Silver Salt Spoon 1935 - 1942

This is Frederick Jackson’s “Silver Salt Spoon,” made with graphite on paper. I’m struck by the way Jackson uses graphite here, such a humble material, to render something precious. The layering of tones really brings out the reflective quality of the silver. It’s amazing what you can do when you just let the process lead! Check out the lower spoon— it’s a simple, elegant contour drawing. See how it captures the essence of the spoon with just a few lines? It's like Jackson is showing us different ways of seeing, different ways of representing the same object, from detailed realism to pure, distilled form. It reminds me a bit of Morandi and his bottles, or perhaps the reductive forms of Ellsworth Kelly, stripping things down to their barest essentials. Anyway, art is all about this ongoing conversation across time. It's cool to consider that what we see is never fixed!