Kim Jackson loves details to an irritating degree.
Her art is meticulous. Jackson starts her portraits by sketching in red, black, gold and white markers. Each stroke is a highlight or shadow.
Then comes the intricate work: coloring. She fills the art with pieces of cigar labels — each selected, trimmed and positioned just right. Each label and stroke of ink illustrates inanimate objects like a Texas flag, humans like boxer Muhammad Ali or an eight-bit version of Batman.
For about a decade, the Arlington resident has combined her habit of smoking cigars with her love of making art. She has produced over 100 collage portraits made from delicately layered cigar labels. She was one of dozens of national, regional and local artists selected for the 11th annual South Street Art Festival in downtown Arlington.
“The more I do it, the more insane I get about the details,” she said. “And I clean it up as I go just because I’m uptight like that.”
Jackson picked up the habit in the early ’00s as a theatre major at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, where “the only thing to do was to go smoke cigars and run lines for theater,” she said.
She has made art for as long as she can remember. Her father was a political cartoonist, but she wasn’t as good at drawing. Instead, she’s drawn to a more realistic style.
Her art business began when she couldn’t figure out a birthday gift for a friend, Jackson said. She took about 150 labels they had collected together and made a portrait of Shakespeare.
At her tent for the South Street Art Festival, Jackson’s works seemed disconnected at first glance. Portraits, patriotism and pop culture icons sat next to one another.
Upon further inspection, her work’s details subtly shimmer.
Every shadow, every expression and all motions are made of tiny paper fragments — the gold-embossed edges of foil stamping on cigar bands.
Each piece can take about 100 hours, Jackson said.
While most of her work was hung in the tent, one larger piece was laid on a bench. The 2-by-4-foot piece was a commentary on the Food and Drug Administration wanting to take labels off cigars so they would be attractive to children.
The piece was made from 1,500 to 2,000 labels, she said.
Jackson has learned to master her craft of blending cigar bands’ colors to make a detailed image, said Steve Moya, owner and producer of South Street Art Festival.
“I am amazed at how good she is with what she does,” Moya said. “It’s a very unique talent and something you don’t see a lot.”
Her art carries both sight and scent. She displays and sells her work at a cigar lounge she co-owns in Burleson, Texas, Jackson said.
The bar in the lounge allows her to escape from the business side of selling art, Jackson said.
“It just was never a money thing to me. I just like making things, and I cannot stop,” she said.
Her work has traveled worldwide, and her commissioned clients include Al Micallef, owner of Micallef Cigars and the Reata restaurants in Alpine, Texas, and Fort Worth. One of the pieces Jackson did for Micallef consisted of 30,000 cigar bands.
Yet, Jackson is still processing that she’s selling art. A decade into her business, it’s not second nature to her. She still schedules alarms to make sure she’s promoting her art on Instagram.
But the reality is slowly setting in on her. She can now refuse commissioned pieces.
She owns 40 66-quart tubs of bands that friends and the cigar community have collected for her, even if she never directly asked for donations, she said.
Her art career is no smoke and mirrors — just smoke and glue.
@DangHLe
