Chance Dunlap
Chance Dunlap, Implement, 2012
Chance Dunlap was born and raised near Lubbock, Texas, where big skies, cotton fields, and rural experiences have shaped his life and work. While in high school, his family moved to Sherman, Texas, where, in the summer of 2003, he made his first sculpture the backyard of his parents' house – deciding instantly to become a practicing artist. Humble beginnings and a complete lack of art exposure gave him a voracious appetite for all things art-related. Dunlap completed his undergraduate work at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma, just north of the Texas/Oklahoma border, and is currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. The artist's work continues to take clues from his rural roots, experiences, and personal interests.
Artist Statement - Metalicious
My work is a reflection of my own sensibilities, interests, and experiences. As a child we lived in a small house in the middle of huge cotton fields stretching forth in all directions. The rows were our earthy playground, and we could be anything we wanted. The experience of driving down the road and watching giant machines process the raw organic materials, and witnessing the dust and grime covering the entire town during cotton gin operation is only experienced in those areas. We learned the virtues of hard work as small children and grew up fixing fence, working cattle, and chasing chickens around my Grandparents farm. All these experiences affect the content of my work to great extent. I often utilize found or cast off parts from equipment of the past. These objects are not simply junk cast offs, they are vehicles of experience and contain associations to their past usefulness and convey a very human desire to be wanted, utilized, or useful.
In the past year I have developed a new body of work where I have brought in new subject matter and forms that never appeared in my work before. The organic biomechanical structures that I had previously developed over a couple years began to transform into geometric shapes and take on associations recognizable as frozen confections; popsicles and ice cream cones. Through these ephemeral objects, which typically either get eaten or melt, I use their most noted features and give them permanence. Not an absolute permanence, but one, which conveys the imperfections and impermanence of the original object. I have also recently begun working on paper sculptures, which began as drawings or studies for potential future works, but have evolved into new forms that reinforce the direct hands on approach I have utilized over the years. I can really just play, which is most important.
I hope that my work can be interpreted as a medium, which contains messages and associations that reach beyond the station of the viewed artwork. Each work is an inheritor to the entire lineage of my process over the past nine years. I embrace the individuality I associate to each piece, and each little directional shift is important for all the work because it allows reflection upon the correctness of a certain direction? To me no particular work is more important than another. Each comes from the same stream, but just involves a different set of choices and solutions.
-- Chance Dunlap, 2012