Jesse Salisbury bio resume press

Salisbury manages to squeeze, press, or twist massive stone into new forms that help the viewer see the stone’s natural synergy. As one walks around “Inner Motion,” in particular, the stones twist like wet clothes being wrung out. The pent up energy creates a commanding gestalt that belies our preconceived notions about stone.

Born in Steuben, Maine, Salisbury began to study sculpture at the age of twelve from a local sculptor. His family eventually moved to Toyko, Japan, where he attended high school and became fluent in Japanese. Salisbury went on to study Bizen wood-fired pottery in Japan before returning to the United States where he graduated from Colby College with a major in East Asian Studies and a dual minor in Chinese and Art.

In 1997, Salisbury returned to Japan to work with sculptor Katsumi Ida as his assistant. The following year he attended a symposium in Japan and met sculptor Atsuo Okamoto, a master at splitting stone. In 2004, Salisbury was a participant in the Nasunogahar International Sculpture Symposium in Japan, where he met his future wife sculptor Kazumi Hoshino.

In 2010, the Farnsworth Art Museum selected two of Salisbury’s mammoth sculptures for an exhibit, which will focus on site-specific sculpture. Salisbury has participated in juried sculpture symposia in Japan, New Zealand, Egypt, and the Unites States. In 2007, he founded the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, an ambitious ten-year biennial held at the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park. He also initiated an interna- tional sculpture symposium at the Round Top Center for the Arts in Damariscotta, Maine. Salisbury’s work is included in private and public art collections. He lives in Steuben with his wife, Kazumi, and their son Ren.

The artist enjoys working on a large scale, and he loves the stones native to his region: granite and basalt. Indeed, the stone he used for Anatomy of a Boulder came from a nearby gravel pit. The 20-ton granite behemoth was split into four pieces and transported to Salisbury’s studio. There, after further splitting, he carved it into the dynamic abstract sculpture now on view at the Farnsworth.

The title of the piece underscores Salisbury’s approach. Whatever the size of the sculpture he is working on, whether it’s abstract or figurative, the rock must be intensively studied beforehand to understand its physical makeup. Transforming stone into art takes a great deal of calculation; it’s “mathematical and proportional,” says the sculptor, as much as it is aesthetic.

Salisbury began carving as a student at Ella Lewis Elementary in Steuben, from which he crossed the road to work in Peter Weil’s sculpture studio after school. As a teenager, his family moved to Portland, where his father ran the fish auction, and then to Japan, where his father served as a fisheries attaché. He completed high school in Japan, then stayed on to apprentice with a Japanese potter.

His artistic studies became more focused at Colby College. An East Asian studies major with a dual minor in Chinese and art, Salisbury took sculpture every semester. Harriett Matthews, a master sculptor on the Colby faculty, pushed him in new directions, but he always remained committed to stone. He went on to study at the Art Students League in New York City, learning to carve marble and limestone in the European tradition. To support his burgeoning career in sculpture, he spent summers fishing in Alaska.

Salisbury’s introduction to “big time” sculpture came on a return trip to Japan in 1997, where he had been offered the position of assistant to the sculptor Katsumi Ida. Ida proved to be a great inspiration: not only did he work in granite and basalt, he had also started an international sculpture symposium in his home town.

Salisbury attended that symposium the following year and was delighted to encounter Atsuo Okamoto, a sculptor he had discovered as a student at Colby in Janet Koplos’s seminal book Contemporary Japanese Sculpture. Okamoto was a master at splitting stone, a skill that was quickly becoming Salisbury’s passion.

After returning home to Maine, Salisbury began assembling the tools he needed to tackle stone on a more ambitious scale. He bought an air compressor, and then a crane; a power hammer and wire saw came later. He began collecting stone from local quarries and gravel pits. He also had several exhibitions at Tunk River Sculpture and Gardens in Steuben, which was owned by his first teacher, Peter Weil, and Weil’s wife, Jane. Proceeds from the shows, in addition to what he earned working as a landscaper, moved him closer to his dream of creating more monumental sculpture.

As his style and skills evolved, Salisbury became comfortable working in both figurative and abstract modes, and he frequently worked in both. Over time, the artist kept returning to the stone-splitting techniques he learned in Japan. He loved exploring the character of each stone and developing new ways to reveal subtle textures and dynamics.

In 2004, Salisbury returned to Japan to take part in the Nasunogahara International Sculpture Symposium Exhibition in Otawara City, Tochigi. Among his fellow participants was sculptor Kazumi Hoshino. The two artists fell in love and later married. Today, they have a 3-year-old son named Ren. Salisbury’s experiences in Japan led him to organize his first international sculpture symposium, which was held at the Round Top Center for the Arts in Damariscotta in 2004. He went on to found the Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium in 2007, where artists from around the world, and from across Maine, are invited to create sculptures using local stone.

