Contingent Upon
Ridley Gallery, Sierra College, 2019
Heart + Mind + Action + Together = Healing and Thriving =, a wall installation of machine embroidery on fabric stretched on panels, is a call to contemplation and action.
Uncontrollable Beauty
AXIS Gallery, Sacramento, 2016
Cheselyn Amato’s first solo show at AXIS Gallery, Uncontrollable Beauty, is an interdisciplinary circumstance designed as a context for the experience of enchantment, wonderment, awe, and delight in the face of ever-present uncertainty.
Seder Plate Old Story New Works
Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2009
Light as a metaphor for the soul is central to Cheselyn Amato’s installation of six screen mesh discs fitted with spectral radiant film to create an aura of radiant and colorful light punctuated by the shadows of incised marks, objects laid on the surfaces and flat silhouettes.
New Authentics
Spertus Museum, Chicago, 2008
Cheselyn Amato’s work, exhibited in The New Authentics, also removes charged imagery from a specific context in order to explore its meaning.
Big Issues – Time’s Up
JayJay Gallery, Sacramento, 2018
Cheselyn Amato speaks to justice and injustice in paired works in which narratives are constructed of silhouetted images that tell the story of tribulation on the one hand and the possibility of resilience and triumph on the other.
Swag With Love
AXIS Gallery, Sacramento, 2016
How amazing that sublimity, awe, wonder and delight are embodied in every infinitesimal frame that we choose to see. The frame – like a snapshot or moving image still – captures an instant that does not otherwise exist.
Ner Tamid Reinventing Ritual
Spertus Museum Chicago 2005, the Jewish Museum New York 2009 and the Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco 2010
The ner tamid (eternal light), a perpetually illuminated lamp, hovers directly above the ark in every synagogue to symbolize the presence of God. In previous times the source of the light was burning oil, but today gas, electricity, or solar power may generate light.
Manna Redemption
Betty Rymer Gallery, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2002
The Manna Redemption is a visual testament to the striving for holiness as well as an invitation to being and becoming receptive.
Love Life Codex
AXIS Gallery, Sacramento, 2017
A re-presentation of three decades of her visual work cast in the light of what she has learned about All That Is.
Nitzavim
Women of the Book, International Contemporary Visual Torah Project, Jerusalem Biennale, Israel, 2015
Parashat Nitzavim speaks to me about God’s love for us and about our opportunity to reflect this love. “The [Torah] is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)
Flower Garden
Regional Round-Up, Nelson Gallery, UC Davis, 2008
Cheselyn Amato calls her sculptures flowers: they are the simplest conjoining of elements—chin-high thin bamboo and pipe fittings stems and colorful balls of found fabric for blossoms.
The Calling
Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA, 1984
The Calling is a multimedia installation in which drawing, 3D elements, projected images and sound are combined. A herd of life-size rams made of poultry netting are gather; they are waiting.