CHALK gallery is pleased to host the Peter Bodge Retrospective of jazz linoleum prints. Bodge, a jazz drummer, artist, historian, and teacher has spent his artistic career merging his passion for visual expression with his love of jazz.

Bodge’s observations and perceptions breach boundaries, seek chords that resolve, make connections. Bodge takes inspiration from many places.  For example, his Dancin’ Suiteseries it’s a riff on Jackson Pollack. In this particular series of prints though built on the same calligraphic image, like jazz improvisation, has variations that result in dramatic shifts - foreground and background change places to the point where even seen side by side, it’s hard to believe they began with the same block. As Bodge says, “That’s the goal of the improviser - a different interpretation every time it’s played”. In another print, Bodge portrays Thelonious Monk as Picasso might have depicted him, an homage to both artists. “ This is like Monk - the radical angularity, the relationship to reality, “ Bodge says, “Whenever I hear Monk, I see Picasso; and when we I see Picasso, I hear Monk.”

What you see in this show, it’s all interpretation of the music visually.  A big impetus with this show for Bodge is “as Papa Joe Jones said, ‘pass it on’.  And with the deepest respect for the artists of this great music that I try to portray their essence.”

Peter Bodge

Retrospective of jazz linoleum prints

July 10 - August 9, 2025