2020

Looking back now, I see 2020 as a year not just of isolation and loss, but also of adaptation. As painful as the COVID lockdowns were, they created a powerful incentive to simplify, and to come up with ways to do more with fewer resources. They also gave us plenty of time to think about our profligate habits and their escalating environmental consequences, like wildfires, hurricanes and global pandemics. For me personally, 2020 was proof of the adage that creativity thrives under constraints. Unable to travel, for instance, I visited the same local locations again and again, finding new dimension in familiar landscapes. And rather than skipping from one sculptural object to another, I focused on a single material all year, nylon tulle. I chose tulle for its mutability—depending on how it’s arranged and how the wind catches it, it can morph from a solid to a liquid, to fire to billowing smoke. /// Another unexpected innovation wrought by 2020 came in how my installations are held aloft. In the past, when doing shoots on beaches, I’ve relied on bulky tripods as off-camera supports. But hiring extra hands to help carry them wasn’t an option last year, so I tapped a resource right there on the sand: driftwood. Once I made use of it, the installations became more responsive and intrinsic to their environments, and my own life got a lot easier in the process. /// Above all, 2020 was the year I tried to harness the wind. On every shoot, Northern California’s offshore breezes were my collaborator, the force that transformed my installations from lifeless fabric to living things. As collaborations go it was a tumultuous one—of the twenty or so pieces I built and photographed last year, thirteen were failures—but along the way I learned a thing or two about the importance of staying on nature’s good side. When I built pieces that obstructed or defied the wind in any way, I’d go home unhappy. But when my constructions respected and responded to the wind, interesting things would occur!

Tutus no. 3, Half Moon Bay, California, 2017 from Thomas Jackson on Vimeo.

Cups/Spoons from Thomas Jackson on Vimeo.