ARTIST STATEMENT:

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My work begins with attention—with looking closely and remaining open to surprise. Whether I am writing a poem, translating a poem from Spanish, drawing a graphic narrative, or creating visual art, I am interested in the ways stories emerge from observation and memory.  I am drawn to the small moments that reveal something larger: a fragment of conversation, a childhood image, a landscape, an object carried across time. 

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For many years I worked only with words. Poetry, fiction, memoir, and translation taught me that language is both a bridge and a mystery. When I began drawing, I discovered another way to tell stories. Images allowed me to approach memory —to embrace uncertainty, silence, and intuition. In my visual work, I often combine text and image, exploring how the two forms can converse with and challenge one another. I am interested in the space between what is seen and what is remembered, between the visible world and the inner life.

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Across all genres and media, my work is guided by curiosity and wonder. I hope my work invites viewers and readers to pause, look closely, and enter a moment where the ordinary become luminous.

 

 

BIO:

 

JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL was born in France and currently divides her time between Madison, Wisconsin and Montevideo, Uruguay. Although widely known for her award-winning career as a poet, writer, and translator, Kercheval has developed a distinct and increasingly recognized presence in the visual arts. Her drawings create intimate, atmospheric images that blur the lines between autobiography, myth, and dream. 

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Kercheval’s turn to visual art began during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, when she was living in Montevideo and began drawing daily as a way to confront fear, solitude, and uncertainty. What started as an instinctive act of self-preservation quickly evolved into a vibrant new artistic direction. In addition to her original art, her drawings now form the backbone of a growing body of graphic narratives that merge her lifelong love of storytelling with the immediacy and vulnerability of visual mark-making.

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Her graphic memoir French Girl (Fieldmouse Press) was named one of The Washington Post’s best graphic novels of 2024 and has brought wide attention to her visual work. Her illustrated essays and graphic stories have appeared in Five Points, New Letters, The Rumpus, Orion, Image, and other national journals. Her second graphic memoir, Household Gods, is forthcoming in spring 2027. Her work has been shown in group shows and in her solo show, Drawn Lives (Edgewood University Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin, August 17-October 2, 2026). 

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Other recent books include the poetry collections I Want To Tell You (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023) and America that island off the coast of France (Tupelo Press, 2019), winner of the Dorset Prize. She is also the author of the memoir Space which won an Alex Award from the American Library Association. Her translations include Love Poems by Idea Vilariño and The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems Circe Maia, for which she awarded an NEA in Translation, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the Zona Gale Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.