Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades

by Suzanne Jackson (Artist), Rachel Reese (Editor), Aberjhani (Contributor)

Published on the occasion of the first full-career survey of American artist Suzanne Jackson at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia, Five Decades illuminates a professional career that spans more than fifty years, concentrating on a unique selection of Jackson’s artworks and their relationships to identity, community, the natural world, and the grace and movement of the human body. “To me there isn’t any difference,” Jackson has reflected. “Art, life, and nature are all the same. There shouldn’t be any separation.”

In addition to presenting new photo documentation, archival images, an extensive narrative chronology, and some 50 image plates with interpretive texts, the exhibition catalogue includes original scholarship that fills a critical void of interpretation surrounding Jackson’s work. Curator and editor Rachel Reese contextualizes each social, cultural, and geographical shift across the lifelong evolution of Jackson’s art practice through the lens of her relationship to the natural world.

In addition to an insightful essays by Reese, Dr. Melanee C. Harvey, scholar julia elizabeth neal, and Dr. Tiffany E. Barber, Five Decades features a foreword by acclaimed artist Betye Saar and poem by author-poet Aberjhani written specifically for this volume.

Published by the Telfair Museum of the Arts, the title has been selected for inclusion in the Artbook/DAP catalog, one of the premier distributors of artbooks by classic and contemporary artists.

(adapted from publisher monograph)

Genres: Art

160 pages, Soft

First published September 30, 2019

About the author

Throughout her distinguished career, Suzanne Jackson (American, b. 1944) has exhibited her work in prestigious museums and galleries around the world. Her artworks and archival materials can be found in public and private holdings, including the collections of the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, as well as the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. Recent exhibitions include holding on to a sound at O-Town House in Los Angeles (2019); Life Model: Charles White and His Students, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at the Brooklyn Museum (2018); West by Midwest at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, MoMA PS1 in New York, and the Williams College Art Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts (2011–14); and Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980 (2011–12).

Jackson’s work has been the subject of major solo and group exhibitions at venues including CAAM; Normal Editions Workshop in Illinois; the United States Embassies in Monrovia, Liberia, and Belgrade, Serbia; the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History in Virginia; the Ferst Center for the Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; the Parkersburg Art Center in West Virginia; the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, Virginia; the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California; the Savannah College of Art and Design; the Smithsonian Institution’s Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Just Above Midtown in New York; the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh; and the Laguna Art Museum in California, among others. Jackson’s costume and scenic designs have been featured in productions at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre; California Shakespeare Festival; El Teatro Campesino; John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Mark Taper Forum; Oakland Ensemble Theatre; Philadelphia Drama Guild; and Yale Cabaret, Repertory, and University Theatres.

In addition to the exhibition catalogues for Soul of a Nation (D.A.P. and Tate Museum, 2017), South of Pico (Duke University Press, 2017), and Now Dig This! (Hammer Museum, 2011), Jackson has been featured in publications including Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles (Duke University Press, 2010) and L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980 (California/International Arts Foundation, 2010). She holds a bachelor of arts in Painting from San Francisco State College (now University) and a master of fine arts in Design from the Yale School of Drama.

Reviews

[Ida · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had discovered the art of Suzanne Jackson earlier in my life. But I'm glad to know about it now. The sidebars to the pieces shown explain some of her techniques in ways that make sense to us non-experts.

[Aberjhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suzanne Jackson is an extraordinary artist and Rachel Reese the perfect editor for this volume. FIVE DECADES is a major achievement, especially in the current era when women's voices are emerging in many exciting, beautiful, and powerful ways. The book is also a wonderful contribution to current celebrations of the Harlem Renaissance centennial.

[Doris Raines · Rating 3 out of 5]

VERY NICE