Interview of Daniel Jackovino on his Solo Art Exhibit

Black Walnut Head Dolls of Daniel

Sometimes a phone call is forgotten even before uttering goodbye. Sometimes it is remembered for decades, but rarely does it lead to a solo art exhibit.

Daniel had met Victoria at the Art Students League of New York and had not spoken with her in a while when she called to ask if he’d heard from Mort, a fellow classmate. Ordinarily, Mort would have contacted Victoria for the holidays, but this year, he had not. Daniel hadn’t heard from Mort either and called him right away to receive the grave message. Mort was ill and had only weeks to live.

The next day, Daniel went to visit him in his studio and Mort’s condition was shocking. His legs were like balloons, filled with water, and out of proportion with his upper body, which was almost skeletal. After the visit, Daniel felt like he had to do something with his hands to let his emotions out of his system.

“I bent and dressed a wire hanger with torn clothing and attached a decomposed black walnut shell above the twist in the neck of the hanger,” Daniel says. He collected walnut shells in his backyard. He made the first doll, inspired by a “nut head doll,” an American folk art indigenous to the South. Then he made 38 more dolls.

“With photography slides of the dolls, I applied to the Newark Museum for its artist-in-residence program and was accepted,” says Daniel. “Next, I applied to the Donnell Library in New York for an exhibit and was also accepted.”

When the public library in New York called to discuss the solo exhibit, Daniel promised to give 36 dolls. He still does not know why he said 36.

Daniel’s exhibit connected him to thousands of people who visited the library in midtown Manhattan. Before it opened, it also connected him to his father, who had been sick and had not spoken for months. Daniel was unsure if his father was even able to speak anymore or if he chose not to, after falling down the basement stairs.

Right after Daniel’s call with the library, he shared his excitement with his father anyway. “Dad,” he says and tells him about having an exhibit in New York City. “I was not expecting a response and turned away,” Daniel says. “But my father said, ‘It’s better than here.’ I was surprised that he spoke, and I asked him, ‘You mean New Jersey?’ He said ‘Yes,’ and turned to me and said, ‘In New York, there are people who will understand and appreciate you.’” Then his father became silent again.

When I asked Daniel whether his father’s condition amplified his urge to create the dolls, he took a long pause and said, “Maybe.”

Daniel Jackovino is a journalist at Worrall Community Newspapers, covering Essex and Union counties in New Jersey. He is a painter and photographer and works as an usher at Paper Mill Playhouse. He has a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Drew University, studied Journalism at NYU School of Professional Studies and was a graduate student in the cinema division at the University of Southern California. The broad range of interests and education gave him the tools to express himself in multitude.

We met for coffee at Skidoo, a cafe in Glen Ridge, New Jersey when the warm sunlight was brightening the fall foliage. The roads to the cafe were closed due to construction, but we managed to get there.

The Donnell Library, where Daniel’s exhibition has been held, was demolished in 2008 to make room for a hotel across from the Museum of Modern Art, but he still had the slides of his dolls.

Daniel opened the bright yellow Kodak box he’d brought with him and took a black slide viewer to show me the transparent 35mm films of his dolls. They were magnified in the viewer.

Each doll had a unique story which was reflected by its pose and outfits, but also its name, like: “Dancer,” “Witch,” “Beggar with Sack,” “Monkey,” “Nightmare,” and “Crusader,” to name a few. Some of their walnut-shell faces had natural cracks for eyes and mouths and might have been gnawed by squirrels. Daniel had bent their wire bodies as he worked and dressed them in cloth and threads. The yellow and black striped fabric used for one of his dolls was from a dress that was once his mother’s.

Daniel photographed the dolls in his driveway by attaching them to an illustration board which was bent into a concave surface. The lighting came from the sun. They triggered some sense of suspension and curiosity in me, as if the dolls didn’t care about being captured because they were busy with being and living their own stories, almost accidentally, like having this lovely conversation with him twenty years later in a neighborhood cafe.