Jesse Butcher (b. 1982) is an artist, writer and educator currently living in Memphis, TN. Butcher received a BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2005 and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Butcher has been an artist in residence at the Graham Foundation during the Breaking Glass Summer Seminar and a HATCH Resident Artist at the Chicago Artists Coalition. Butcher worked with Locate Arts and Extended Play Press to release his first book “Think Of Me Like Days”. His work is included in the collections of the Felix Gonzalez Torres Foundation, The Rhode Island School of Design, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Phoenix Art Museum. Curatorial projects include Okay Mountain and MASS Gallery in Austin, TX. He is a Co-founder of Walls Divide Press. Classes taught include “Introduction to Photographic Image Making,” “Damaged: Punk and Images” and “Exploratory Media.” His recent exhibitions include 15 Years at Channel to Channel in Nashville, TN, America at PhilMOCA at Philadelphia, PA, By Our Own Hands at Camayus in Atlanta, GA, Extension at Dixon Gallery in Memphis, TN, we like small things at Filter Photo in Chicago, IL and The 55th Annual at the Masur Museum in Monroe, LA.

I’m interested in the apophenia one curates to make sense of the world around them. I tend to explore themes of safety, control and power and how these are implemented visually. I want the works made to perform a woven narration, constantly looping back informing and reimagining themselves to reference a larger, futile attempt at solving a mutating puzzle of our fictionalized ideal of America. My ideal atelier is simple a state of constant consuming, finding, and exploring these pieces of information and making a ladder so that we can look from above and contemplate the vastness of it all.