STARCHIVE: Kobe Jackson

Katherine Fu
→BFA CER 2025

Kobe Jackson
→MA GAC 2025

March 14, 2025, 4:00 PM

I take the bus into Olneyville and stand in a patch of sun, watching a mother and son play kickball in the parking lot until Kobe appears from one of the many doors in front of me. We walk up a spiraling wood staircase to their studio. It is not quite spring yet; the air inside is still noticeably cold.

Favorite tool: Ratchet a.k.a socket wrench

KF How long have you been here?

KJ Since June of last year. After I finished an interdisciplinary grad sculpture class with Derrick Woods-Morrow he said, “I'm trying to get somebody to take over my studio lease.” I was like, “Where is it?” He said, “Atlantic Mills.” I was like, “I'll take it!”

A historic mill building from the 1850s, Atlantic Mills has over time become an artist’s haven. In response to a pending change of ownership in 2024, the recently formed and first commercial tenants’ union in the state has been advocating to protect business and artist spaces in the Mills from displacement and rent changes.

KF Do you know how many artists are in here in total?

KJ I don't know, but we have like 100 people in the union. Most of them are artists and musicians.

All photos by Katherine Fu

Kobe says sometimes they can hear sounds from band practice, at times multiple rehearsing concurrently, from around the grounds. Maybe the walls are thin or maybe Kobe and their studiomates like to keep their windows open, but there’s a sense that the studio is much larger than the space implies. Kobe’s space is quietly dramatic but distinctly worked in. A skylight somewhere vaguely above us filters light into the room.

KF Do you feel like you draw much or does it go straight to painting?

KJ I don't really draw much at the moment. I start with painting outlines and then fill them in.

Kobe brings me over to a corner occupied by a flat bench and an easel, where they’ve been working on a painting in their latest body of work revolving around creating 3D objects that they paint in collaged, abstract compositions. They show me a face cobbled from scrap wood. Its form is reflected in lime and yellow paint on the canvas next to it.

KF How do you think about materiality in painting? Now that you’re also getting into sculpture, does that change?

KJ I use mostly found materials—not only does it take most of the financial pressure off but it gives me a structure, narrows the options to be less overwhelming, and is more environmentally sustainable. In California, I used to make wood panels out of thin pieces from a cabinet shop’s dumpster. I also painted on scrap wood from alleys, cut them up with circular or chop saws, glued the supports on the back, sometimes primed them with old house paint and other times left the patina as a ground. In Providence, there are a ton of frames and loose canvas that get discarded so I’m painting on those now.

I have always done a bit of sculpture alongside painting but it feels new in that recently, sculpture has kind of surpassed painting in my mental hierarchy. Though sculpture can transform or have a conversation with a space in a way that painting can’t, I feel that I will always primarily be a painter because it has the best ratio of materials, equipment, and space to potential. Painting produces the illusion of space; it can hold way more than the space it occupies.

It certainly can occupy significant physical space, though. There are stacks of paintings everywhere around us: on a bookshelf, behind the sofa, packed face-to-face together and perched high onto the walls.

KF Do you like having all this art that you’ve made over the years around you as you’re making?

KJ William Kentridge said during a talk he gave in Providence that at the end of your life, you can look at your entire body of work and all of it together will tell you what your art is about. So, it's a progression, not a freeze frame. It takes some of the pressure off of figuring it all out right now.

Having some of my older work in my studio is comforting. It reminds me that I was in a different place, living a totally different life five or ten years ago. I used to have this attitude that my work could just be lost in the ether unless someone bought it, but after hearing what Kentridge said, it made me want to hold onto things.

KF You’ve been painting all your life—how has the way you’ve thought about art and how it fits your life changed over time and post grad?

KJ As a kid, I didn’t really see it as part of my identity, but it’s become more and more central to my life. If it were taken away from me now, it would be like internet being cut off for a gamer. In that viral scenario, the gamer destroyed a toilet with a baseball bat. I wouldn’t do that but it captures the level of commitment. Post grad feels liberating because I was completing all these assignments in a hyper mode of speed learning. Now I’m free to really follow my own path, but moving now having the bearings greased with that new momentum.

Kobe’s post-grad twice over, having finished their bachelors degree and gone back for a Masters in RISD’s Global Arts and Cultures program. Unlike an MFA program, GAC is a MA liberal arts program, focused on research and writing.

KF What was your arc of progression to GAC?

KJ I guess it was the desire to develop ideas and theory that accompany art. In the art world, there's this imposing culture of having to be a business person as well as an artist. You have to explain your art for it to be relevant and to validate it to people who maybe aren’t as fluent in visual languages, or don’t want to spend time on close looking.

I think some of it might come from grant writing culture. Museums, galleries, and artist residencies are all institutions that center visual arts and are counterintuitively governed by written narratives. The more I traversed through the art world, the more that all these narratives stood out to me. It was like a pretentious foreign language. It kind of pissed me off. I wanted to understand. That was my drive: to be able to talk and write about art, and that maybe, becoming fluent in that language would add to my practice in a way that was not only helpful for the business end but also interesting for me.

Kobe offers me a cup of tea. We stand in the kitchen quietly. A breeze floats in from the window, and as if summoned, we hear drums and a hazy guitar riff start in the near distance. Band practice has begun.

KF What are you excited for?

KJ The possibility of something big and dramatic, but maybe the little things too, like spaghetti for dinner.

Katherine Fu doesn’t know what to do with any of this.
Kobe Jackson knows what to do with some of this.