SANDY CHISM

SANDY CHISM was a Professor of Painting in the Newcomb Department of Art at Tulane University from 1996 - 2012.  She had a BFA from University of Kansas and an MFA from University of Arizona where she studied under famed painter Robert Colescott. Chism had six solo exhibitions with the gallery since 1999 and her work has been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. In July of 2000, a ten-year survey of her work was exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, entitled Sandy Chism: A Survey and included paintings as well as large scaled mixed-media installations. A catalog was published by the Contemporary Arts Center.  She has received grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the Pollock Krasner Foundation and been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute and the First International Colony of Artists in Debrecen, Hungary. Her paintings are featured in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection in Los Angeles, Emprise Bank in Wichita, Kansas, and Liquitex Paints, New Jersey. Chism's work has been reviewed in Art in America, New Orleans Art Review, The Times-Picayune, Gambit Weekly, Forum Magazine and The Journal Santa Fe. She is known for her works that combine the ethereal and the concrete. Similarly, her work often incorporates imagery to describe the flux between opposites in nature such as the cycles of life and death, the single versus the multiple, the micro and the macro, stillness and frenzy and chaos versus order.

Showman describes the artist’s body of work:

Regarding the Incidence of Purpose; this phrase inherently poses juxtaposition in concept. Similarly, Sandy Chism’s paintings are wrought with these sorts of contradictions: strength/weakness, conflict/accord, natural/man-made, real/imagined, hope/despair . . . This internal struggle can be seen in all of the various bodies of work that Chism produced over her 35 year career. Presented side by side in this exhibition, these works illustrate one seamless narrative of struggle, memory and nature. The paintings consistently air poetically towards the positive. Chism created haunting yet uplifting visions to profoundly inspire the viewer.

On January 2nd, 2013, Chism died from ovarian cancer at age 55. Her spirit lives on through her work. The Sandy Chism Estate is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.