Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
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Two Worlds Touch, 2005 (acrylic, 54x72) by Herb Jackson
The Names by Fred Chappell
The names we gave them never were their own, Merely the ones they learned to answer to At promise of a meal of favorite stew, A saucer of milk, a stroll, a rawhide bone, A jolly romp before the sun went down. Never would they call themselves Old Blue, Bojangles, Fluffy, Doc, or Honeydew. Their genuine names are known to them alone. Perhaps they claim their unimparted names When they depart our world so limited By human feeling and intelligence. Perhaps in that place they converse with streams And clouds and woodland spirits, where nothing is dead And everything alive to every sense.
Raleigh native and Professor of Art Emeritus of Davidson College, Herb Jackson received his MFA degree at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 1999, he received the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest civilian honor, for Lifetime Achievement in Fine Arts. He has had over 150 one-person exhibitions and has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in the US and abroad. His work is in the permanent collections of over a hundred museums, including the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the British Museum in London. See more of his work on his website.