Spotlight on Jackie M
If you ever reviewed stacks of resumes and references while filling a position, you’ve seen descriptions calling someone a “self-starter.” Jackie M is something rarer: a true “starter.” In her many roles an artist. arts educator, administrator, advocate, and activist, Jackie has initiated works, exhibits, programs, characters, and ideas with lasting impact.
photo: Insightfoto
In her words, “Everything goes back to the arts.” Childhood memories include watching her first opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, on television, seeing Fontaine and Nureyev dance, enjoying a Met touring company’s performance, and taking drawing classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s when activism motivated many young people, Jackie considered a career in social work but instead chose Art History, earning a B.A. from the University of Michigan and studying the History of Photography in a University of New Mexico M.A. program. In Santa Fe, Hazel Archer’s classes on perception and its relation to art sparked themes that resonated through Jackie’s work and still fascinate her – people’s responses to stimuli, how quickly interpretations form, how the system of Visual thinking Strategies influences what we see, and how observation is a skill to be taught and learned.
In Santa Fe in the 70’s and 80’s, Jackie was the “starter” of several endeavors – one of the founders of Santa Fe Gallery of Photography and The Performance Space, as well as the creator of two enduring characters. One was “The Rubber Lady,” a performance art character begun in 1978 by Jackie in which she, clad in a full-body wet suit crafted by artist Brad Smith, silently appeared in art venues, on the streets of Santa Fe and then elsewhere, always unexpectedly and anonymously, for more than a decade. Although the media gave the living sculpture character its name, Jackie let it stick. “Who we are to people has more to do with their personal perception of us than to our own sense of self.” “If there has been any common thread through the diversity of places I have appeared and ideas I have presented, it has been about a questioning…I was working from a deep-seated passion to see what would happen if I appeared in the fog, or on the roof of a building for an hour, becoming a caryatid.” The second emergent nomenclature was “Jackie M,” at first an artistic riff echoing the time’s widespread nickname of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis as “Jackie O,” but now the established identification of a woman well-known and respected across many artistic, educational, and civic circles of Santa Fe.
In the 90’s Jackie became the first Curator of Education and Special Programs at the new SITE Santa Fe, a contemporary art space and museum platform for producing and presenting artistic and curatorial innovation. Soon after, she also became founding Director of Education for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. At both institutions she developed education and public initiatives welcoming everyone from local school children to distinguished resident scholars to internationally renowned speakers. She forged collaborations with other arts organizations, social service agencies, and educational institutions, and championed programmatic inclusivity across the diverse cultures, genders, ages, and ableness levels that typify Santa Fe’s residents and visitors.
All those themes continued to resonate, and still do, throughout Jackie’s subsequent wide-ranging activities as an independent arts consultant and educator. An art studio program for developmentally disabled adults, Santa Fe Opera’s Young Technicians Program for teens, and a course for UNM medical students in building observation skills – she’s done them all. The Whitney Museum of Art, the Mayo Clinic, the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, and Santa Fe’s Capshaw Middle School – she’s worked with them all.
Jackie enjoys opera as a synthesis of many arts. She’s served on the Education Advisory Committee for the Santa Fe Opera, trod its stage as a supernumerary, been on our Guild’s Board, and headed its Communications Committee. If you encountered her at our 2024 Annual Luncheon, you may have shared in stimulating conversation on the Santa Fe art scene, the relationship of perception and imagination, the beauty of winter sunsets behind New Mexico mountains, or the joys of being a Guild volunteer bringing inspiring programs to our community. Perhaps Luncheon conversations may have “started” ideas and endeavors for you, too?