West Gallery | November 20th — January 10th | Opening Reception: November 20th from 5:30pm — 8:30pm
Artist Bio
Chadwick Tolley teaches Printmaking and Drawing at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia. His artist C.V. includes 12 Solo exhibitions, the most notable locations include Washington D.C., Salt Lake City, UT, and Nashville, TN. He has exhibited widely across the United States and has won various awards for his work including a Purchase Award in the Atlanta Print Biennial, a Purchase Prize in
the “Ink and Clay” exhibit in Pomona, CA, the C.G. Metals Purchase Prize from the Boston Print Biennial and a Best in Show award from the Oso Bay North American Printmaking Exhibition. His work is included in over 15 public collections in the United States and the Guandong Museum of Art in China and the Jordanian National Gallery of Art in Amman, Jordan. He is represented by Chauvet Gallery in Nashville, TN, and Horse and Hero in Asheville, NC.
Artist Statement
The process of making work is equal to, or more important than the outcome. Each piece begins as an idea or desire to explore one of the many technical aspects of printmaking. I start by collecting images, sketches, and textures and use these to begin creating prints, drawings, or collages. As I develop the image, I try to avoid planning too far ahead by intuitively responding to each step of the process. I deliberately leave visual evidence of deletions, corrections, or accumulation of marks as a form of documenting the process.
My recent work explores new ways of combining digital drawing and composing with traditional processes. My work follows a stream-of-consciousness mode of working and it is through this process that I
begin to discover narratives that are often based on personal experience or point of view. It is through introspection and visual exploration that I hope to develop a better understanding of themes related to shared human experience.
Hurrican Helene lifted the roof off my studio and damaged my screen printing equipment and forced me to think about how I could make images from simple materials and in a smaller space. Most of the work in the gallery are paper cut outs I completed after Helene. 9 months after Helene, I was able to transfer the paper cut outs to a screen and screen print them. Some of the art is a return to how I traditionally work and some of it pulled from sketchbooks.