Joe Chesla explores the concepts of transparency, translucency, balance, reflection, and the fragility of presence and loss. Glass, porcelain, fishing line, and graphite become tools for examining the internal voices that drive his compositions—grounding the viewer while drawing them aloft into conceptual spaces that tug at the body, hoping for a landing point. Mostly stable, these works speak of quiet beauty alongside dynamic catastrophe, glacial speed, and vast stillness.

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 Chesla 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 currently holds the position of Professor of Fine Art, coordinating the Sculpture Department at St Louis Community College at Meramec in St Louis Missouri.