About The Artist
Cheselyn Amato is an interdisciplinary visual artist, global citizen and lightworker for justice and social transformation. She works across the disciplines – 2D, 3D and 4D – with an emphasis on enacting circumstances for the experience of sublimity, awe, wonder and delight in the midst of uncertainty and suffering in the world via the orchestration of visual props and cues, colored light phenomena, video projection, vocalization/sounding, and choreographies of gesture and movement. The work is made as instigator of experience, of presence, of all that is revealed when we pay close attention: look and see, listen and hear. Cheselyn’s work reflects and chronicles her lifelong spiritual, aesthetic and humanitarian journey. She has been teaching art students for decades and has recently added spiritual care and bereavement counseling to her toolkit as light worker and doula for personal, social, societal and global transformation and for the triumph of justice, love, beauty and abundance.
Cheselyn is a New Jersey girl with NYC at her core. She spent 20 years in Chicago where she taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for two decades before moving to Northern California where she lived in Davis for fifteen years until recently moving to San Rafael. Cheselyn has taught at American River and Sierra Community Colleges. She earned her BA in studio art and comparative religious studies at Brown University, an MFA in drawing, painting and new genres at Tyler School of Art of Temple University, and an MTS at GTU/PSR in Berkeley in Interfaith Chaplaincy and Justice & Social Transformation. Cheselyn is currently serving as Spiritual Support Counselor/Clinical Team Manager at By The Bay Health. Her work is exhibited nationally and has been included in exhibitions at the Jewish Museum in NYC, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and Spertus Institute of Judaica in Chicago with works in the permanent collections.
Drawing, Digital Art, Photography, Mixed Media, Sculpture
Contact Information
Exhibitions & Press
Books, Reviews, Journals, Catalogs, and Cover Art
Shoshana Gugenheim, Women of the Book, ongoing project
Z. Soltes, Tradition and Transformation, Three Millennia of Jewish Art and Architecture, 2016
Rami Ozeri, The Jerusalem Biennale, catalog, 2015
Elana Maryles Sztokman, The Men’s Section, Brandeis University Press, 2011, cover art
Sanctuaries in Time, exhibition catalog, 2011
The Dura Europos Project: An Ancient Site Revisited, exhibition catalog, 2010
Seduced by the Sacred: Forging A New Jewish Art, exhibition catalog, 2010
Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging, Edited by Derek Rubin, Brandeis University Press, 2010, cover art
500 Judaica, Lark Books, 2010
Richard McBee, Reinventing Ritual, The Jewish Press, 10/7/2009
Daniel Belasco, Reinventing Ritual, Yale University Press, 2009
New Works/Old Story: 80 Artists at the Passover Table, The Dorothy Saxe Invitational, organized by the Contemporary Jewish Museum, SF, 2009
Flatlanders 2: Regional Roundup, UC Davis, The Richard L. Nelson Gallery, 2008
Diane Chin Lui, Dreamers and their Visions, The Davis Enterprise, August 11, 2008, A9
Sharon Cohen, The Arts: A Museum of Great Reflection, Hadassah Magazine, April 2008
Menachem Wecker, Post-Jewish Painting and Its Discontents, The Jewish Press, Jan. 23, 2008
Gloria Orenstein, Jewish Contemporary Women Artists, Nashim, Fall, Number 14, 2007
Alan Artner, New exhibit gives modern focus to Spertus tradition, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 5, 2007
Blair Kamin, Blades of Glass, Chicago Tribune, Arts and Entertainment, November 25, 2007
Kevin Nance, The 2007 Fall Preview: Visual Arts, Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007
Staci Boris, New Authentics, catalog published in association with exhibition, 2007
Leslie Kaufman, On the Metaphysical in Art, Inside Magazine, Winter 2005, pp.50-53.
Harriet Goodheart, The True Mysteries, Not Celebrities, of Kabbalah, The Jewish Exponent, Vol. 219/No.13, 12/22/05
Miriam Seidel, The Hidden Garden: Three Artists Explore Kabbalah, exhibition catalog, 2005
Gloria Orenstein, Contemporary Jewish Women Artists Visualize the Invisible, FEMSPEC, 2005
Dan Bischoff, The Star Ledger, October 1, 2004, p. 52.
NEWS-RECORD of South Orange and Maplewood, NJ, September 9, 2004, p. 3.
Tina Wasserman, Dialogue, Arts in the Midwest, Sept/Oct 1996
James Yood, New Art Examiner, 23, 10 (Summer 1996), pp. 41-42.
Lisa Stein, New City, May 16-22, 1996, p. 22.
Lori Gray, The Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1995
Contemporary Art Workshop 1949-1989, designed & written by Alex Nelson, Chicago, IL
Garrett Holg, Departures from Architecture, New Art Examiner, 16,10 (June, 1989), pp. 45-46.
Cara Glatt, Leopold Bloom ate with relish…,Hyde Park Herald, 3/15/89, pp. 10, 20.
Michael Bonesteel, Pioneer Press, Evanston, IL, 3/19/89
Larry Lundy, Interiors, New Art Examiner, 15,4, (December, 1987), pp. 48-49.
Education
MTS, Art, Spirituality, Spiritual Care and Social Justice/Transformation, PSR/GTU
CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education, UC Davis/UC San Francisco Medical Centers
MFA, Painting & Drawing and New Genres, Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Elkins Park, PA
BA, Visual Art, emphasis Painting & Drawing, Brown University, Providence, RI
