Heavy metal

Sculptor Preston Jackson casts stories and bronze with equal amounts of panache. Each of the nearly 30 works in “Fresh From Julieanne’s Garden,” on display at the Chicago Cultural Center, tells a tale inspired by his Southern ancestors. Jackson pairs his writing—he calls it “historical fictions”—with his bronze sculptures, all of which appear to be frozen in action. Hanging on a gallery wall near The Soldier and the Mastiff on Mule Head Island are a few paragraphs about a former slave named Julius Ward who, after fighting for the Union, finds himself a Confederate POW. He is rounded up and shot with some other black soldiers, but does not die. Discovered alive by a sympathetic grave digger, he is nursed back to health and supplied a temporary home on Mule Head Island. When the townsfolk become aware of his presence, they send over a bloodthirsty mastiff to eat him.

The sculpture finds Julius in thick of his battle with the dog, who appears as sort of an antiquated robot: The bitch’s shoulders and hips are secured to her body with giant flat-head screws, and a wide slit runs a few inches down the middle of her back—the piggy bank of unsympathetic death and dismemberment.

The text informs us that he pulls his bowie knife out at the last minute and impales the dog as she falls on top of him. In the sculpture, his knife is still in his belt, looking like a warm slice of reddish-brown cheese.

A professor of sculpture at the School of the Art Institute, Jackson was born and raised in Decatur. This work, however, is linked to his Southern ancestors of the 1800s and 1900s, specifically Julieanne, Jackson’s grandmother and muse. The mood created is certainly one of a master storyteller weaving a tale packed with bits of fact and pearly streaks of the surreal, as if plucked from Julieanne’s garden of experience.

The two elements—metal and narrative—combine to form a massively powerful world of history and invention.

Claire Michelle, “the most striking woman in the State of Kentucky,” provides a sterling—though still bronze—example of Jackson’s penchant for expressive physical forms. The hands in this piece are violently dynamic and appear to act separately from the woman’s body. She has a severe bosom, and her asymmetrical musculature suggests both motion and contortion.

Another trait of many of Jackson’s female subjects is the way that they seem to lean far enough forward to tip over. They float headstrong yet unhurried, like specters driven on by some vital sense of duty. In Toward Union Lines, a woman glides along, child stuck to her breast and basket (with a chicken on top) balanced on her head. Her legs are invisible under a long dress that turns into tree roots at the ground. She wears a determined but vacant look, as though she’s looking at the world through a third eye; the bearer of a lesson who develops at her own melancholy pace.

Subtly harrowing is Protecting Assets, in which a shirtless pregnant woman stands cradling her belly over a trio of holes dug into the earth; she is captured as if she was knocked to the ground to be beaten and whipped. The unborn child was a major commodity in the South during the years of slavery, and although Jackson states that women used as breeders were invaluable—as the importation of slaves had been banned—“Many received beatings while pregnant or nursing. Those beatings often caused the blood from their wounds to mix with the milk from their breasts, forming long streams of pink liquid flowing down their bodies.” The woman’s face wears a look of confusion and innocence, and her back is crisscrossed with wormlike scars.

Jackson’s vision doesn’t shy from pain and tragedy, but its real roots are in strength, resourcefulness, courage and a deep connection to nature. He manages to inform us and spur the imagination, offering plenty to digest but keeping the appetite healthy. This show is not to be missed.