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San Francisco, United States of America
Jesse Schlesinger (b. 1979, Kentucky) is amultidisciplinary artist who lives and works in San Francisco. He has exhibitedwidely both domestically and internationally including exhibitions at 6018North, Chicago, IL; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Curator’s Cube, Tokyo,Japan; Gallery Hiroo Tokyo, Japan; Governor’s Mansion, Sacramento, CA; Kadist,San Francisco, CA; Museum of Craft & Design, San Francisco, CA. His recentcommissions include “Pacific Transit” (2025), 10 monumental carved beach stonesculptures on Judah Street and 43rd Avenue in San Francisco, sponsored by theSan Francisco Arts Commission.
He has also had numerous residencies both nationally andabroad, including Think Green Produce, Tokyo, Japan, 2013; 6018 North, Chicago,IL, 2012 and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA, 2012. Amongst hisrecent awards are the US-Japan Artists Exchange Fellowship, NEA and JUSFC (bothin 2019-21 and 2018-19).
My experience with wood, the primary material I work with, has developed over the course of a lifetime, not as an artist initially, but as a carpenter, alongside my father. So my first interactions with the material (in its utilitarian form/state) were while spending time on my father’s job-sites: sweeping up the sawdust from one of the carpenters, playing around the stick frame construction site, learning to use a hammer to drive a nail or a saw to cut a lumber. What I hope resonates w/ viewers in my work, is this lifetime of engagement with, & profound appreciation for, wood as a material and as a living thing. A consequence of this experience is a fundamental commitment to, and knowledge of, the material; its characteristics and idiosyncrasies, histories and potential, its exceptional beauty.
