ARTIST STATEMENT
Held Between Water and Sky considers water as elemental archive and the body as vessel of ancestral memory. Standing waist-deep in the Jordanian Dead Sea at sunset, I occupy a threshold space between immersion and emergence, inheritance and becoming. The sea’s high salinity allowed me to remain buoyant with grounded ease, keeping my posture steady and head lifted. Trusting the water, I felt held rather than overwhelmed. The archival pigment print preserves the integrity of the original image, subtly toned to reflect the stillness I experienced. A mineral gold disc, rendered through a speckled, grain-like application, references structural inheritance and honors my mother, whose favorite color was gold. It holds both radiance and the quiet imperfections of lived experience. A restrained crimson horizon line signals bloodline and forward motion, while blue tones of sky and water operate as atmosphere and architecture, evoking breath and unseen systems that sustain us.
I am aligned, held between water and sky.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lisa Marie Phoenix Jackson is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, integrated strategist, and storyteller whose work explores ancestral memory, geography, and intergenerational resilience. With over 14 years of experience in digital strategy consulting and a parallel practice as a self-care advocate following the publication of her first guide, her work bridges analysis and intuition, structure and spirit.
Working primarily with photography and mixed media interventions, she incorporates mineral gold, thread, and color to examine how lineage is carried through body and place. Rooted in Brooklyn and now based in Chicago, Jackson’s global perspective, shaped by travel to over 40 countries and grounded in her academic foundation in International Business, informs her approach to landscape as participant. Through her work, water, salt, and land become active carriers of memory, transmitting stories across generations while centering Black womanhood, continuity, and becoming. Her evolving practice expands from intimate lineage into broader mappings of Black community, migration, and the infrastructures built across geographies. Held Between Water and Sky, part of Between Mothers: Thread of Becoming, marks her first exhibited work and reflects her exploration of inheritance as a living presence.
© Lisa Marie Phoenix Jackson