Roxanne Jackson

Ovum

September 12 – October 22, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12, 5–7 PM

The Pit is pleased to present OVUM, a solo exhibition of new ceramic works by Roxanne Jackson. Created over the past year—culminating in an intensive summer residency at California State University, Long Beach’s Center for Contemporary Ceramics—this exhibition unveils Jackson's first solo presentation in her home state, bringing together ambitious large-scale sculptures and intimate objects that capture feral life in an enduring state of transformation.

Named after the biological origin of life, OVUM unfolds as a meditation on emergence and survival, highlighting creatures that hatch from an egg. Born ready, precocial species like snakes immediately strike out on their own, driven by a potent primal instinct. In Jackson’s lore, mythical beasts and strange wildlife adapt to a spartan, littered wilderness where fantasy collides with reality. Distinctions between human and animal, interior and exterior and beauty and decay continually dissolve. These wild sculptures suggest a world in which identity is never fixed, but always in the process of becoming.

Jackson treats clay as a living material—one capable of mimicking skin, shell, bone, mineral, and viscera with equal conviction. Richly varied surfaces recall weathered tree bark, cracked earth, iridescent scales, fossilized remains, and the delicate architecture of marine life. Glaze becomes less a decorative finish than another living skin, carrying evidence of heat, pressure, and transformation. Every sculpture retains a palpable sense of its own making, embracing the unpredictability of the kiln as an essential part of its final form.

In this modern myth Jackson blends natural history, mythology and speculative fiction. A serpent coils protectively around an ancient vessel. A bird's body opens to reveal an impossible interior. A harpy roosts high above, silver treasures spilling from her nest, exposing her bestial nature. Throughout the exhibition, birth and death, vulnerability and resilience, attraction and unease exist simultaneously. The works possess the strange familiarity of archaeological discoveries—as though they have been excavated from an enchanted ecosystem that belongs equally to the distant past and an imagined future.

This uncanny world is rooted as much in process as in storytelling. Jackson's residency at the Center for Contemporary Ceramics provided an opportunity to expand both the scale and ambition of her work, while embracing the experimental possibilities of the ceramic studio. Working with controlled chaos, she allows uncertainty to remain visible, treating firing not simply as a means of production but as another stage of transformation. This approach echoes Jackson’s longstanding fascination with geology, biology, and myth—and the ways our folklore of creation, mutation, and adaptation shape our understanding of nature.

Although populated by fantastical beings, OVUM remains anchored in reality, offering a poignant reflection on our own living world. Jackson presents nature not as a stable system governed by clear boundaries, but as a conscious, adaptive network of relationships—one where growth and collapse, mutation and regeneration remain inseparable. Her sculptures evoke a wilderness in perpetual flux. In her vision, the ovum is not simply the beginning of life, but a condition of eternal possibility—a form suspended between what has been and what is still waiting to emerge.

For more information please email info@the-pit.la