Page 3 -  Conversation: Julian Jackson .... / April

So as a re-entry into the art world, I took my woodworking skills and began running my own custom framing business out of my house.

JW: That sounds perfect coming out of the cabinet making experience where you have the skill-set but no longer had to deal with the heavy labor.

JJ: Exactly, exactly. The level of detail involved with framing is a lot like doing cabinets or a big library for someone but the work is much lighter.  More importantly it got me back into the art world where I was working directly with and for artists.  I was also doing very specific and unusual projects. For instance, I worked for an artist, Alex Gray and I had to build a Buddhist temple for him.

JW: It sounds as though you got a rich variety of experiences beyond just the labor that went into it.

JJ: That�s right; it was a lot of design, consultation and collaboration. But it was also a way to get closer to the art world. All through this period I was making work and showing occasionally, though not as much as I wanted to. But I decided to refocus 

Julian Jackson, Red Center, oil on wood, 20 x 18 inches

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my efforts on developing my art and my career and I started going to art colonies.  I got a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts a couple of times.  I went to McDowell�

JW: Millay?

JJ: Millay. The residencies were really good for helping me to focus on my work.

JW: Those colonies are wonderful places for creating a sort of island in which you can achieve a quality of focus absent of the normal day-to-day distractions.

JJ: Yes, you�re able to completely withdraw from everything else that puts demands on your time to center on this thing you love the most and that is a real gift.

JW: So I can see where all of this is leading; the how and why of establishing your gallery. Go ahead and elaborate on that.

JJ: Well I�ve always had an interest in the presentation of art.  I had a show in 2000 at a start up gallery but I felt as though the gallerist knew so little about what he was doing and that I could do it better. My wife Rene and I started thinking about starting a gallery around 1998 or so, just around the time that Chelsea was burgeoning and we looked at some spaces over there, wrote a business plan, did the numbers. But at the time we concluded that we just weren�t ready.  But we started going to shows with a very curatorial outlook; developing a list of concepts for shows, collecting artist�s names and what it was about their work that interested us.

JW: It�s interesting you mention that because I�ve found the same to be true about writing art criticism or profiling artists.  Prior to that I would look at shows casually and then quickly decide what I did or didn�t like.  But from the perspective of writing or with what you�re talking about, well� now you really have to think about what you�re looking at and you can�t afford to be casual about it.

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