About

William J. Jackson was born in Rock Island, Illinois. He has lived in New York City, in northern Vermont, in California and other parts of America, and has spent a total of three and a half years in India. He studied traditions and languages of India at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD. He taught courses on Comparative Religion, Asian Religions and Indian culture for many years at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He is the author of several books about south Indian musician-saints, three of them published by Oxford University Press. He is the author of journal articles such as “Sincere praise of honest sweat,” and “Evernew flights of creativity,” in Dharma Studies Journal. He has also published books such as American Tricksters, and The Wisdom of Generosity, (non-fiction studies) as well as novels such as Diving for Carlos, and The Singer by the River. Visual archetypal imagery has always been a key element in his writing and teaching. Collage-making has been a quiet passionate avocation of his for five decades. He currently lives with his wife Marcia in Leverett, Massachusetts.

From the Artist

Found objects are boundless, and the possibilities are endless. Many of my collages are pasted in blank books of various sizes. To me collage art represents a form well-suited to the expression of freedom. Whatever I find, on the street or wherever, my imagination feels free to employ it in picture-making, however my psyche sees fit, guided by intuition. We feel freedom in the scope of possible situations which collages can present to us, seeing the lost now found, and the repressed now blossoming vividly. Collage art lets us consider the untold world, its anima mundi freed from seeing cosmos as dead matter, with dynamic images coming to life in new fluid relationships.

Photos of Bill and Marcia Jackson’s house in Newark, Vermont.

We built a house, a cabin in the Vermont woods, when I was 27, and Marcia was 22, after returning from several months in India.

We built the house overlooking Sleeper brook, off the beaten path back in the woods. Fred Cross told us about the plot of 27 acres in Newark, which was owned by Roger Lucier. Marcia’s father, Alfred Plant, as a wedding present gave us the money we paid for the land and the lumber for building the house. Most of the boards came from a mill in Canada.

Marcia and I studied Rex Robert’s book “Your Engineered House” about frame structure, windows, insulation, etc. I worked at Jerry Derry’s sawmill in East Burke at that time, and I used small pieces of wood from to make a model house.

While we were working on the house, we saw that a building of the Fairbanks Morse Co. in St Johnsbury was being dismantled and sold, including two curved-frame arching transom windows, which looked perfect for our house.

With my brother Tom and his wife Karen, we put the timbers of the frame in place. Tom and Karen stayed in a tent near our tent on our land by the clearing. We cooked our meals over a campfire.

After tent-living for 6 months, we heard geese flying South and saw snowflakes drifting in the wind, as we put the front door in place. I found the hinges from an old barn and they worked well.

I have pangs, 50 years later, of nostalgia, a wish that the course of our lives had not left this place behind. I thought we would spend many years there in Newark. But life had other changes in store for us, and I am grateful for those opportunities.

During this time when we were living in Vermont, I wrote stories & poems for the Green Mountain Trading Post. For example, the poem beginning

“First settlers came to this place rough with riches Which had been getting ready for them Millennium after millennium.”

I was a late bloomer. Confucius said, “If a man hasn’t done something remarkable by 40 he probably won’t ever.” I built this house when I was under 30. After a 5 month stay in India. My writing on aspects of India was a sign of my work. This house is too.

I always wanted to carve into one of the beams an old passage “Unless the Lord build the house, they strive in vain who build it.” But I never got around to it. I always felt that way about it. It was a place of dedication.