ANTHONY CHASE: Acts of Presence

From The Findery

Words by Iris Cushing, Photography by Rachel Watson

Anthony Chase’s work hovers in an elusive yet deeply satisfying aesthetic zone between painting and object. Chase, who was born in South Africa, spent decades in New York City before settling in East Meredith with his wife, Nini Ordoubadi, owner of Tay Tea in Delhi. He works primarily with lime plaster, powder pigments and marble dust. In a dialogue between surface, color, shape and texture, Chase trowels lime plaster to create pieces that are part image, part sculpture. A visit to Chase’s studio (housed in a lovingly refurbished dairy barn on a quiet country road) yields a fascinating glimpse into an artist’s love affair with material and process.

Chase crafts custom pigmented plaster interiors as an extension of his art and is highly sought after for his inimitably beautiful work in both commercial and private spaces. But in the space of his studio, Chase’s singular approach to his material emerges: intimate, attentive, and layered with memory and personal history. We walked through some elements of his practice on a recent studio visit. With the gorgeous July sun streaming through the open door, cups of coffee in hand, Chase recounted how he made his piece Cobblestone. He began by laying down a grid of colored squares with scratch coat plaster in tonally similar shades— what he calls “a grid with a rhythm.” He textured this surface with brooms and combs, then added another layer of thinner plaster that, once dry, he went into with sandpaper and scrapers, creating “places where the eye can rest.” Cobblestone evokes the feeling of an old town square with cobbled streets, worn in places by centuries of foot traffic. Each “stone” has its own character, is an object-image unto itself; taken as a whole, the effect is atmospheric.