Vignette: Amy Chase

"Complacency" by Amy Chase, 9x5.5x5in, Porcelain Cone

It was recently announced that Amy Chase is one of the recipients of the 2017 Al Smith Fellowship. The prestigious award, named in honor of former arts council chair and Kentucky journalist Al Smith, recognizes professional artists who have reached a high level of achievement in their careers. Since its beginning in 1983, the program has provided more than $2.5 million in funding to artists in the visual arts, literary arts, media arts, composing and choreography. In this round of funding, the fellowships were awarded to artists in the choreography and literary arts disciplines.

Examining a selection of Amy Chase’s work, one gets the sense that a community has been built. The forms are often abstract, but the relationships are clearly drawn, and some of the figures capture very human postures and attitudes. Those figures live on various platforms, so there is always a context of isolation or separation. Sometimes characters are drawn closer, and other times they are widening the distance between them. Often, and most irresistibly, two of them (for they almost always seem to come in pairs) are connected by a slender thread, pulling on their tether in a precarious fashion that creates a delicate tension.

"Compliance" by Amy Chase, 10x8x10in, Porcelain

“The surface consists of intricate patterns that are applied using precise silkscreened slip and glazing techniques. These choices in pattern address personal experiences, while at the same time evoking the viewer’s own memories.”

Chase’s artist’s statement makes it explicit that these patterns and textures are drawn from childhood memory, so there is an undeniable element of autobiography in this work. Yet the abstraction puts us at a distance; we are empathetic because the fundamental dynamic at play resonates within our own memory. The anonymity allows us to see ourselves in this nebulous but welcoming community.

"Enticement" by Amy Chase, 3x4x3in, Porcelain, Underglaze, Luster

Chase is currently the Design Coordinator for Louisville Visual Art in Louisville, Kentucky. Since residing in Louisville she has also been the Ceramics Instructor and Gallery Director at Spot 5 Art Studio and taught Ceramics at Jefferson Community and Technical College. From 2010–2012 she was the Adjunct Professor of Ceramics at Southeast Missouri State University located in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Amy Chase has been awarded the title of ‘Emerging Artist’ by American Style magazine, has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, Clay Times, 500 Ceramic Sculptures and 500 Ceramic Vases. Chase has also has an extensive exhibition record including venues such as: The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; The Clay Studio of Missoula in Missoula, Montana; The Washington Project for the Arts in Washington D.C.; Carbondale Clay Center in Carbondale, Colorado and Lincoln Arts in Lincoln, California.

Hometown: Murray, Kentucky
Education: BFA, Murray State University; MFA, Southern Illinois University
Website: http://amychaseceramics.com

"Inclination" by Amy Chase, 8x4x3in, Earthenware, Fibers

"Solidarity" by Amy Chase, 9x7x4in, Porcelain, Stoneware, Flocking, String, Luster

"Deciphering Fiction" by Amy Chase,  6x6x6in, Terracotta, Wood, String, Underglaze

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Vignette: Miranda Becht

"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order)" by Miranda Becht, 13x68x5in, tinted cast resin, flocking, lace, shelves (2016)

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“An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice… or terrify, all depending on how we conduct ourselves today.”– Jim Davis, from Garfield “Alone,” October 23, 1989

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Artist, Miranda Becht

Miranda Becht is having a moment. One of only three students in the University of Louisville’s MFA program at the Hite Institute of Art, she is taking her three degrees and wasting no time positioning herself to have a positive impact in the Louisville and Southern Indiana arts community. This fall, she will be teaching foundation art courses as an Adjunct Professor at Bellarmine University, and be working as a instructor in LVA’s Academy program for high school students. She also has recently been offered an adjunct position at IUS. At the same time, she will a part of the St. James Court Art Show Emerging Artist Program and has been commissioned to create public art through the Jeffersonville Public Art Committee, Powering Creativity.

Becht’s work has largely been installation based, exploring how memory and nostalgia form our idea of the past: “I have always seemed to long for some sort of metaphorical home located somewhere in the past. Homesickness is defined as the longing for a particular home, nostalgia as a longing for a lost time. Nostalgia may carry with it a yearning for home, but it is a home faraway in time rather than space. Nostalgia, oftentimes used to refer to something sweet and pleasant, is bittersweet. It is the longing for something that is unattainable.”

