The Artwork of Chazz Williams

I was born in Central Florida and spent a great deal of my childhood with my grandparents in South Georgia. My grandparents introduced me to making things and creative approaches to life. My mother and father would introduce me to fine art, and over the years I cultivated a better understanding of art.
Spending a good deal of my life in Florida and Georgia, I have witnessed the effects of migration, torrential storms, development, and redevelopment. The South is filled with harmonies and dissonances. It's all about cultures interweaving and meshing in ways sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible. People who have attempted to define The South only seem to create stereotypes. It is all so layered and haunted that even those of us who live here do not pin it down; we navigate it. We navigate it with humor and, at our best, grace.
I am fascinated by perceptions of natural and constructed worlds: virtual and analog, history and myth. I've reached an age that I can see history repeating. I make art like I see the world... pieces assembled and reassembled. It is always a challenge to assemble this evidence from the region in an artful way that doesn’t become nostalgic or predictable. It is the artist’s job, after all, to find ways of looking at things and thinking about things with a different perspective.
I graduated the MFA program at Florida State University in 2003. I have worked at Albany State University for the past eighteen years where I am currently the Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences. I have always considered myself a mixed media artist, though I learned a great deal about painting from the wonderful faculty at FSU. Most recently I have been creating a series of collages that address identity and perceptions regarding America and the Western World.