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] Some of Chase's work was added to the permanent collection at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay.^[18] Two of her murals were also installed at the Door County Library in 2010.^[1]