User:Redmagnolia/Oliver L. Jackson

Oliver Lee Jackson is a painter, sculptor, draftsman and printmaker whose work is based in figuration. Jackson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1935. During the 1960s, he became involved with the Black Artists Group in St. Louis through his association with Julius Hemphill and other members of that organization, acting as a consultant and collaborator on multimedia arts presentations for the city's African American community. During that time, Jackson formulated the concept of the African Continuum, a vehicle for understanding the fullness and continuity of African creative traditions.

Jackson's work has been exhibited at galleries and museums since the mid-1960s. In 1982, Seattle Art Museum presented a solo exhibition and accompanying catalogue. His work was exhibited in the Whitney Biennial (1983); International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1984); and was included in exhibitions at the Museo do Arte Moderno, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New Orleans Museum of Art, and many others.

In Spring 2000, Oliver Lee Jackson was invited by Harry Cooper, then Curator of Modern Art for Harvard University Art Museums (now Curator and Head of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), to serve as Artist in Residence at Harvard, giving critiques and lectures for art students. During the period of his residency, the Fogg Art Museum installed a triptych of his paintings. A primary purpose of the residency was to create a series of paintings for an exhibition at the Sert Art Gallery in Harvard's Le Corbusier building. The project was an homage to late composer and saxonphonist Julius Hemphill, in collaboration with musician and composer Marty Ehrlich, and resulted in the 2002 installation "Duo" at Harvard's Sert Center, which presented Jackson's paintings with a musical soundtrack composed by Ehrlich.

In 2019, the National Gallery of Art presented the exhibition "Oliver Lee Jackson: Recent Paintings," which was accompanied by a film about Jackson produced by the NGA titled "Oliver Lee Jackson: There Is No Story." In conjunction with that exhibition, the PBS Newshour produced a segment with Jackson talking about works in his exhibition as well as Vermeer's painting "Woman in a Red Hat."

Oliver Lee Jackson was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award in Painting in 1980-81; Nettie Marie Jones Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Lake Placid, New York, in 1984; a grant from Art Matters, Inc., New York, in 1988; Eureka Fellowship Award in Painting from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, in 1993; and an Award for Painting and Sculpture, 2003/2004 Awards in the Visual Arts, from the Flintridge Foundation, Pasadena, California.

In 1983 and 1985 Jackson spent extended periods working on marble sculptures in Carrara, Italy, at the studio of Manuel Neri, and has continued to work with marble and other sculptural materials in his Oakland studio. In 1986, he was awarded a commission by the U.S. General Services Administration to create a marble sculpture for the Federal Courthouse in Oakland, California, which was installed in 1993. Also in 1986, he received a commission from the California Arts Council for a painting for the State Office Building in San Francisco. In addition to public art commissions, he has created numerous sets for theater productions, most notably for plays by Paul Carter Harrison, and in 1993 he was commissioned to create set designs for the ballet "The Overcoat" choreographed by Donald McKayle for the Cleveland/San Jose Ballet.

Oliver Lee Jackson's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are in museum collections across the U.S., among them the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; New Orleans Museum of Art; St. Louis Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; San Jose Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and other museums.

Jackson earned degrees in art from Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington (1954-58, B.F.A.), and University of Iowa, Iowa City (1961-63, M.F.A.). He continued working as an Instructor, Lecturer, and Professor at colleges and universities, teaching classes in Art, Philosophy, and Pan African Studies, and served as a Curriculum Consultant advising universities on the creation of programs in Pan African Studies. Jackson relocated to California in 1971 to take a position as Professor of Art at California State University, Sacramento, where he taught until his retirement in 2002.

Jackson has also served as Visiting Artist and Artist in Residence at numerous institutions, including: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1979; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Wake Forest University and North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, Artist in Residence Program sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, 1980; University of California, Santa Barbara, Winter 1985; University of Washington, Seattle, Spring 1985; University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1985; Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, Summer 1986; University of Illinois, Champaign, 1988; University of California, Berkeley, Spring 1989; University of Hawaii, Hilo, Spring 1993 (also 2001 and 2005); San Francisco Art Institute, Summer 1993; California State University, Arcata, Summer Arts Program, 1994; California College of Arts and Crafts Summer Institute, Aix-en-Provence, France, 1999; and California College of Arts and Crafts Summer Institute, Paris, 2000.

Oliver Lee Jackson's work is represented in New York by Malin Gallery, and in San Francisco by Rena Bransten Gallery. His studio is in Oakland, California. His website is www.oliverleejackson.com