Art House Productions presents
New Works for a New Audience

Featuring Visual Artist
CHAD WALTER
Part of the 2008 Jersey City Artists Studio Tour

Opening Reception:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3RD * 6PM-8PM

Open all studio tour weekend!

Location:
Cosi Cafe and Restaurant
545 Washington Blvd, Jersey City, NJ
(201) 963-0533

Contact: Emily Helck, Curator
art@arthouseproductions.org or (201) 915-9911
www.arthouseproductions.org
Barrier-free



ARTIST STATEMENT

Growing up in a small Illinois town, the street life consisted of small front yards with scary prickly shrubbery, empty sidewalks and the occasional passing car. It is not surprising then how now when traveling I'm drawn to the nearby plaza or public space to people watch and see how alive and teeming the streets of the world are, even the rural ones. America invented the automobile, and in that invention all Midwesterners lost the ability to move from Point A to Point B by foot.

In those early summers, I was forced to search the house for loose change, plead with my mom for permission to run the nearly two whole blocks to the 7-Eleven to buy my Cheetos and Big Gulp. This almost daily ritual was the extent of my street life. Sure I ran between yards with the other neighborhood kids on the block but my world ended at the concrete street. When I left it, I was in the back of a station wagon on our way to a big parking lot. Today, I love attempting to capture the day-to-day life that its participants see as simply ritual and most likely boring, and that outsiders more than likely overlook on their way to somewhere important. Some aspects are easy to capture, an odd combination that catches your attention while wandering down a street ("Orange Peels Hung on a Blue Door") or something truly unique about that place as with a vendor's coca leaves in La Paz, Bolivia ("Spice Cart").

However, it is the people that make the street truly interesting. You can take photos of a door all day, wait until the light changes, but with people it is a split second that you have to work with. At times it seems beyond intrusive and almost rude to capture a moment of a stranger's life exploiting it through analysis and even worse displaying it.

In "Napping on the Shady Side of the Street", an elderly woman crossed from the opposite side of the street to sit on the same bench with me in the shade. I turned to make conversation, and she had fallen asleep and prey to my rude camera lens. While in "Crossing at San Pablo de Tiquina", I couldn't help but think that with a few million dollars this totally unique piece of culture would be rendered useless if only a bridge were built here. All of the hustle brought about by dozens of boats and ferries shuttling passengers of cars and buses across this narrow straight of water, would be gone and there would be one less thing to slow down and take a photo of.



ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Raised by his adopted family in deep downstate Herrin, Illinois, Chad Walter moved to Little Rock, Arkansas where he studied at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and completed under-graduate and graduate degrees in marketing. After staying in Little Rock to work at an advertising agency, he slowly became jaded and sought out his "real" family south-of-the border. In Mexico, he worked as a graphic designer at a university before returning to a more traditional career path in New York and took a position at a small market research firm in midtown Manhattan. Currently, he lives in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. In addition to photography, he enjoys cooking, travel, handball, reading and anything to do with the beach.



MEDIA STATEMENT

Chad Walter is a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a degree in Marketing and although admittedly photograpy will probably always have to take a back seat to his career, his meddling in photography and travel during his free time, makes up more of who he is than most people realize. Growing up in a small Illinois town, the street life consisted of small front yards with scary prickly shrubbery, empty sidewalks and the occasional passing car. It is not surprising then how he became fascinated with the buzz of street he encountered while traveling. Behind the lens, the aim is to capture the day-to-day life that its participants pass off as dull ritual, and that outsiders more than likely overlook on their way to something important. Today, Chad works in a small market research firm in Midtown Manhattan and lives in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey.