The Jackson County Campus Fine Arts Gallery will feature the work of adjunct art instructor and Jackson County Campus alumnus Daniel J. Bass beginning Thursday, January 28. The exhibit will run until March 3.

Bass earned his associate degree from the Jackson County Campus and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Mississippi University for Women in 2004. In 2008, he earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Lesley University College of Art and Design (formerly the Art Institute of Boston).

Bass has taught at the Boston Architectural College, the University of South Alabama and all three MGCCC campuses, including Jefferson Davis and Perkinston.

He has shown artwork in exhibitions all over the South and the Northeast, including shows in Boston, Concord, New Hampshire, and Brooklyn, New York. He collaborates with his colleagues from MGCCC and USA at various shows in Mississippi and Alabama. His first solo show was held at the Perkinston Campus. Additionally, his work has been featured in publications such as Studio Visit Magazine and the Mississippi Newcomers & Visitors Guide.

“This body of work represents a culmination and continuation of 15 years of work,” Bass said.  “I have always loved working from people and the figure. More often than not, it was difficult to find a body to work from, but my body, my face is always around, always quick at hand. So if I wanted to start something new, experiment with a new idea or simply shake off the cobwebs, I typically found myself drawing or painting from my own body and face.”

Bass said that as he entered graduate school, he began to use himself as subject matter deliberately in a kind of neo or pseudo-expressionistic series of drawings and paintings that got more and more conceptual as he worked on them. “The paintings ended up in a place where the physicality of my body influenced the product of the painting itself through the discomfort of the poses in which they were painted (in that they’re all painted from mirrors). The drawings are all more conceptual related to philosophical texts I was reading at the time, but still based on my own body, nonetheless.”

More recently, he has taken the concept of the self- portrait and made it digital. That is, digital portraits of digital selves. “Being a member of the first generation to really grow up with video games, they’ve always been a part of my life – I’ve always played with these characters.  As an adult, the games are much more advanced, the characters make the decisions that I dictate and become images of myself. So, the strange menagerie of individuals that seem to have no connection with each other are all me. They are all portraits of my various selves that exist in video games and were produced digitally with Photoshop and a tablet.”

The exhibit is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Marc Poole, gallery director, at (228) 497-7684. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. -3 p.m., and Friday, 9 a.m. -1 p.m.