M. Jake Jacobson
Faculty
Minneapolis Community and Technical College
Minneapolis, Minnesota
October Sunrise, Sawbill Lake BWCA
View Garden Reflections Gallery
Jake Jacobson received his Masters in Design from the University Minnesota, BFA from MCAD, and Osaka University of Arts, Japan. He is a practicing professional artist, and has taught art, design, history, and education studies courses at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, and the College of Visual Arts for over 3 decades.
Jacobson currently teaches full-time in the Department of Graphic Design and Visual Communications, Web Design, and Film. He instructs all levels of courses in Design and History of Photography. His photography portfolio focuses on “REFLECTIONS” in two ongoing efforts. First, BOUNDARY WATERS REFLECTIONS is an ongoing project of creating a series of images building on 50 years of indulging in the beauty and serenity of up north in the BWCA, Minnesota and Quetico Park, Canada. The second is, GARDEN REFLECTIONS, a yearly challenge of capturing and sharing a series of images created from his own Minnesota garden.
Of his Reflections, Jacobson comments:
The landscape reflections are visual poems that allow any viewer to contemplate and self-surrender to the
connotations of isolation and loneliness of these remarkable areas of the world. I am particularly interested in the
natural reflections of light in color as they play across water and wood; those expansive horizons that speak to our
hearts with something more than just beauty, Garden Reflections is essentially an urban art-form in an attempt to
create compressed visual environments that include elements of Nature.
I create “reflections” from one or many images. Many of the works have been born from a search to see and capture a deeper beauty that one could never put to pencil or film. If the sunset, or a bloom, stayed forever, it would go crazy. It is creation beyond thought. This artist's intention of imaging nature is not imitation but rather appreciation of the lessons that nature holds about life. For example, windswept-pined shorelines speak of perseverance; flowers and grasses that bend with the wind reveal the power of resilience; and evanescence of life is seen in the endless cycle of change. To see the organic complexity of even the simplest thing - the delicate branching pattern of a spring Wisteria or the sculptural construction of an Iris - reminds us that there is more. Reflections are a “hanchi” or pond, at the entrance; symbolizing the threshold between inside and outside spaces.
