DELHI — Materiality is a buzzword in contemporary art circles or to use another phrase, “the medium is the message,” and mediums do come to the fore in the works of Kelli Cain, and Anthony Chase. These two artists currently make up the two person show “One Dreams Up Another” at Bushel, the airy and welcoming art and performance collective in Delhi, New York. These artists’ compelling works, created using plaster, for Chase, and clay for Cain evoke singularity and meaning through the artists’ choice of substances.
Anthony Chase, trained in theater, and film, also spent 25 years as a master craftsman, specializing in high-end Venetian plastering for residential interiors. Chase’s work and travel took him to the world’s ancient cities—where a cobblestone walkway, a centuries old wall in disrepair, or stones lying beneath covered edifices, formed images in his mind which never left him. Several years ago, as Chase pondered a new direction, his friends urged him to transfer his tradesman skills to fine art. He did so, and the results are abstract sculptural paintings filtered through his memories. There is not a paintbrush in sight. His compositions, colors, and materials such as the plaster, marble chips and marble dust, graphite, webbing, and fabric are manipulated by workman’s tools such as trowels, chisels, scrapers, and screwdrivers, the last to etch in the symbols which resonate in Chase’s life. The results are quiet, compelling and “contemplative” abstract paintings.
His work Saraban is first appreciated as an elegant abstract, and then upon closer viewing one perceives it as a thousand year old cobblestone walkway viewed from high above. Chase’s palette most often relies on the colors of warmer climates: terra cottas, truffles, pinks with highly saturated hues for punctuation. In Saraban, Chase first applied Venetian plaster as a textured base, building up some areas into mounds, then smoothing out the surface, adjusting pigment and marble dust throughout the process, to reveal glistening spots of color. This process of building and scraping reveals the understories—the “palimpsests” over time, the histories of man’s handiwork. The final touches, Chase’s barely discernible objects and figures-are then etched in.
Another standout, very different from the foregoing, is Purge, a high gloss, highly textured almost geometrically arranged black painting achieved by building up the desired texture, and treating it with gunmetal polish for a high sheen. Chase leaves a center image of silver. Some of Chase’s paintings are inspired by night sailing, during which he stares into the darkened sky with only the moon as illumination.
Chase comes from a family of professionals, doctors, lawyers and the like. “I think I was the black sheep of the family, because I could never settle down,” he says. But his wanderings are proving to be to his advantage.
The impressive works of ceramicist and sculptor, Kelli Cain range from detailed representations of sea creatures, to purely abstract vessels and objects. She shares with Chase a love for geological materials which evoke hidden worlds, but her hidden world sometimes lies under the sea. “I’m obsessed with plankton,” she says, “The first 20 feet under the sea are fascinating. Also, I believe that if you go deep enough into the sea, you’ll get to outer space.” Her piece Jennies Two is one of the few wheel-thrown pieces in the show. It evokes not only a sea creature, but a space station, One object in her series Upwelling again recalls a sea creature, this time fossilized. In several other pieces in the Upwelling series, the hand-sculpted pieces resemble ceremonial vessels used in ancient times. The clean white Upwelling 10 also draws on her underwater leanings—the glaze is made of makes cuttlefish bone, silver ash and lithium. Upwelling 12, a vessel with a glazed background and eye like abstractions coating the entirety of the piece is made from paint stains and the dregs of a rusty farm cistern. For many vessels in the series, Cain states, “the mouths of the vessels connect the inner and the outside world.”
“I start by drawing,” she says. “Usually I think of animals and bone,” and I feel that is the starting point for the organic nature of these pieces. The organic structure of the pieces give them life, and make them seem to breathe.”
There might be a reason for that. Like Chase, Cain also came from film, as well as animation and music production. She then started earning her living as a production ceramicist, making ceramics on a large scale, before embarking on her solo pursuit. But her training as a filmmaker is still with her. “I view these pieces as one frame in a film, “she says. “They are like stills taken from a scene captured and frozen.”
Originally from New Jersey, Cain lives in Delhi where she and her husband raise peonies, and also manage Luck Dragon, their art supply store and workshop next to Bushel on Delhi’s Main Street.
More of Cain and Chase’s work will be shown at Half Hidden, the Bushel extension, upstairs from the main gallery on just two days --August 22 and August 30 from 11-2. One Dreams Up Another, in Bushel’s main gallery runs through September 13 during regular hours.
If you would like more information about One Dreams Up Another, Bushel’s opening times and other events, check out bushelcollective.org.
