Joe Chesla
Professor of Fine Art, Sculpture Department at St Louis Community College at Meramec in St Louis Missouri
Bio
Using aspects of order, repetition, stillness and evolution, Joe Chesla works to create works of unfocused awareness. Within these pieces, we experience manifestations of internal and external, cool and comforted, filtered and clarity of vision. We can find comfort in glacial speeds and spaces of great stillness. This work takes the viewer to that place of personal confrontation with beauty, stillness, isolation, and vast mindfulness.
Joe Chesla focuses his aesthetic perspective on creating sculptural objects, installations and drawings that bring the viewer to a stronger connection to a specific sense of presence; the here and now, and other. His work has been exhibited internationally in Poland, France, Japan, India, China, and Taiwan, and across the United States. He has received numerous awards and grants including the Utah State Arts Grant, Utah Art Council Arts Grant, Jon Morgan Fellowship, George B and Marie Eccles Caine Fellowship, and the Regional Arts Commission Grant. He has been artists in residence at Cowhouse Studios Ireland, the Academy of Fine Art in Katowice Poland, Chorzow Culture Center Poland, Pays’Art at Marnay Sur Seine Botanical Garden, France.
Joe received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Utah State University and his BS from University of Wisconsin Stout. He has studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota College of Fine Art, and the Kansas City Art Institute, and exhibited and lectured at numerous institutions nationally and internationally. He worked as a preparator at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and as Head Preparator at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City and as a ceramic artist in Shigaraki, Japan. He currently holds the position of Professor of Fine Art, coordinating the Sculpture Department at St Louis Community College at Meramec in St Louis Missouri.
BORN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
LIVES AND WORKS IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, USA
Abstract
what would you think if i used my artist’s statement?
Intuitive responses to the elemental nature of materials, the environment, and social engagement are central to my artistic investigations. I am drawn to moments found within natural and engineered structures, points that stand out as inherently, mathematically, or compositionally intriguing: surfaces, transitions, beginnings, and endings. These fragments lead me to consider the relationship between the rules of nature, how the built environment responds to those rules, and how we navigate our individual and collective lives.
I draw inspiration from the philosophies of Zen, Tao, and Wabi Sabi, especially ideas of emptiness, silence, and the contemplative mind. The works and writings of Agnes Martin and James Turrell, and the poems of Mary Oliver remind me that simplicity transcends, creating a natural pathway for internal contemplation, revelation, and finding our way.
My influences: steel, concrete, wood, glass, rust, algae, etc. often serve a very utilitarian purpose, to exemplify a biological truth or inherent physical transformation. I find transcendence and spirituality in simple materials and the rules they follow. It is my aim to humanize these materials by amplifying the duality of imposing strength while creating a sense of comfort and longing/touch. When done well, human-made environments translate the organic growth and biomorphic building we see in nature. In these seemingly small artistic moments, where a conceptual thought merges with material expression, I find transcendence and poetry in humble materials.
More than ever, today we yearn for connectedness. We need space, time, and focus of this humble unity of thought and material to be within ourselves, so that we might share those ideas in community.