Sharon Cheslow

Sharon Ann Cheslow (born October 5, 1961) is an American musician, composer, artist, writer, photographer, educator, and archivist. In 1981, she formed Chalk Circle, Washington, D.C.'s first all-female punk band. She has since become an accomplished artist who works between different mediums, mostly sound-based.

Biography

Cheslow was born in Los Angeles, California. She has a B.A. in Intermedia Arts from Mills College, attended graduate school in Music at California Institute of the Arts, and completed a Master of Library and Information Science degree from San José State University. She has worked or taught at Mills College's Olin Library, Stanford University, Bay Area Video Coalition, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Cruz, and California Institute of the Arts. As a pioneer on many levels, she has collaborated with numerous musicians and artists. Her work crosses boundaries and addresses subject/object relationships. In an introduction to an interview with her mother for Interrobang?! Anthology on Music and Family, Cheslow wrote that her maternal great-grandmother emigrated from Kolomea (in present-day Ukraine) and had a professional violinist father.

Cheslow stated, "My main goal was to write about music from a female perspective, and that included writing about the fact that female musicians weren't taken seriously." It also featured an interview with The Raincoats. Along with doing bands and zines, Cheslow had a radio show on freeform station WMUC-FM. Cheslow's first issue of Interrobang?! was published in 1989 with a Nation of Ulysses interview. Cheslow was also in a one-off project with Fugazi's Joe Lally.

A retrospective Chalk Circle release, "Reflection", came out in 2011 on Mississippi Records and Post Present Medium.

Publications Cheslow's experiences with riot grrrl, while in Suture during 1991–92, inspired her to compile a list of women involved in punk that recorded from 1975 to 1980. For an Experience Music Project Riot Grrrl Retrospective oral history interview in 1999 she said, "There's this whole history out there...And it's not just punk music. It's in rock 'n' roll, it's in jazz, it's in blues, it's in experimental and avant-garde classical music; in every one of these genres, women's history is lost. Women are seen as an 'other.' In the mid-1990s, Cheslow published her comprehensive list of these late 1970s punk women in Interrobang?!, and it became available as an online list. The list was also influenced by Lenny Kaye's compilation LP Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, Judy Chicago's art installation The Dinner Party, and Lucy Lippard's book Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972. Cheslow's sound collages and explorations are documented on the CD, Lullabye from the Sky, released in 2002 on Decomposition under the name Sharon Cheslow and Coterie Exchange. It featured collaborations with Tim Green, Julianna Bright and members of Deerhoof among others. The project was the audio component from sound installations she had been performing. She performs with guitar, electronics, organ, digital audio, objects, and vocals.

In 2006 and 2007 she presented the Coterie Exchange sound event Sonic Triptych in California and New York. Multiple, random sets of three performers were instructed to represent themselves through sound in order to facilitate participatory, collaborative action. The New York version was a collaboration with filmmaker/video artist James Schneider (who directed Blue is Beautiful). Sonic Triptych first premiered in San Francisco in 2002 with nine women, including Blevin Blectum and members of Erase Errata. A video of Duct Tape Piece, a collaboration with Alyssa Lee, was exhibited in Europe through Chicks on Speed in 2007 and 2008.

Videography Dream/Construct on Video Fanzine #2 (NTSC VHS, Kill Rock Stars, 3 October 2000, KRS300) While the City Sleeps and September Son on Sharon Cheslow Video Shorts (DVD, Decomposition, 2004, DE08) September Son on Video Fanzine #3 (NTSC DVD, Kill Rock Stars, 12 July 2005, KRS400)

Discography Albums and compilation appearances Chalk Circle Mixed Nuts Don't Crack compilation LP (1982) Time Clock = Hole in Head compilation cassette (1983) We Gots No Station compilation cassette (1984) Reflection LP (2011) Bloody Mannequin Orchestra Time Clock = Hole in Head compilation cassette (1983) We Gots No Station compilation cassette (1984) Roadmap to Revolution LP (1984) Streetlights in the Dark cassette (1985) Suture A Wonderful Treat compilation cassette (1991) Red Eye Static Storm cassette (1998) Electroletes Plug Me In cassette (1998) Solo, Coterie Exchange, Collaborations Lullabye from the Sky CD (2002) with Coterie Exchange If the Twenty-First Century Didn't Exist CD compilation (2002) with Sharon Cheslow Uncertainty Rides the Waves CD (2004) with Coterie Exchange, KIT Collaborations CD (2005) with Yellow Swans, Inca Ore, Chuck Bettis, Jerry Lim, Kris Thompson Macro-Eden LP compilation (2006) Sharon Cheslow Less Self is More Self CD compilation (2006) with Trebville Exchange Plants That Kill CD (2007) with Liz Allbee, Weasel Walter

Singles and EPs "Pretty Is" 7-inch EP (1992) with Suture "Special Delivery to My Heart" 7-inch single (1995) with Red Eye "Octane Lies" 7-inch single (1999) with Electroletes