Who?
Often, I’m sure people find this site and wonder who is this Jesse Cohen. Years ago when I started this site, I only knew of a few people in the U.S. with this name. Over the past few years, I’ve seen my name pop up more often. There are interesting individuals out there with a varying level of success in different careers. From artists to actors to doctors and lawyers. It does excite me and complicate things a little to see other artists with the same name. For a while, locally, there was another photographer with the name Jesse Cohen. She had an amazing job working for the National Zoo. I never had the opportunity to meet her, but every time I visit a major local photography shop, people have a lot to say about her.
This particular Jesse Cohen is an artist and a scientist. I have a research career in the Bio-Tech world with over 10 years of experience. I’ve worked in a variety of labs from developing drugs, drug targets, and measuring gene expression. After a great deal of focus, energy and fight, I decided to make a change. Anyone out there who’s worked in the research field is familiar with the pitfalls of grant-funded contract jobs, and the the idea that your job stability relies on the ability to answer a question which may be unanswerable no matter how much time, energy, and fight you apply! My thoughts go out to grad students and new academics working to create a name for themselves. I now work full time in the art world.
While working in research, in 2004 I started an organization with the help of a small advisory board which evolved from a post on the web by Antoinette Wysocki. In 2005 we collaboratively opened a studio deep in a dark neighborhood in the city which ended in 2010. We held our first popup gallery at another location the same year which would develop a unique series of events and web activity. In 2009 we started an art gallery.
You can read about this progress here, and another profile which relates more to my progress as an artist here.
I have always had the goal to develop this website further as a more active reference for my opinions about the world around me from art to research and beyond. However, with a million and one things happening at all times, this site gets less attention than it deserves. You’ll see that in my history of annual posts that claim to bring more energy here. I mean obviously the world wants to hear more than my intermittent resume posts.
The other day, it hit me, there’s a valuable direction that this site could provide in addition to a resume stomping ground. With all of the Jesse Cohen’s out there, from many of which I receive email. I would like to know who you all are, and what you do. I’m sure many of you have websites, so I’d like to propose an experiment. If you read this site, if you have your own page, drop me an email through the contact page. Let me know who you are, where you are, what you do, how you can be contacted via email, and a link to your site. I’d like to compile a Directory of links to other people with the same name. If there’s enough interest, I can make that happen on this site. That said, I’m only interested in personal pages. Let’s not make this a business directory. I will ignore links or messages from people that don’t suit this exact plan for a page of links to personal pages of individuals with the same name.
If this happens, you’ll see a new link eventually at the top leading to a page of links and brief info…