Jessie Kalmbach Chase

Jessie was born on November 22, 1879, in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin.[1] Her parents were Albert Kalmbach and Dora C. Higgins, who were married in 1878; Jessie had two sisters and a brother.[6][7][8] She married Wilfred Chase and lived with him in Madison.[9]

Chase studied design at and graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago before becoming a stained glass window designer for an art glass company in Chicago;[10] in this work she would often prepare water color paintings to demonstrate the design before producing a window.[5] Her later work was in oils. She would spend time studying a scene in person then retreat to a studio to create the paintings saying that she did not want to simply copy nature, but wanted to show specific light situations and to avoid mosquitoes.[11]

In the 1920s she was a member of the Madison Art Guild, exhibiting works in the area.[12] Her work was also distributed through the Madison Art association to galleries statewide, such as for an exhibit at the Sawyer Foundation in Oshkosh in 1926[13] and at the Milwaukee Journal's Gallery of Wisconsin Art in 1929.[14] In the 1930s, as her body of work grew, Chase had individual exhibitions at museums across the state such as at the Little Gallery in Manitowoc in 1936.[10][15]

In 1933-34, she was employed by the Works Progress Administration's Public Works of Art Project.[1] Chase created murals for the Madison Public Library and the Bank of Sturgeon Bay.[1][16] For some of the larger pieces she created in this decade, Chase worked in a mixture of cement and oil paint to create "cement-frescoes" such as were created for the entrance to Madison West High School and some civic structures in Fort Atkinson.[17]

She died in 1970 in Green Bay,[1] and was buried in Bayside Cemetery in Sturgeon Bay.[18] Some of Chase's work was added to the permanent collection at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay.[19] Two of her murals were also installed at the Door County Library in 2010.[1]

• Anderson, William J.; Anderson, William A., eds. (1929). The Wisconsin Blue Book. Madison, WI: The State Printing Board – via Google Books.
• Levy, Florence N., ed. (1917). American Art Annual. Vol. 14. Washington, DC: The American Federation of Arts – via Google Books.
• Levy, Hannah Heidi (2004). Famous Wisconsin Artists and Architects. Oregon, WI: Badger Books, Inc. ISBN 1-932542-12-4 – via Google Books.
• Usher, Ellis Baker (1914). Wisconsin: Its Story and Biography, 1848-1913. Vol. 6. Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company – via Google Books.