Darla Jackson

Will you even notice that I’m gone?

2024

Clay, epoxy resin, wood, sheetrock, acrylic, graphite, enamel

12”h x 12”w x 2”d

This piece was created for an exhibition with Arch Enemy Arts at AQUA Miami in 2024.

Private collection.

Odyssey was on view at The Art Trust Gallery in West Chester, PA in Spetember 2024 alongside work by Maria Teicher and Katherine Fraiser.

Each piece is accompanied by a haiku written by my daughter, Olivia.

To purchase any remaining pieces from this collection, please visit SHOP

Tell me all your secrets…

2023

Fired clay with Mirror finish

Created in 2023 for Birds Rising at Brassworks Gallery curated by Heiko Muller in September 2023.

3 of the 7 birds remain available.

Staring at the Sun was on view at Talon Gallery in Portland, Oregon May 31st through April, 2022. To view additional images of the work, please visit STARING AT THE SUN.

Ten new pieces about overthinking the divide that seems to touch everyone’s emotions these days. While we are excited to go back to “normal” we are still trying to figure out how to exist in this world, trying to make lasting change if we can and still processing all that has happened. We are looking for clear answers and just not finding any.

As I do, I fumbled my way through my thoughts and emotions, trying to capture that universal uncertainty. I attached these thoughts to “Staring at the Sun”, a song by Tv on the Radio. The chaos the words stir up felt fitting. There aren’t any answers here, only more questions.

To purchase one of the remaining pieces from this collection, please visit SHOP

The Alchemist

2021

Fired clay, epoxy resin, acrylic and gold leaf

15”h x 10”w x 6”d

The Alchemist is a one of a kind piece based on a section of the painting “Two Regents of the Surgeon’s Guild” by 18th century painter Juriaen Pool. The thought behind the piece is that there is a transformation taking place…the heart into turning into gold, referencing the idea in alchemy of turning lead or other base metals into gold. Here it is more of an emotional alchemy being represented.

This piece was created for the Spectrum exhibition at Arch Enemy Arts in 2021 and is available here SHOP.

Like pulling teeth…

2022

Fired clay, epoxy resin, 16kt gold leaf, and aluminum leaf

12”h x 12”w x 3.5”d

Created for Arch Enemy Art’s 10 Year anniversary exhibition, this piece features an anatomical clay heart covered in Aluminum leaf (aluminum being the symbol for the 10 year anniversary) surrounded by 10 clay teeth, the top one covered in 16k gold leaf.

The thought behind this piece is that while maintaining anything for 10 years takes love, it also takes a lot of work and can, at times, require a large degree of sacrifice.

This piece is available.

Enter the 36 Chambers is on view at Antler Gallery in Portland, Oregon May 27th through June 20th. To view additional images of the work or to purchase a piece, please visit ENTER THE 36 CHAMBERS

Part “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” and part “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)”, Enter the 36 Chambers is a series of sculptural emotional portraits that focus on the path to self discovery, and the heart and the battle that it takes to get there.

This series has roots in many things but discovery of self, challenging your thoughts, and emotional growth are at the core, with the story being told through dead birds, found objects and various references to Wu-tang lyrics and Shaw brothers movies, among other things.

Art is funny. You don’t have to like Wu-Tang Clan or Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies or even dead birds to find something in this series that might resonate with you. Those things are just starting points, lenses through which a story is being told. When you look at them, you may see them in different ways entirely. For me they are emotional portraits, or a sculpture of a feeling, and I want that to be universal so that anyone can feel it and in their own way.

I use dead birds as a vehicle because they are vulnerable and beautiful. You want to protect them, despite the worst being over. I think looking back at emotions can be a bit like that. You’ve already felt them...it’s over, they’re gone. Yet we sit with them and obsess, relive, dissect or reimagine them. I think the best thing for me is to learn from them and move forward... but I also feel that is a struggle, a daily battle to not dissect what I felt and why.

Enter the 36 Chambers is about mastering emotions... the idea being that as you are working through these emotions, each represented as a Chamber, you eventually get to a place of peace, or at very least the ability to find calm and stillness even when there isn’t any.

This exhibition title , “Guarantee of nothing...”, was based on a line from a 2017 Vanity Fair article on Serena Williams that said “The trouble with love is that it comes with the guarantee of nothing.” I took this to mean that despite this lack of guarantee, the risk involved emotionally, the fears we may have and the vulnerable state we put ourselves in by opening up to another, we do it anyway because we believe in the good that can come of it. This body of work has been in my head for a long time (and truthfully I may not be done with it) but the idea continues to renew itself in different ways.

This new body of work, “Guarantee of nothing..” is different for me, in that most of my exhibition work is made in small editions (3-5 castings per piece). This collection contains 7 pieces, 6 of which are one of a kind fired clay pieces, never to be repeated exactly, which makes them dear to me and hard to let go of.

