Katherine Jackson

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

Drawing, glass, and light: these three ingredients are the basis of my work. I begin with drawing, which sometimes becomes an end in itself. But often the images are sandblasted onto glass panels, lit along the edge by LED strips, and displayed in steel frames or stands, or suspended. The images themselves are composed of my drawings: lines (of poetry, of scientific inquiry, of thought, of gestures), broken into dots or pulses. When the LEDs shine through the etched panels, the dots glow, forming multiple light-paths, making vivid the mind’s search for ways through, and the shifting perspectives that haunt our “readings” of the world. One etched glass piece is a memorial to 23 undocumented Chinese workers who were drowned while picking cockles (for upscale restaurants) in Morecambe Bay, UK, in 2004. The cockle pickers could not call for help, so they called home to China to say goodbye. Having learned that this crime is still a live issue in the UK, and that the problem of imported (virtually slave) labor has if anything gotten worse, I created a video to accompany this sculpture, and exhibited both as an installation. A recent project, Little Oil, is a collection of over fifty (so far) cast glass oil cans, each unique in color and/or shape, set on lightboxes. They can be presented singly, in groups, in large scale installations, wall mounted, on a shelf, or in a vitrine. My hope is that these glowing vessels provide a space of reflection where one can allow their many,...

Artwork