"I can feel your sweet decay." by Miranda Becht, 38x73x73in, wood, sticker paper, acrylic paint, cast resiin, linoleum, found objects (2017)

“As a society we tend to idealize our vision of the past, particularly our vision of home. Our idealized notion of home presents itself as a supposedly traditional form of domestic life, but bears little relation to the way people actually lived. This concept of a cozy home full of family love is an invented tradition. Inevitable in our linear understanding of time, we are constantly being uprooted from home and from the past. Because of the fallibility of our memory, the past and home as we remember them, no longer exist. I mourn for a home that perhaps I never had.”

"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order) (detail)" by Miranda Becht

Becht cites “The pleasant, nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. I would sit and play with an odd, white vessel, full of wonder about its use and its origin. This vessel seemed so big, so white and pure, so curious. My grandmother told me it was a bedpan, but it wasn’t until much later in life that I realized just what a bedpan was. My most cherished childhood memory is soiled with urine and feces. Lost innocence often takes the guise of idealized memories. My work is a vehicle for my fetishized, fragile memories. I am pressured to be the object of desire… this untrue illusion, the ideal.”

Becht’s work is filled with mid-20th century design layered with a cotton-candy colors (she seems especially fond of pink), which adroitly captures the unique collective memory of what is arguably the most idealized period in modern American history, the 1950’s. The artist reminds us that what seems too good to have been true, often is.

Age: 31
Education: MFA Sculpture, University of Louisville, 2017; BFA Ceramics, Indiana University Southeast, 2012; BA Printmaking, Indiana University Southeast Minor Psychology, 2012
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Miranda.indiana/

"I can feel your sweet decay (detail)" by Miranda Becht

"In Hiding" by Miranda Becht, 119x64x24in, wood, cast resin, acrylic paint, shag carpet, embroidery floss, light fixture (2017)

"Underside" by Miranda Becht, 96x96x66in, wood, screenprint, cast resin, rug, embroidery floss (2016)

"What’s a dream and what is real? (Entropy)" by Miranda Becht, 84x54x6in, wood, cast resin, hydrocal, embroidery floss, lace (2016)

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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Vignette: Patrick Donley

Donley in his studio working.

As a painter, Patrick Donley became known earlier in his career for distinctive acrylic paintings; compositions of spherical objects applied with an insistent mark-making technique. Then, for several years he worked with found objects, first in 3-D wall-hanging constructions of freewheeling spatial complexity, and then in The Memento Series, which incorporated old photographs into intimate collages that evoked communal memories of the past.

More recently, Donley has embarked on, “…a path of rediscovery,” returning to the sphere, and if, at first glance, the paintings look the same, and most easily connote astronomical perspectives on heavenly bodies, there is indeed the same concern for relationships in space, but have the years of focus on 3-D informed the artist’s mark making, so that we feel a greater plasticity in the modeling of form - a greater freedom now in the application of medium? Whatever we imagine, Donley finds a curious tension in the work: There is something surreal happening that is at once perplexing while at the same time pleasing.”

"Untitled #2" by Patrick Donley, 36x36in, mixed media on canvas

"I draw with a brush. I draw with graphite. I draw with charcoal. I stain, and I glaze. Collage is worked into the surface, and I draw over that. I render worlds, and I proffer particles. Accident belies intention. Color justifies the means. I enjoy what I do, and I offer it up to you."

A long-time member, now co-owner of Zephyr Gallery, Patrick Donley has been making art since the early 80’s in one form or another.  His work can be found in collections from New York to Seattle, including Paul Allen, founder of the EMP Museum. Locally, his paintings and sculptures are located in numerous corporate and private collections.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Age: 54
Education: BA in Painting, Davidson College in Painting; MFA in Painting and Drawing, Northwestern University
Website: http://patrickdonley.wix.com/donleyart

A recent photo of Donley's studio.

"Untitled #1" by Patrick Donley, 25x31in, mixed media on canvas

"Untitled #3" by Patrick Donley, 36x38in, mixed media on canvas

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2016 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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