Former athlete turns to art to express his creativity

Former athlete turns to art to express his creativity

(Noah Jackson)


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PROVO — A former athlete turned artist when he couldn't resist the urge to create anymore.

Two years ago, if you asked artist Noah Jackson what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d say a professional soccer player, but he became dissatisfied with the sport.

“At a certain point I decided I wanted to spend my time making things, in hopes of creating beautiful moments for people,” Jackson said.

In his senior year of high school, he was starting to become extremely invested in painting, while still practicing and playing hard on the soccer field. Recruited to play for BYU, Jackson spent the summer before his freshman year struggling between focusing on art and soccer.

“One day I woke up and decided that I needed to decide between art and soccer,” Jackson said. “So I called my coach and told him that I quit.”

Jackson said a main source of his inspiration to create comes from his brother Levi. After years of helping him with projects at strange and long hours, Jackson started to ask himself why his brother was so dedicated, and if he felt the same way.

“In the past two years there has not been a day that I wake up and don’t think about making art,” Jackson said. “It has become something that is a really important part of my life. I work between 20-30 hours every week on creating things.”

Between art, a part-time job and being a student at BYU, Jackson said sometimes balancing his life can be a challenge. He hopes to someday have a studio and be a full-time artist. Jackson cites a laundry list of things from glitter to grass to Kanye West that give him sparks of insight when dreaming up his next project; he is always on the lookout for creative inspiration.

Jackson said he tries not to limit himself to one medium, but express himself through painting, photography, video and sculpture all at the same time, in the same space. He said he is always surprised how each piece informs the other.

“Being an artist that only uses one medium is suspicious to me, because then you are saying that your ideas are always communicated best one single way,” Jackson said. “We live in a time where people have already paved the way for the acceptance of new media (video, photography, performance) into the art world, and so I think as artists today we have so many tools to say what we want to say, that we owe the world our ideas in their purest and best-functioning form.”

Jackson has big dreams of expanding to clothing and set design, working on a magazine and being a musician. He said his greatest joy comes from dreaming up and throwing himself into new projects. He also said he is very approachable about his work.

‘No matter how much a person knows about art I am always willing to answer questions about my work,” Jackson said.


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About the Author: Amanda Taylor -------------------------------

Amanda is a writer and pop culture fanatic who studied journalism at BYU. She has written for a candy store, a US Senator, Deseret News, an art museum, Entertainment Weekly magazine, a beauty company, KSL and several artists and musicians. Find her on Twitter @amandataylor88.

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