AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska and was inspired by the idealism and pragmatism of the Pioneers who settled the Great Plains.  My high school English teacher,  Josephine Frisbie, lived in Red Cloud and spoke of seeing Willa Cather there. The artists I met at my mother’s gallery, the first in Omaha,  inspired me to make art, but because I was a “good” student, I was encouraged to become a very intellectual art historian. Ultimately I was drawn to studio practice and studied jewelry and metalsmithing, later,  sculpture which explains my allegiance to both the applied and the fine arts.  I am equally devoted to J D Prown’s material culture studies and the work of Constantin Brancusi. 

I  am a part-time activist. I  made anti-war posters at the Boston SMFA with my fellow students.  Studying African tribal objects taught me about Western imperialism when I was a Bunting Fellow.  I helped to found Boston’s Women’s Action Coalition (WAC).  I have been a teacher—first in adult education and then at MassArt.  I recently retired after 47 years of teaching.  I am a mother and now a widow. I cook for those in need.  I treasure the soliloquy of the studio more than anything.

   My work and I have been formed by sum total of my experiences in the world and in my studio.  My work as a citizen as well as my endeavors as a visual artist  is to mediate between opposing notions and my public and private selves.  A life in the arts is arduous and without certainty.  My studio is at the same time a haven and a vexing and terrifying place.  Still, I am grateful to inhabit this space of wonder and industry.


ABOUT MY WORK

My studio is the laboratory where I make sculpture, drawings and installations. I work with wood because its varied manifestations (as found in the forest, the construction industry, simulated or in furniture) are rich with references to nature and culture. The circularity of the life cycle of wood—how it grows, reseeds itself, decomposes, then regenerates—is like the way the Hindu god Shiva, destroys the world in order to make it again. And like Shiva, I create work by resurrecting discarded pieces of furniture and re-configuring my own scraps.

My work is intuitive and process-based, often about history, material culture, and relationships. The processes I employ include wood-carving and fabrication. I don’t know what I am going to make will look like; that is the work. I know that I can count on my manual skills to build what I invent. One of my studio mottos is, “One thing lets another make sense.” So, I begin— trust how the work unfolds and then make decisions as the work takes form. My most recent tableau works display the cumulative effect of my approach.

The titles of my works are literary, not necessarily descriptive, but informational. I employ the title to communicate some of the things I am thinking about and discovering as I work. For example, the title Blossfeldt-Rietveld / Slosburg-Ackerman. (An illustration. Imminent Collapse and Ascent.) is autobiographical and meant to suggest precariousness with the possibility of a resurrection.

If you visit my studio, you will see a columbarium, of sorts, in the form of boxes stored on shelves. For over thirty years I have saved the sawdust, wood chips and scraps that were left from carving and fabricating my work. These remains reside in bespoke boxes at one end of my studio as the material catalogue of my own production. 2021.

jsackerman44@comcast.net