Martha Jackson Jarvis (Public Art)
1. Title: Music of the Spheres
Medium: Glass Tesserae, Carnelian Stone, Indonesian Jade Stone, Steel, Mortar
Dimensions: 10’H X 60’W X 60’D
Date: 2003
Location: Fannie Mae Plaza 4250 Conn. Ave. NW Washington, DC
Commissioning Body: Fannie Mae
Date of Completion: May 2003
6.Title: River Spirits of the Anacostia: Wall C (Fishes)
Medium: Glass Tesserae (Mosaic)
Dimensions: 4.5’H X 100’W
Location: Anacostia Station Metro Green Line, Washington, DC
Commissioning Body: DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Location: Anacostia Station Metro Green Line, Washington, DC
2. Title: Music of the Spheres (detail)
Medium: Glass Tesserae, Carnelian Stone, Indonesian Jade Stone, Steel, Mortar
Dimensions: 10’H X 60’W X 60’D
Date: 2003
Location: Fannie Mae Plaza 4250 Conn. Ave. NW Washington, DC
Commissioning Body: Fannie Mae
7. Title: Family Circle
Cast concrete, glass mosaic, Stone
3’H X 35’W X 3’D (each) Seven Arcs total
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Commissioning Body: Cleveland Public Art
Date of Completion: 2009
3. Title: Point of Entry/ Notes from the James River
Materials: Sand Stone, Sapling Sumacs, Glass, Wood, Mortar
Dimensions: 9’H X 9’W X 2.5’D
Location: Katzen Museum
Art Center American University Washington, DC
Date: 2007
8. Title: Family Circle/ Ohio River Effigy
Cast concrete, glass mosaic, Stone
Dimensions: 3’H X 35’W X 3’D (each) Seven Arcs total
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Commissioning Body: Cleveland Public Art
Date of Completion: 2009
4. Title: Crossroads
Terracotta, Steel, Concrete, Glass, Stone
20’H x 23’W, 23” D
North Carolina Museum of Art
Raleigh, North Carolina
2005
9. Title: Sun Ra’s Intergalactic Street Throne
Glass, Steel, Concrete
6’ H x 24’W x 8’D
Location: Silver Spring, Maryland
Commissioning Body: RST Development
Date of Completion: 2012
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Each work, is an integral part of a larger, more cohesive body of work that tells a continuous
story.
MARTHA JACKSON JARVIS
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A dark, womblike atmosphere pervaded Martha Jackson Jarvis’s “Ancestors’ Bones,” an exhibition of recent work at the University of Delaware’s Mechanical Hall Gallery. More than a group of individual pieces, the show offered a complete staged environment. ( AM Weaver : Art In America Review) The sculpture Nest Stones (2010-11) straddled most of the central space. A tangled web of cured wisteria- and grapevines, anchored by large pod shapes made of petrified pine bark (pressurized bark found below the earth’s crust) and mortar, rested on the oak floor. Digital enlargement of the artist’s Ancestors’ Bones #1 (2010-11, mixed mediums on paper) covered one wall. The 20-by-26¼-inch drawing was also on view. It is a sepia-toned group portrait of African-Americans assembled in front of a one-room wooden schoolhouse. Hovering above them in the area of the sky are large monochromatic photo transfers of coral clusters. Intrigued by the engravings of Albertus Seda, an 18th-century pharmacologist, zoologist, and collector of plant and animal specimens, Jackson Jarvis used images of coral in most of the two-dimensional works in the exhibition. A series of photo collages lined other walls. These feature shots of Southern vernacular architecture, some inhabited and some not, as well as renderings of skeletal pears, leaves, and maple seeds. The photos were taken from a discarded family album of vintage images, picturing blacks from the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition’s title speaks volumes about the works displayed. Jackson Jarvis, who is based in Washington, D.C., and has been making artwork for more than three decades, intends to evoke ancestral visitors, and always pays homage to the spirit realm in her work. The installations, sculptures, and works on paper in this show reflect her interest in spirituality as well as her love of nature, both flora, and fauna. Like the ancients, Jackson Jarvis believes everything animate and inanimate possesses a life force. Of note, in two adjacent rooms, were additional mural-size details of her photomontages, along with 35 abstract mixed-medium ink drawings that spin-off of Seda’s coral engravings. The most compelling of these are from the “Free Spirit” series, in particular Free Spirit I and IV (both 2011, 42½ by 60 inches). They are a lyrical abstraction at its best and enliven the sepia tones, predominant in smaller drawings created between 2010 and ’11, with splashes of yellow ocher, blue and red. In one section of the show, Jackson Jarvis juxtaposed a mural featuring a detail from one of her gestural drawings and a 76-inch-wide sculpture, Umbilicus (2008). The latter consists of a giant version of a spherical sycamore pod, made of volcanic stone and glass, attached by a wooden vine to a long, narrow pod shape. The metaphor of birthing is evident here and coincides with Jackson Jarvis’s use of symbols of life and living. One was left with a sense of mystery, enhanced by the dramatic low lighting. With this exhibition, Jackson Jarvis brought together works reflective of a sensibility that she has nurtured for years, establishing her process and theme as a cyclical evolution. The term “environment” truly encapsulates the spirit of this exhibition.