The practice of printmaking has Jonathan Lyndon Chase (MFA ’16) thinking about his work in new and different ways. Chase usually focuses on large-scale paintings and drawings to explore issues of race, gender, and sexuality. His work has been collected by PAFA, the Walker Art Center, and Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, among other collectors.

But an opportunity from the Brodsky Center at PAFA gave Chase the chance to tread new ground.

“Printmaking can be alchemy or magical, it is really amazing,” said Chase, the first Artist-in-Residence at the Brodsky Center since the center moved to PAFA in 2018.

The primary mission of the Brodsky Center is to enable artists to create new work in paper and print. The longstanding Artist-In-Residence program at the Center enables artists to create new work in paper and work with the center’s master printers and papermakers.

Editions produced by the Brodsky Center are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, and other international institutions as well as many private collections.

In collaboration with Master Printer, Peter Haarz '08, Chase created an edition of 10 of Forehead Kiss. The edition is now available for sale.

The stone and plate lithograph on Somerset Satin white paper, digital print on a brown paper bag, and CDR with seven soundtracks is a continuation of Chase’s exploration of black, queer bodies and the decolonization of painting and artmaking, in general.

“My work is about the space and body relationships between queer, black and non-gender conforming bodies, a fluctuation between pleasure, joy, despair, and sorrow,” Chase said at the edition signing.

Since moving to PAFA, the Brodsky Center has built a new papermaking facility for artists and PAFA students. Upcoming Artists-in-Residence include Sharon Hayes and Didier William.

Hayes is currently in residence and working on an edition of five prints based on her 2014 work in video Fingernails on a Blackboard: Bella. The edition references American feminist and politician Bella Abzug and will become a part of an installation Hayes is developing for an upcoming solo exhibition at the Museet Museum in Sweden.

For Chase, it’s been an honor to be the inaugural artist in residence at the Brodsky Center’s new home.

“It’s really a privilege to be given a chance to talk about my work and have this platform,” Chase said. “Being a part of the Brodsky Center means being a part of the canon and history. Many of the artists who have worked at the Brodsky Center have been integral in challenging our notions of what it means to be an artist.”