Current Multidisciplinary Bio
Jari Chevalier is a creative artist working in several expressive forms. Her visual art has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including Bristol-Myers Squibb in Wallingford, Connecticut; Haskins Laboratory Gallery at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; and the Silvermine Gallery in New Canaan, Connecticut. A solo exhibition of her work, Mathematics of Ecstasy, toured to seven galleries in North Dakota in 2008 and 2009, including the Memorial Union Gallery at North Dakota State University and the Taube Museum of Art. A selection of her visual art is featured on the cover and in an interior folio in Artful Dodge literary and arts magazine.
Chevalier’s poems have recently appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, the Cincinnati Review, Foundry, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast Online, The Collagist, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, Spillway, and other literary journals. She won the 2018 Common Ground Poetry Contest, the 2016 inaugural poetry contest at Sheila-Na-Gig Online, and a Merit Award in the Atlanta Review International Poetry competition. She placed as a finalist in the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest and as a semi-finalist for the 2015, 2016 and 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prizes.
As a short story writer, she won the first Portable Story Series contest. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Sun magazine and Green Mountains Review and has been featured in Terrain, the Brevity blog, M magazine, Reality Sandwich, and elsewhere. Jari is host/producer of Living Hero, a radio/podcast series of over 40 interviews and special programs featuring prominent luminaries working for the greater good, archived at livinghero.com. She has received multidisciplinary project support from public and private grantmakers and residency awards from Marble House Project, The Ragdale Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from CCNY where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize, and an honors Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Literature from Columbia University. She has designed and taught courses or lectured for SUNY Purchase, Antioch University, Fordham University, North Dakota State University, Moorpark College, Lakewood Prep School, Rishi Valley School, and other academic centers. Originally from New York City, she now lives in Shelburne, Vermont.
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Mathematics of Ecstasy traveling solo show bio (2008-2009)
After 20 years as a literary artist focused on poetry, Jari Chevalier became fascinated with creating imagery of another kind. Working with paint, x-acto knifes and an extraordinary variety of paper, she began creating nonverbal poems through an unusual and meditative process of carefully inlaying cut pieces onto canvas.
In her early childhood she was introduced to Eastern philosophy through her parents’ interest in the teachings of J. Krishnamurti. Later, she began practicing Insight Meditation and yoga. She spent six months traveling and teaching in Japan, India and Thailand. These experiences, her background as a poet, and her abiding fascination with advances in science prompt her artistic expression and inform her aesthetic.
Using papers from around the world, sometimes painted, printed or distressed by the artist, and including international currency, Chevalier’s inlaid collages repeatedly pose the questions: Who and where are we? Is there a beginning or end? Is there a layer or level that is in charge more than any other? Birds, flames, stars, veins, radar beams, strands of DNA, a chaos of competing forms falls within a simple grid. These images and forms clamor for space and interrupt each other to form the larger picture. On closer inspection they have been x-acto-cut to fit into one another. They are pieces in a puzzle of geometric and organic forms both mysterious and predictable. In a global picture such as ours, these questions are at the heart of a need for cooperation to solve the puzzle of making a functional and sustainable world.
Chevalier’s artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including Bristol-Myers Squibb in Wallingford, Connecticut; the Red Mill Gallery at Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; the Haskins Laboratory Gallery, and Small Space Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut; and the Silvermine Gallery in New Canaan, Connecticut. A solo exhibition of her work, Mathematics of Ecstasy, toured to seven galleries in North Dakota in 2008 and 2009, including the Memorial Union Gallery at North Dakota State University, The Jamestown Arts Center, Minot State University Galllery, and the Lillian and Coleman Taube Museum. She is the recipient of residency grants from The Quarry at Marble House, The Vermont Studio Center, and from The Ragdale Foundation.
Her poems have been appeared in American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Review, Boulevard, Cimarron Review, The Cortland Review, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast Online, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, The Massachusetts Review, Spillway, and many others. She has written about art for M Magazine (thenewyorkartworld.com)
Jari Chevalier has appeared on the National Public Radio Program “Beyond Words” and Boston Cable TV’s “It’s All About Arts.” She holds a Master's degree in creative writing from City College of New York and a B.A. cum laude in writing and literature from Columbia University and has served on the faculty of the State University of New York at Purchase and Antioch University in Santa Barbara.
