The Pilot News - Culver teachers, parents inspired Jackson’s creativity

The Oct. 29 visit was part of a days’ field trip centered around the theme of viewing and understanding sculpture, beginning with a tour of some of the highlights of Culver Academies’ sculptures (see accompanying article this issue) followed by a visit – with lunch – to the Jackson property to take in the grandeur of David Jackson’s massive works, all constructed, he says, from 99 percent recycled material scrapped by his Jackson Services demolition and construction company.
The story of that company and its founding by David Jackson’s father, the late Harvey Jackson Jr. (who passed away earlier this month) informs David’s artwork as much as the artistic encouragement he received from Lyman, which began as early as 1987, when she named him CES’ first “Artist of the Week.” Even then, David smiles, he was taking Lyman’s scraps and making art. “I was recycling when I was a little kid!”
It was David’s father Harvey, he says, who emphsized that each of his children should “be who you are supposed to be, instead of somebody telling you who to be. Don’t let anybody take your idea and make a mockery of it. He was very supportive.”
What CES students and teachers saw included works made of steel and concrete, fieldstone and copper. A massive bird and nest which Jackson calls “a balancing act,” perched perfectly atop a steel beam. Like most of his sculptures, this one – at least two stories high – has philosophical underpinnings for Jackson, who says it represents the balance needed in life. He says his father helped him build the work, which took two days to create.
Among other sculptures scattered between and around a series of ponds and flowing landscaping across the land: a series of huge concrete tubes acting as stairs, each one centered by a drop straight down. Jackson told the students the stairs represent the choices we make in life. “You can do something positive and climb upwards,” he explained, “But if you mess up, you fall all the way to the bottom.”
A fieldstone constructed building designed by Jackson’s father three years ago (and taking almost a year to build, he notes) features portraits and names of influential figures over the 20th century, Martin Luther King Jr. prominent among them.
Especially meaningful for Jackson is the tallest of his works, a great metal bird atop a stone tower, a memorial to his father he began four weeks ago, burning the name, “Harvey Jackson Jr.” into the metal aside the bird.
Possibly the most popular – and one of the most breathtaking from a distance – of the works is a stone fountain some three stories high, which students saw in action.
Jackson and his sister, Phyllinga also showed students the pond from which their father pulled part of a mastodon over 30 years ago, donating part of it to area museums and keeping a portion, including a tooth they showed the students.
The students, meanwhile, repaid Jackson’s hospitality by presenting him a check for over $100 they had collected to buy mums and cannas, Harvey Jackson’s favorite flowers, in tribute to him. The Jackson family, in fact, will soon pull up all of the scores of cannas Harvey planted over the years on the property and store them for the winter indoors before replanting next spring, an annual ritual they have no intention of altering, reminding them as it does of their father’s presence and guidance.
The impact of that guidance on his family is obvious, not least in David, who took over his father’s company out of high school, working with younger brother Michael, they representing two of eight siblings (eldest sister Arnesia died last year).
As an African-American family putting down roots in a largely white, rural locale, the Jackson children were taught early on, says David, not to let racism temper their dreams. He credits his father and mother, Beverly, with “real parenting, not TV and computer parenting,” a method he now has a chance to employ with his three year old daughter, McKenna, alongside wife Katrina. They live on 30 acres adjoining the 40 acre family property across the road.
He notes being named “Artist of the Month” all those years ago was a turning point. “(Joyce) Lyman could see something in you,” he recalls. “Teachers need to draw out what students are good at. She did it with all the kids in her class; she found the positive in people and exploited it.”
He also credits retired Culver High School teacher Bill King, “one of the most influential teachers (on me) there. Everything he taught us about science has to do with what I do now.”
David Jackson became serious about his own sculpture about four years ago, he says, when he was designing some of the bridges on the property. “I can’t draw, but I can see it in a piece of iron or concrete.”
He says “carloads” of people, from Indiana, Michigan, and beyond now come out to see his work, especially in the summer, adding a lot of work and cost has gone into the pieces from his own pocket, even though the raw materials are almost all recycled from demolition jobs.
Concerned, as was his father, about the plight of youth today, David Jackson channels his father’s directives: “The main thing is to be what you are supposed to be. Find it and do it. Grownups: encourage that one point you see in somebody. My dad used to quote Martin Luther King (who) said, ‘if you do something well, people will beat a path to find you. That’s true.”
It’s certainly true of David Jackson, as busloads of Culver students attest to. Lyman, who organized the trip and continues to see greatness in Jackson’s art, calls him a “folk artist.” When asked about that title, Jackson doesn’t argue, but clarifies, “I consider myself a liver of dreams.”