“I’m not an artist yet. I’m a painter. And I draw, and I work in theater as an ‘artist person,’ in quotes. But to become an artist takes a whole lifetime.”
Suzanne Jackson’s lifetime in the arts spans mediums such as painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, and theater design, and roles such as gallerist, educator, student, arts administrator, and activist. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1944, Jackson moved with her family to San Francisco, California, during the Great Migration. Growing up, she spent the majority of her childhood in pre-statehood Alaska, which she found inspiring: “In Alaska...everybody paints and writes…the landscape is the most incredible landscape…. I can still smell the air sometimes.” At the age of 16, Jackson was given a set of oil paints and took her first art classes. She spent her youth invested in nature as a member of the National Audubon Society, and birds, fish, and other animals and natural elements have remained subjects of Jackson’s work since her teens.
Jackson returned to the Bay Area to study dance and painting at San Francisco State University, and after graduating moved to Los Angeles in 1967. She enrolled in a drawing class at Otis Art Institute with Charles White, and was both a student and an artist’s model in his classes. One of her classmates was David Hammons, who suggested she look for studio spaces in close proximity to art schools. This suggestion led to the birth of Jackson’s community arts space, Gallery 32, founded on Charles White’s teaching philosophy of art as a vehicle for community action and social change. Gallery 32 gave then-emerging artists such as Hammons, Betye Saar, Senga Nengudi, and Emory Douglas a platform “to question history, culture, and risky improvisation.” The space hosted poetry readings, musical performances, and fundraisers for the Black Panther Party, the Watts Towers Arts Center, and the Black Arts Council. In 1970, Gallery 32 made history, organizing the first survey of Black women artists in the United States. Jackson created a culture of active citizenship not only within the studio’s walls, but throughout Los Angeles, and the gallery’s legacy also influenced Linda Goode Bryant’s Just Above Midtown gallery in New York. As Goode Bryant put it, “The energy that came from LA at that time into New York was really key to JAM.” MaeGame (1973) was included in JAM’s first group show, Synthesis, in 1974.
During this time Jackson began to trace the connections between Blackness and nature through research and learning about African art and symbolism. “Having a better understanding of our heritage, where we’d come from before coming to the Americas, or sometimes we were here first, a long time ago. So across oceans, across continents, we have been a part of nature since the beginning.” She cites the Alaskan wildlife and the vastness of the African diaspora as key to her diptych painting Wind and Water (1975). “Across oceans, across continents, we have been a part of nature since the beginning…there is a great deal of love and beauty in Blackness. There is nature within us.” In 1987, Jackson moved to the East Coast to pursue a master’s degree in set design at the Yale School of Drama.
After a few years of freelance work and teaching, Jackson moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she lives and works today. Jackson worked at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 1996 to 2009, teaching classes during the afternoons and evenings and waking up at 5:00 a.m. to paint. This transition led to an embrace of abstraction and an exploration of various mediums. She said, “I was graduating from more simple ideas, and I was more romantic as a young person. I just started experimenting with what I had and having a good time with it. For a long time, no one was paying attention to what I was doing, so I had the freedom to experiment with materials.” Since then, Jackson has adopted a hybrid approach to painting in which she builds up layer upon layer of acrylic paint structured with netting, rods, paper, and found materials, resulting in what she calls “anti-canvases.” At the age of 80, Jackson continues to work with her environment. “It’s always a mystery, going into the studio. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s different every time. Right now, I think I’m in another transition.”
José Miguel Camacho, Assistant Educator, Department of Learning and Engagement, 2024
Note: opening quote is from https://static.library.ucla.edu/oralhistory/text/masters/21198-zz0008zszs-3-master.html.
