Louisa Chase, 1988-1989

Louisa Chase
Peter Pettengill, printer
1988-1989

Workshop: March 7-11, 1988

Louisa Chase received a BFA from Syracuse University and a MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her works have been featured in gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the world. Her work was also included at the American Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale. That same year, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston organized a traveling exhibition of her work. In 1997, the Madison Art Center showed a retrospective of her prints, Louisa Chase: Prints, 1981-1996. She has been a featured artist at the University of Wisconsin Tandem Press and at the Tamarind Press, and her work is included in the collections of many major museums.

Chase used her time at Smith to deepen her involvement with new imagery in her prints. Although she had done some etching previously, she favored direct methods of printmaking, like woodcut and drypoint, in which the artist carves into the block or plate. While her earlier works featured loosely drawn but recognizable figures, Chase eschewed recognizable imagery in her prints at Smith, focusing completely on the expressive possibilities of tone and mark-making.

Chase arrived at the workshop with several books for inspiration, including one on the early work of the De Stijl painter Piet Mondrian. This may have been the source of the bright squares of color, printed in relief from pieces of mat board, which anchor the swirling network of etched lines and brushy passages of spitbite aquatint that make up the background of her prints.

Louisa Chase. American, 1951 –