JACKSON NASSIR
BY NATHAN BADGER, A JUNIOR MAJORING IN HISTORY AND MATHEMATICS
“PEOPLE CALL ME AN OPTIMIST, BUT I AM REALLY NOT AN OPTIMIST. I JUST WORK VERY HARD TO FIND THE BEAUTY IN THINGS AND IN PEOPLE."
Thanks to Jackson Nassir, a senior majoring in business and art, visitors to the Cruzen Murray Library may come by beauty with ease. His art installation traverses all three stories of the building and, through masterly craftsmanship, carries a story of life, death, and beauty throughout. Visitors to the library might begin their journey on the building’s top floor, where blue, gold, and black silk flowers first arrest the attention. They sit piled in glass display boxes and delicately perched on the wall of the stairwell. Guests are invited to follow the trail of petals downward. In the basement, the source of the floating tokens of life is finally revealed: a dying tree. The spindly structure of wood is covered in a mass of determined flowers and surrounded by a floating cloud of those that have relinquished their hold and begun to ascend. In contrast to these releasing and rising tokens are 25 stones piled in rigid construction. The viewer’s journey ends with this grounded punctuation, but the experience—of reflection and introspection—continues far longer. The installation was Nassir’s final project in an independent study of advanced sculpture under art professor Stephen Fisher. Fisher pushed Nassir to try new materials and, more importantly, to reimagine the possibilities of installation. “The space is half the work,” Nassir explains. Before he began constructing the piece, he first had to find a suitable location. Nassir describes that, even as a child, he had an eye for space and a certain distaste for its misuse. As he remembers it, “I wanted my art to be put into a space that will bring people into an underutilized, unvisited space.” Not only did the Cruzen Murray Library offer Nassir a spot in one of the more architecturally celebrated buildings on campus, it offered somewhat of a blank canvas. Nassir’s original plan for the installation only included the tree, yet the vertical scapes of blank wall invited him to reconsider. From the first shipment of petals in early October 2024 to the final stone placement in January of 2025, Nassir significantly altered his vision. While he received funding as part of the Student Research Conference, the money went towards materials, leaving him to craft and iterate the installation without any outside help. The final product stands as a testament to Nassir’s many hours of conversation with professor Fisher and many more silent hours of independent navigation. The installation is an ode to life and death and the life within death. Having endured near-death experiences in the past, Nassir stresses the importance of celebration in his piece. As he puts it: “It’s a beautiful thing, death. It really is. And it’s often tragic and its often depressing, but the reality is, it happens to all of us.” Moving forward, Nassir expects art to remain a part of his life. While the graduating senior will soon begin a full-time career in finance, he has also been selected as a featured summer artist in McCall and is expected to partner with a Treasure Valley décor store. Nassir’s dream is to open an art consultation business with his parents, whom he cites as the greatest supporters of his art journey. As for the installation, it is unclear where the many pieces will end up. Nassir hopes for it to remain in the college library but has also begun conversations with a number of installation museums. The potentials are plenty. Yet, if students had a say, the installation would never leave the place it first took root.