School of Art building, on the Texas Tech campus near 18th Street and Flint Ave (3072 18th St.). Hours are Monday through Friday, 8am - 5pm, Saturday, 10am - 5pm, and Sunday, noon – 4pm. On Mondays through Fridays, paid parking is available on the fourth floor of the Flint Avenue Parking Facility. Parking is free on weekends. Gallery admission is free.
The exhibitions, speakers and related programs at Landmark Arts and the Texas Tech University School of Art are made possible in part by generous grants from the Helen Jones Foundation and The CH Foundation. Additional support comes from cultural activities fees administered through the Texas Tech College of Visual & Performing Arts.
landmarkarts.org
