Jacqueline Stack Lagakos

Here's the Found Artists exhibit panel text developed for Jacqueline Stack Lagakos, along with some photographs taken of her work.

Jacqueline Stack Lagakos has been making art from found materials since she salvaged throwaway chairs, repainted them in jazz images, and furnished her Lindenwold home with them.  Some of her chairs later found their way into a museum auction at the Stedman Gallery in Camden -- and she was on her way: On her way, though not yet a self-confirmed artist.  That came later.  Sojourning in California, then returning to New Jersey, she enrolled as an apprentice in the bricklayers union – one of the very first women ever admitted for that training – and then crossed over into the world of bottle walls, inspired by the work of visionary folk artist Grandma Prisbrey.  Jackie’s art continued to evolve, incorporating a delight in color and joy in working with her hands, all the while branching into other media.  Deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, friend and collaborator of such notable figures as Edward Espé Brown at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California, and Isaiah Zagar in South Philadelphia, she established herself as a capable and versatile artist.  Today, her mosaics and bottle walls, founded on expert masonry skills, coalesce to form subtly compelling built environments -- microcosms that gesture, in their meditative quality, toward a practical Buddhism at work within the abundant living universe. 

Bottle Wall Shrine

Mosaic Enso