I did this because I wanted to reflect on how unique this time is (making art about emotions while social distancing during a pandemic) and wanted the pieces to echo that in some way. These feelings that are being drudged up for all of us as we sit with ourselves are a little bit different. They allow us, if we choose to, to see things we may not normally see...to revisit and try to process things we may have not had the time to...and to move forward a bit changed by it all. In every hardship there is an opportunity for growth, a chance to try harder, to do better. There is no guarantee that it will play out the way you’d like, but that’s the risk we take in trying, isn’t it?

Arch Enemy Arts, Philadelphia, PA. November 2019

“There’s nothing like trauma and surviving it to add a deeper perspective (to life). The duality of loss became clearer to both of us. On one hand there is the devastation of losing a partner or loved one, the void it creates (not just the reality of it but even just the thought of that loss). On the other hand, with surviving you gain clarity and can shed (lose), some of the negative things that continually recur and take up valuable thought and energy, and hold you back.” - Paul Romano

On October 4th, Arch Enemy is proud to present “I imagine losing you all the time", a new large scale collaborative exhibition by Darla Jackson and Paul Romano.

Both artists are well known for their emotional narratives; Darla through her animal sculpture, and Paul predominately as a painter and designer. ‘I imagine losing you all the time” is the culmination of several past collaborations ,as well as their independent explorations on the positives and negatives of loss, and following the couple’s confrontation with themes of loss earlier this year when Romano had a near fatal bout with his health.

"The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains."
-Arthur Golden

Each series begins with a feeling...something any of us could relate to...in this case love and loss. After going through a well timed recent breakup, I took everything I was feeling and poured it into this work...everything I'd felt for years each time my heart broke. It was like gluing a plate back together and breaking it again....gluing and breaking... eventually pieces got lost and soon the whole thing was mostly just glue anyway...what was real of what was left? I don't know. It all felt real...until all of a sudden it didn't anymore. Just like that.

I've always believed that we learn much more from our failures than we do our successes. There is so much beauty in the hard won lessons of failure, if we can get back up and find them. This series is meant to call attention to the beauty that can be found when we fall, by using birds as stand ins for humans. When they fall, we can stop and examine them, appreciating them in a way we couldn't before. The same holds true with ourselves.

tan·gle  (ˈtaŋ-gəl) -v. 1.  to seize and hold in or as if in a snare.  2.  to unite or knit together in intricate confusion  -n. 1.  a twisted mass. 2a.  a complicated or confused state or condition. 2b.  a state of perplexity or complete bewilderment.

My inspiration from this piece comes from the story of Snow White. As the story goes, our heroine's unknowing trust is what causes her to bite the apple that poisons her into a deep sleep. The only cure is True Love's kiss...but what if no-one ever came?

Fairy tales are stories that help us drift off to sleep each night, but the modern day watered down Disney versions do little to prepare us for the realities we may face while we are awake. As a woman, I struggle with the idea of "happily ever after" and of being rescued...or not. As a mother, I struggle with how to balance this idealistic dreamland with gentle reality checks. As a human, I struggle with knowing when to ask for help and how to accept it if it comes. In life it seems we relive events or situations over and over again until certain truths are realized. When we try our best, yet nothing changes, we begin to question ourselves, our actions, our choices. We become unsure and uneasy and doubt seeps in wherever it can. We start to feel trapped. We relive moments over and over in our heads, trying to figure out what went wrong. We may look to others for help, yet if we don't speak up the won't know we're suffering. We wish for someone...anyone...to save us, when we should be saving ourselves.

Every day we enter into contracts, both large and small...everything from promises, relationships,marraiges, business deals...and often we don't take the time that is needed to determine if we can each uphold our side of the deal. This ends in broken promises, broken relationships, broken marriages, broken partnerships and unfortunately the reality is that we don't always learn for the next time around. This creates distance, resentment, and mistrust, which all carry right on into our future promises, relationships, marriages, and/or business deals... Breaking this cycle requires a hard look at oneself, stripped bare of what hopes you may have for yourself or others, facing the reality of who you are and what you are capable of.

Sometimes life becomes a series of all or nothing bets, one after the other. Some things come together, while other things fall apart and all you can really do is brace for impact.

This work was about everything I felt was going wrong in my life over a period of 2 years. I got separated, I moved out of my house and slept on a floor for months, I felt like I was dodging emotional bullets and land mines left and right, I felt alone and I didn't want to feel it all anymore. Coup de grace, the centerpiece of Brace for Impact, was about just that. Here is this life size bear who has ripped out her own heart in order to no longer feel anything. 

In an effort to continue with this feeling of all or nothing bets, I ended up raffling off the whole show. Nothing was available for sale. Only tickets for a chance to win each piece were available.