Darla Jackson

"The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains."
-Arthur Golden

Each series begins with a feeling...something any of us could relate to...in this case love and loss. After going through a well timed recent breakup, I took everything I was feeling and poured it into this work...everything I'd felt for years each time my heart broke. It was like gluing a plate back together and breaking it again....gluing and breaking... eventually pieces got lost and soon the whole thing was mostly just glue anyway...what was real of what was left? I don't know. It all felt real...until all of a sudden it didn't anymore. Just like that.

tan·gle  (ˈtaŋ-gəl) -v. 1.  to seize and hold in or as if in a snare.  2.  to unite or knit together in intricate confusion  -n. 1.  a twisted mass. 2a.  a complicated or confused state or condition. 2b.  a state of perplexity or complete bewilderment.

I've always believed that we learn much more from our failures than we do our successes. There is so much beauty in the hard won lessons of failure, if we can get back up and find them. This series is meant to call attention to the beauty that can be found when we fall, by using birds as stand ins for humans. When they fall, we can stop and examine them, appreciating them in a way we couldn't before. The same holds true with ourselves.

Every day we enter into contracts, both large and small...everything from promises, relationships,marraiges, business deals...and often we don't take the time that is needed to determine if we can each uphold our side of the deal. This ends in broken promises, broken relationships, broken marriages, broken partnerships and unfortunately the reality is that we don't always learn for the next time around. This creates distance, resentment, and mistrust, which all carry right on into our future promises, relationships, marriages, and/or business deals... Breaking this cycle requires a hard look at oneself, stripped bare of what hopes you may have for yourself or others, facing the reality of who you are and what you are capable of.

My inspiration from this piece comes from the story of Snow White. As the story goes, our heroine's unknowing trust is what causes her to bite the apple that poisons her into a deep sleep. The only cure is True Love's kiss...but what if no-one ever came?

Fairy tales are stories that help us drift off to sleep each night, but the modern day watered down Disney versions do little to prepare us for the realities we may face while we are awake. As a woman, I struggle with the idea of "happily ever after" and of being rescued...or not. As a mother, I struggle with how to balance this idealistic dreamland with gentle reality checks. As a human, I struggle with knowing when to ask for help and how to accept it if it comes. In life it seems we relive events or situations over and over again until certain truths are realized. When we try our best, yet nothing changes, we begin to question ourselves, our actions, our choices. We become unsure and uneasy and doubt seeps in wherever it can. We start to feel trapped. We relive moments over and over in our heads, trying to figure out what went wrong. We may look to others for help, yet if we don't speak up the won't know we're suffering. We wish for someone...anyone...to save us, when we should be saving ourselves.

Sometimes life becomes a series of all or nothing bets, one after the other. Some things come together, while other things fall apart and all you can really do is brace for impact.

This work was about everything I felt was going wrong in my life over a period of 2 years. I got separated, I moved out of my house and slept on a floor for months, I felt like I was dodging emotional bullets and land mines left and right, I felt alone and I didn't want to feel it all anymore. Coup de grace, the centerpiece of Brace for Impact, was about just that. Here is this life size bear who has ripped out her own heart in order to no longer feel anything. 

In an effort to continue with this feeling of all or nothing bets, I ended up raffling off the whole show. Nothing was available for sale. Only tickets for a chance to win each piece were available. 

Coming soon...