James Jack

Throughout James Jack’s practice, dirt plays a central and abiding role. Recognizing dirt as the material earth upon which people both rely and the land with which they identify, Jack works with dirt as a conceptual and physical medium to manifest connections that people have to place. The drawings are personal documents of his learning process: a means to connect with community members and also a way to create “windows” through which specific places and cultural values and practices can be respectfully shared with those both within and outside of the particular community.  As someone not native to Hawai‘i, Jack spent extensive time listening and learning from community members of Moloka‘i, participating in cultural practices and finding means to collaborate with them and create new forms of aesthetic and even spiritual expression of one’s kinship with place. Such a practice shares some similarity to methods of cultural anthropologists studying  different cultures through “deep hanging out.” However, for Jack, the work is part of a deeply personal and intimate research practice rooted in the ways that place, people, and natural materials interpenetrate each other. — AY