The second Schoodic Sculpture Symposium happened last summer. Even larger pieces were produced and on display, thanks to better equipment and more technical support provided to visiting artists. When the finished pieces are sited, a total of thirteen Downeast communities will be the lucky recipients of world-class public sculpture. A third symposium is planned for 2011.

Salisbury has shown his work in venues across Maine, from the University of New England Art Gallery to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. He also participated in the 2008 Aswan International Sculpture Symposium in Egypt. As he told Letitia Baldwin, arts

editor at the Ellsworth American, “There you are carving right next to things that are thousands of years old.” Today, Salisbury is able to make a living from his work. Private commissions, gallery sales, and a variety of special projects keep his days filled, including a Percent for Art piece he recently completed for a new school in nearby Gouldsboro. “It’s amazing,” the sculptor says, reflecting on the last decade of his career. “The international connections, the Maine connections, developing the symposium—they seem totally separate, but they come together, create momentum.” It will be exciting to see where that momentum carries this consummate stone splitter next.

Salisbury is featured in “Four in Maine: Site Specific,” opening at the Farnsworth Art Museum on April 17. Fellow artists are Kazumi Hoshino, Aaron Stephan, and Warren Seelig. Salisbury is represented by June Lacombe Sculpture in Pownal and the Courthouse Gallery in Ellsworth. The 2007 Schoodic Sculpture Symposium is the subject of the film Rock Solid by Richard Kane. Jesse Salisbury: jessesalisbury.com

Steuben sculptor Jesse Salisbury, who carved “Glimpse of the Moon” as part of the 2007 Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium, is participating in the 13th Aswan International Sculpture Symposium in Egypt.—PHOTO COURTESY OF GERRY WILLIAMS Salisbury, accompanied by his artist wife Kazumi Hoshino and their 16-month-old son Ren, is the sole American selected to participate in the Egypt symposium, running Jan. 21-March 10, in the Egyptian city of Aswan on the Nile River. Salisbury and the 14 other artists, who come from Egypt, Japan, Turkey, Greece, Taiwan, Brazil and Iraq, will each produce one piece, which will be on permanent display at Egypt’s Open Air Museum overlooking Lake Nasser and the Philae Temple. During their stay in Egypt, the sculptors and their families will live at the Basma Hotel near the area’s granite quarries.

Salisbury has participated in sculpture symposiums in Japan and New Zealand, and he initiated and helped organize a 2004 International Sculpture Symposium at the Round Top Center for the Arts in Damariscotta. He is busily planning the 2009 Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium being held once again at the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC) in Winter Harbor.

Salisbury, a large-scale granite and basalt sculptor, says he has always dreamed of traveling to Egypt. As an art student, he was inspired by a red granite sphinx, an immense sarcophagus lid made of basalt and other Egyptian antiquities at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

At Aswan’s granite quarries, Salisbury is looking forward to seeing an ancient, 1,200-ton obelisk. The 130-foot granite piece, made from a single stone, was abandoned after cracking during construction.

“It is still sitting in the quarry where they left it 3,000 years ago,” Salisbury said late last week, adding that ancient plans for moving the giant four-sided shafts of stone were carved into and remain visible on the quarry walls. During his Egypt stint, Salisbury plans to create a horizontal sculpture, composed of multiple pieces of red and black granite, similar to a smaller wave-like piece that he created last summer.

Before leaving Maine for Egypt, Salisbury and other organizers of the 2009 Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium were wrapping up the 2007 catalog featuring the works produced by the seven sculptors. He said plans are shaping up to invite half a dozen sculptors next time. Meanwhile, he said organizers are fine-tuning the housing, transportation and other aspects of the six-week summer program.

In the works for several years, the 2007 Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium was the first of a series of symposiums to be held on a biennial basis over 10 years. Each artist received a $5,000 stipend. Substantial in-kind donations for last summer’s event included 30 tons of granite from local quarries, a portion of the room and board for the artists through SERC and some use of heavy equipment from Acadia National Park. Funds were raised to cover the artists’ travel expenses, additional equipment and apprentices, transport and installation of the finished sculptures and other expenses.

At the 2007 symposium, the participating sculptors were: Salisbury, Dominika Griesgraber of Poland, Jo Kley of Germany, Don Justin Meserve is from Round Pond, Maine, Ian Newbery of Sweden, Roy Patterson is from Gray, Maine, and Narihiro Uemura of Japan. Their pieces have since been installed in Milbridge, Sullivan, Winter Harbor, the SERC campus in the Schoodic District of Acadia National Park, Southwest Harbor and Ellsworth.

Breaking Form, 2010
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