BYUH professors share their experiences as artists and their different artistic styles
Jacob Jackson said he knew he wanted to make 3D art, specifically pottery and sculpture, since he was a child. Growing up in Laie, Jackson, an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts & Letters, said, “The art program has been important to me my whole life.” He said he has worked with clay since the age of 4 and would sneak into his neighbor’s backyard to watch him make pottery.
Jackson graduated from BYU–Hawaii and got his master’s of fine arts at University of Hawaii at Manoa. After this, he said he started working and selling his artwork in galleries around Honolulu. Starting in 2005, he also worked part-time teaching art classes at BYUH until he got the full-time position in 2019. Jackson said his love of water and the way it interacts with the land has inspired him to represent the ocean and mountains of Hawaii in his artwork.
When working on pottery, Jackson said, “I think of the outer surface of the vessel as being like a canvas to paint on.” He described the process as treating the outer surface of the ceramic vessel as an abstract painting before using colors and forms borrowed from the land and the ocean.
Reflecting on his career, Jackson said, “It’s normal for people in the arts to struggle when they first finish with the school, to try to find a way to sell their work. I wish I put more time and effort into selling my work.”
Robert McConnell, an associate professor in the Faculty of Arts & Letters, said he explored different paths before settling into one category. “I took art in high school and in college. It was industrial design at first. Then I tried an engineering class, and I didn’t like it, so I went back to art - mostly art education because I like teaching.” He continued, “There is nothing wrong with taking time to figure out what you really want to do.”
McConnell graduated with a master’s of fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore with an emphasis in graphic design. There he said he started to make his first couple of projects. His work is mostly focused on screen printing, typography and lettering. He explained typography has letters that are already made or are created for other people to use. In creating typography, McConnell said, “You have to make sure all the little pieces work so that
it’s useful for other designers.”
He said he was drawn to typography because of the way “it communicates a message or a certain tone, something beyond just the words or the letters that they say.” He said the look, shape and size of typography serve as forms of visual communication.
In helping art students with their choices, McConnell said, “We expose them to different projects and teach them different skills [to help them] find something they enjoy and know [so] when they graduate [they can] make a living from doing that.”