Early LIfe

Born in Papua New Guinea (1978) Chad was raised in the heart of the jungle in the midst of a primitive stone-age tribe with his parents who were fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian missionaries working for many years to translate the Bible into a language spoken by only a few hundred people on earth. This extraordinary experience gave Chad a unique starting point in this life, which included an appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, different cultures and the simple things in life. But it also initiated a process of understanding the complexity of human nature that eventually led him far from these roots. 

From a very young age Chad was very engaged in art, although there was not an opportunity for formal training he spent many hours of his youth continuously drawing. Chad moved to the United States for high school and followed the strict expectations of his religious community in the following years. He married at twenty-three, had three children, went to Seminary and earned a Masters degree of Divinity (theology).

Having a curious mind and a sincere faith in everything he was taught, he felt the freedom to ask hard questions that he believed would inevitably bring him closer to truth (and thus to God). But this need for understanding what is real and being coherent ultimately created a personal crisis, and at the end of his studies he unexpectedly realized that his whole life had been based on a myth. Unable to move forward as a leader in that religious community, he moved back to San Francisco where he had previously worked and married.

Post Seminary

The next 10 years Chad started three businesses in the tech sector of San Francisco (including online platforms Gutensite and Sitetheory), engaged in volunteer political work (helping to elect progressive candidates), raised his kids, and spent time hiking, rock climbing and traveling. During these years he also spent an enormous amount of energy unraveling his past, relearning what it means to be human and how to live without the religious structures that until that point had been so fundamental to every moment of his daily life. 

These were in fact dark and difficult years, as he was forced to re-evaluate everything he believed, resulting also in a major political and cultural shift that slowly alienated him from his family and past community. During this same period in the United States the country itself (especially his past community) was being radicalized in the opposite direction, toward religious nationalism and the accompanying anti-science, anti-democratic, white-supremacist, pro-violence, fear based political paradigm that eventually lead to the rise of Donald Trump and everything he normalized.

The consumerism and money centric values of United States was never a culture Chad felt at home in, and despite enormous efforts to integrate, to participate positively in the political process and try to engage people in cultural dialogue of self reflection and cultural critique, he found himself further at odds with the people and culture around him. America had become an extremely unhealthy example of late-stage capitalism with increasing wealth inequality and cultural polarization where half of the country was racing towards fascist style religious nationalism that justified any means necessary to gain power, including a growing public justification for violent civil war. This was not an environment in which he wanted to spend his energy investing any longer.

A New Beginning in Italy

Throughout these dramatic years, Chad was consistently drawn to art as a mode of processing his personal story and beliefs and communicating this process to those around him. In the fray of daily survival there was never enough time to develop as an artist, but this artistic drive was still expressed in the form of writing, poetry and personal drawings. But in 2016 he decided that there would never be the "right" time to become an "artist", so he decided to just begin painting at nights after work and on weekends. He was always drawn to the energy of people and so he began a series of portraits that served as a way to learn painting technique and to develop his own artistic voice.

In 2017 Chad moved with his family to Bologna Italy, to give his children another worldview, culture and language, and to find a community that was more aligned with his values. Despite the enormous challenges of learning a new language and culture and integrating in a foreign country, Bologna opened its arms, and for the first time in his life he finally felt at home. As part of the deconstruction process that began many years before, Chad and his ex-wife decided that it was finally the right moment to move forward with separate lives. They remaine business partners, co-parents and friends.

Artistic Research and Production

Chad started his studio work at Alchemilla in 2019 and along with ongoing painting and drawing projects, for the first time, began working in three dimensions with the production of a series of giant figurative sculptures made from cardboard found abandoned on the streets of Bologna on recycling days. 

Awards

In 2022 Chad was invited to participate in an artistic residence at the Lucca Biennale Cartasia, and while he was unable to free up an entire month for the production of an outdoor sculpture, he did send seven large sculptures for the two month show from August through September, and was awarded the Career Achievement award for his pieces which were recognized as being best in show for uniquely pushing forward paper art.

Press

• la Repubblica
• Commune di Bologna
• Lucca Biennale