Artist's Statement:
My approach to both painting and sculpture is to construct something. The chair sculptures are built of pieces of wood, glued together, then painted. The earlier paintings are visually built of faux surfaces and architectural spaces. The more recent paintings bring together my fascination with both chairs and surfaces. Hundreds of tiny multicolored chairs painted onto a black ground create an overall texture like galaxies in the night sky.
I have always been interested in architecture, and by extension, furniture.
The chair sculptures play off of our myriad human connections to real chairs:
our own favorite chair; a dining chair, the boss's chair, the king's throne, a
dental chair, a child's chair. We look at a chair and make judgments: too
hard, too soft, too high, too low, too wobbly, too elegant, too big, too small,
just right. The chair sculptures take on an anthropomorphic quality. With
personalities of their own they stand alone or interact in small groups; warmly
dysfunctional, sometimes funny.
Selected Collections:
- Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Greater Philadelphia, PA
- CIT, Livingston, NJ
- DuPont Corporation, Wilmington, DE
- Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ
- International Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
- Merck, Sharp and Dohme, Philadelphia, PA
- James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA
- Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, PA
- State University of Pennsylvania, Palmer Museum, State College, PA
- University of Pennsylvania
Selected Exhibitions:
- Chairs, A Singular Vision, Philadelphia International Airport
- Multiples III, Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia
- Multiples III, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO
- Contemporary Wood Turning, Wave Gallery, New Haven, CT
- Wood Turning in North America since 1930, Yale University, New Haven, CT
- Twenty Years of Collecting, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA
- Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE
- Furniture of the 90s, ASOFA, Miami, FL and Houston, TX
Teaching Experience:
- George School, Newtown, PA (1966-67)
- Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA (1967-present)
Education:
- University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, MFA, BFA, BA
More Biographical Information:
For more biographical information about Mr. Dodge, please visit the Michener Art Museum website: www.michenerartmuseum.org
Contact Information:
445 Durham Road
Newtown, PA 18940
E-mail: dodger@voicenet.com
