PROFILE // Head Full of Snakes: Inside the mind of Darla Jackson
by Sarah Rose Etter
EXCERPT //
“On East Victoria Street in Port Richmond, there sits an urban oasis in the form of a warehouse. From the outside, the building looks nondescript, half abandoned on its block in a North Philadelphia neighborhood with deep Polish roots. I knock on the metal green door, which is scrawled with light graffiti. As soon as the door begins to open, an orange tabby cat runs down the sidewalk and follows me inside.
The warehouse is a converted studio space for some of Philadelphia’s most impressive and dynamic artists. Among them: Darla Jackson. Visiting her sculpture studio is what brings me here today.
“Oh, you found the cat,” she says. The tabby is winding itself around my ankles as the sound of a machine begins.
All around us, the warehouse is full of creators. On the first floor, just beyond Jackson’s shoulder, a man is woodworking and kicking up sparkling specks of dust into the air. Light streams through the giant grid of windows beyond him, and the scene takes on the effect of a lost era.
‘Follow me,” Jackson says.’”
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