Sharon Cheslow

Sharon Cheslow (born October 5, 1961 in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician, composer, artist, and writer. 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.

Cheslow has a B.A. in Intermedia Arts from Mills College and attended graduate school at 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.

Born in Los Angeles, Sharon Cheslow grew up in the Jewish area near Wilshire and Fairfax. She listened to rock and roll and was influenced by her parents' love of music, especially protest music. Her mother graduated from UCLA and was pro-civil rights. Her family moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs in 1967 after Cheslow's father got a job with the U.S. Department of Transportation. They first moved to Silver Spring, MD and then to Bethesda, MD where she experienced anti-semitism.

Cheslow was influenced by the Beatles, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, The Slits, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and jazz. Her first band Chalk Circle, as guitarist, grew out of her friendships with Anne Bonafede, Henry Garfield (later Henry Rollins), and members of the Teen Idles and Untouchables around late 1979/early 1980. They shared a love of Bad Brains and California punk. When the D.C. hardcore scene became more macho Chalk Circle didn't fit in so well, but they got support from art punk bands such as Half Japanese and Velvet Monkeys. Cheslow attended University of Maryland and first learned about feminist theory through film studies classes with Robert Kolker. These experiences led Cheslow to examine and write about the role of women in music.

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