When JoAnna Jackson and her husband moved to St. Louis four years ago, the self-taught artist couldn’t have predicted how the pandemic would shape her second act. The lockdown gave the newly retired Jackson time to stock her Etsy site with new offerings, enroll in virtual workshops, and strengthen her teaching techniques by offering online classes. Today, Jackson teaches embroidery and bookbinding classes at The Studio at Bowood and hosts paper marbling and bookbinding workshops at her studio inside her South City home. She also sells her creations on Etsy, everything from journals made with the Japanese stab-binding method, to handmade embroidered hair clips and book weights under the brand name Nestfeathers. We interviewed Jackson to learn more about her life and work.
You’re a native of Atlanta. What brought you to St. Louis?
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
Both our daughters went to SLU and never came home. Now we have grandkids here. They’d been after us for quite a while to move and we finally did. We moved from Louisville, Kentucky, four years ago, the day before the world shut down on February 28, 2020. I’ve been teaching a lot more since then. I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that. I started offering classes on Zoom and that got me going. I’ve also retired–I’m a certified mammogram tech. So I was always doing art, but I was doing it part time.
How did you get started and how has your art evolved?
I’ve been doing art—mainly stitching—since I was little. [Later] I started painting and then a friend of mine [and I] did a marbling workshop in her backyard. I had all these marbled papers I needed to do something with, so I started doing mixed media. Then I started bookbinding. Now, I’ve circled back to embroidery combined with marbling and bookbinding. When I make a book, most of them have embroidered covers or embroidered edges, and I use the marbled papers in the book in some fashion. I wrap the book signatures with marbled paper or [use marbled paper] for the endsheets.
Where did you get the name Nestfeathers?
It’s an interesting story. I used to have a store in Shelbyville when we lived in Kentucky. It was a gift shop and, in the back, I had my art gallery. I was trying to come up with a name for the store and I couldn’t come up with anything. But I was doing a Beth Moore book study called “Feathers from My Nest.” I woke up in the middle of the night one night and was like, ‘That’s it. That’s the name: Nestfeathers.’ That was 2008, and after I closed the store I kept the name for my business.
You work with many materials. You even do some encaustic, or hot wax, painting. How do you decide what medium to work with and what you’re going to create?
I’m self-taught. I’ve taken some painting classes and a few online classes but mostly I’m self- taught. I’ve been sewing, embroidering, and stitching since I was young. My mixed media–the paper marbling and book making—are completely self-taught.That’s pretty much how I do everything. I just get the stuff and start playing around until I figure it out. I think it helps make it my own. During the pandemic lockdown, like everybody, I took Zoom classes and I started feeling like I was just copying everybody else. When I get materials and start messing with them, then it becomes mine. It’s more original.
How did the lockdown impact your art and business?
The pandemic was wonderful for Etsy. People didn’t have anything else to do. They were shopping, I think. During the lockdown, I sold so much on Etsy and it gave me a lot of time to create because I didn’t have anywhere to go. Then, when things finally opened up and I started doing in-person classes again, people were ready for it.
What can someone who attends one of your paper marbling workshops expect?
For paper marbling, I don’t do those strictly as a workshop, I plan those as an experience. So, when you get here, I’ll feed you breakfast. We all eat together. Then, we go to my wet studio, which is in the basement, and I demonstrate how to paper marble. Everybody has their own station and they marble 25 sheets. We marble until lunch time and then come upstairs to eat. Then, we return to marbling until about 3:30 p.m. and finish with a snack and maybe a glass of wine.
So it’s really personalized?
Yes. I’m teaching you how to marble paper but it’s hands on. You’re doing it. In a lot of classes, the instructor is talking and the students are watching the teacher. I’m mostly letting students do their own thing. They’re asking questions and I’m right there to help them.
Would you say the process is accessible to beginners?
Absolutely. And they come out with the most gorgeous papers. It amazes me every time.
What do students do with their finished papers?
Some are mixed-media artists. Some are book makers. One time, a couple wanted only four colors of paint because they use their papers to cover the back of a bookcase. A lot of people use it as wrapping paper or frame it and hang it on the wall. And a lot of people tell me they just sit and look at it.
It can be that way with a really nice journal or art materials, I’m afraid to mess it up with my ugly handwriting or bad ideas.
Most of the journals I make I either use handmade watercolor paper or I use mixed-media paper so you can use pen and ink and watercolor or whatever. You can do a lot of doodling with markers. It’s not just for writing. And marbled paper…it’s just paper. That’s what I tell students. But, I know. I have a whole cabinet of journals that I haven’t written in.
