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‘A Chair Affair’ will benefit Junior Achievement of NEPA

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Luzerne’s Home Instead Senior Care and Area Agency on Aging begin annual Be a Santa to a Senior gift drive Nov. 6

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Dr. W. Chad Stanley has been an associate professor of literature at Wilkes University since 2005. There, he has earned a reputation for getting the best out of his students, both creatively and expressively. He has been published in several scholarly journals, analyzing the writing of Fay Weldon, Jonathan Swift and James Joyce, and he has written a widely-printed afterword for Joseph Plumb Martin&#8217;s &#8220;A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier.&#8221;</p><p>In his personal time, Stanley is a talented and noted visual artist, having shown in the Sordoni Gallery as well as other social establishments, including the Rattler and Bart &amp; Urby&#8217;s.</p><p>Stanley believes a continual willingness to learn and create is essential to a person&#8217;s growth. He carries that philosophy into the classroom, the art studio and social interactions where he affects fellow creative minds. He has become a prominent figure in both the academic and artistic communities in the Wilkes-Barre area, positively impacting people he encounters by encouraging and supporting them in their creative endeavors while sharing his own.</p><p>Stanley grew up in Connecticut, the son of a University of Connecticut English professor and a jazz musician. Both writing and painting were forms of expression he identified with early. He wrote for his high school newspaper, but was also passionate about art, and it took him several years to decide which discipline he wanted to pursue.</p><p>&#8220;You have to figure out what you really enjoy, and it changes,&#8221; Stanley said.</p><p>After a short stint at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, Stanley matriculated to Syracuse where he ultimately earned an English degree before earning his doctorate at UConn.</p><p>Although he favored literary pursuits in his schooling, Stanley never stopped painting and, in recent years, has both increased the amount of painting he has done and incorporated visual expression into work at Wilkes with his course Visual Literacy, where he challenges students to express themselves in both textual and visual mediums.</p><p>&#8220;We live in an increasingly visual world in which visual texts proliferate and have greater and greater power, I think, so it&#8217;s very important to be able to study those and analyze them, and for people who are going into relevant professions to create their own images, compelling images,&#8221; Stanley said.</p><p>The course, comprised of an equal split of English and art majors, asks students to go outside their comfort zones to be creative in a style foreign to them.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s good to do things that you&#8217;re unfamiliar with,&#8221; Stanley said.</p><p>He describes his teaching style as collaborative, moving away from a lecture-based structure by heavily emphasizing discussion generated by posing questions.</p><p>&#8220;I always say the classroom is a testing ground for ideas,&#8221; Stanley said. &#8220;I may bring up ideas that I&#8217;m testing and I like students to do that, too.&#8221;</p><p>Sara Crolick, a Kingston resident and Wilkes graduate, now the managing editor at MeetMindful.com, an online dating site, had the opportunity to work with Stanley in his drama course.</p><p>&#8220;He created an incredibly safe environment to really explore ideas,&#8221; Crolick said. &#8220;He&#8217;s so amazing when it comes to nurturing the process &#8230; everyone really has the chance to speak freely. He was just there to help you shape an idea if you needed the help but was willing to stand back and let it just evolve the way it needed to evolve so you would get the most out of what you were reading.&#8221;</p><p>Jacquie DeLucca, a current Wilkes senior, has been taught by Stanley in several classes, including Visual Literacy. The West Pittston native majors in history but minors in both English and art and has appreciated Stanley&#8217;s willingness to accept analysis in several forms.</p><p>&#8220;I remember having a lot of worksheets for him,&#8221; DeLucca said. &#8220;Somtimes it&#8217;s very difficult to, with words, describe the dynamic you&#8217;re trying to explain &#8230; and he&#8217;s completely fine when I draw diagrams. I use a different medium to express something when words aren&#8217;t working for me.&#8221;</p><p>DeLucca has focused on history in her undergraduate efforts but has decided to pursue art at the graduate</p><p>level.</p><p>&#8220;Honestly, Chad Stanley, he&#8217;s the kind of figure in my life that makes me go, &#8216;Ok, I can do that, too. I can get a Ph.D. and write for a living, teach for a living and do art at the same time,&#8217;&#8221; she said. &#8220;He&#8217;s a great example of that.&#8221;</p><p>One of Stanley&#8217;s artistic ventures was to join the Lonelies Tour, a collection of musicians who reached out to lyric poets and visual artists, in the summer of 2013. Stanley stood stageside and painted musicians on stage, players like Dan Avery and Robb Brown, in his unique style that blends realism and abstract expressionism. He has continued to support and inspire those artists since the tour ended, fostering the same type of shared expression he generates in the classroom.</p><p>&#8220;His art is very forward thinking,&#8221; Avery said. &#8220;It&#8217;s very new; it&#8217;s very out of the box. It&#8217;s only Chad Stanley who does it, but his mentality is very old school. He comes from a different school of thought where it&#8217;s almost like punk era. The only way a community like this survives is if we all go out and support each other.&#8221;</p><p>Robb Brown has become more than a appreciator of Stanley&#8217;s art. The two have become friends since working</p><p>together.</p><p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t ask for a better friend, and I couldn&#8217;t ask for a better creative consulate,&#8221; Brown said. &#8220;He runs ideas of his own by me, and I absolutley believe when I have an idea, I am not hesitant to run it past Chad, even if it has nothing to do with painting or literature. As an artist, he has a really great style and perception, and he&#8217;s so modest that he started doing this not for recognition but for the love of it.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley12.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Chad Stanley in his Kingston residence in front of a new work and a portrait of musician Dan Avery. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley12.jpg</photo0><caption0>Chad Stanley in his Kingston residence in front of a new work and a portrait of musician Dan Avery. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley22.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Chad Stanley in his home studio in front of a new piece and a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley22.jpg</photo1><caption1>Chad Stanley in his home studio in front of a new piece and a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley32.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Several of Chad Stanley&#8217;s paintings including a self-portrait hanging in Bart &amp; Urby&#8217;s in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley32.jpg</photo2><caption2>Several of Chad Stanley&#8217;s paintings including a self-portrait hanging in Bart &amp; Urby&#8217;s in Wilkes-Barre. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley42.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">An animal portrait by Chad Stanley hangs in Bart &amp; Urby&#8217;s in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_TTL082015chadstanley42.jpg</photo3><caption3>An animal portrait by Chad Stanley hangs in Bart &amp; Urby&#8217;s in Wilkes-Barre. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Chad Stanley champions creative expression in academic and artistic arenas</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Matt Mattei</p><p><a href="mailto:mmattei@www.timesleader.com">mmattei@www.timesleader.com</a></p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Matt Mattei at 570-991-6651 or <a href="mailto:mmattei@www.timesleader.com">mmattei@www.timesleader.com</a></p></shirttailMeta></div>

Wilkes professor, painter Chad Stanley inspires minds in the academic and artistic communities in Northeastern Pennsylvania