Superbloom? Wildfire? Thomas Jackson’s art installation is in the eye of the beholder

“Tulle no. 12,” a 2020 artwork by environmental artist and photographer Thomas Jackson in Stinson Beach. Photo: Thomas Jackson

During the eight years artist Thomas Jackson lived in the Bay Area, before he moved to Philadelphia in 2021, he photographed his whimsical installations in some of the region’s most scenic locations.

He’d start by finding a natural setting with a built-in awe factor, like the windswept bluffs over Stinson Beach or the Point Reyes cliffs, and then craft onsite an elaborate abstract assemblage from intentionally unnatural materials. The resulting images juxtapose to delightful effect nature and artifice.

Jackson has worked with plastic plates, glow-in-the-dark necklaces, take-out containers, hula hoops, umbrellas, lawn flags, cheese balls and countless yards of candy-hued tulle. His vibrant photos have the quality of an illusion; the eye can’t exactly tell why the billowing explosions of color, swaying above ground in unison, appear more like a flock of birds […]

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