Welcome to the Studio.

Welcome to the studio.

Since this is the first post, let’s start with the basics. I’m Bri Chesler, and I would describe myself as a glass and mixed-media installation artist.

I was born and raised in the swamps of Florida, believe it or not! I found art at a young age while growing up in an unsafe environment. At the time, I didn’t have the language to understand or communicate much of what I was experiencing, so art became a way of processing those emotions. In many ways, making was an act of survival. It gave me a sense of agency, a voice, and a place where I could begin to make sense of my world.

I was fortunate enough to attend a magnet arts program that nurtured my creative interests and eventually set me on the path toward higher education and a professional career in the arts. Along the way, one of the most important lessons I learned was that technical instruction can provide an incredible foundation, but no institution can create an artist or define their visual language. I realized that if I wanted my work to feel unmistakably my own, if I wanted to create an aesthetic and language that were immediately recognizable, I first had to give myself permission to have a voice.

Which brings me back here.

I want to use that voice to offer a little more insight into what the reality of being a professional artist actually looks like, at least for me. The life of an artist has been romanticized throughout history, and social media has created its own version of that mythology. We see finished exhibitions, beautiful studio shots, residencies, awards, and perfectly photographed objects. What we don’t see nearly as often is everything it takes to get there: the experiments that fail, the applications that get rejected, the financial gymnastics, the technical problems that make you want to rip your hair out, the ideas that sit unfinished for years, and the small breakthroughs that somehow make all of it worthwhile.

That’s what I want this space to be about.

Consider this an open door into my studio. I’ll share snippets of my thought process, works in progress, technical experiments, successes, failures, materials I’m excited about, things I wish someone had told me, and updates along the way. I don’t know exactly where this will go yet, and I think that’s part of the fun.

So, welcome to the studio. Things might get a little weird here.