Dessie Jackson is better at like ten different things than any of us will ever be at one. And while most of us would normally feel sick about that, she’s also amazing at making you forget about all of it, instantly lighting up a room and transporting you into her vibrant world of colors. She’s inspiring, to say the absolute least. Dessie makes you want to be great and try new things and throw artistic inhibition to the wind, then paint that wind but also record the entire painting process and make a stop-motion video out of it and possibly put the resulting painting on a t-shirt.
I was already familiar with Dessie’s written work without even really knowing it, reading her funny and insightful musings on Vice, before Bobby Hundreds introduced me to her paintings, drawings, sculptures, animations, and the rest of the multidisciplinary talents she employs in a vast portfolio of artwork. Dessie has been creating for well over a decade and her work is somehow both all over the place and intrinsically her’s, a unique style across mediums that feels abstract enough to make you wonder the meaning and yet still clearly tells her personal story.
Jackson’s history with The Hundreds is a long one, as Bobby originally discovered Dessie’s work on Tumblr while she was an art school student in Philly nearly a decade ago. When the two of them were part of the first wave of users on Instagram, they connected and Bobby recruited the burgeoning artist to design a t-shirt for the brand.
The shirt, aptly named “The Dessie,” was released in 2013 and sparked a fire within Dessie that has fueled an increasingly successful art career. The wildest part is that Dessie and Bobby had never actually met in person until recently when she took over some vacant office space in our sprawling headquarters and transformed it into her new studio. From Tumblr buddies to office neighbors, this was a real deal internet fairytale.
But Bobby isn’t the only industry heavyweight to recognize Dessie’s immense talents. Recently, multiplatinum pop superstar Halsey commissioned Dessie to combine all of her artistic skills and use them to create the lyric videos to accompany her new album, Manic. A deeply personal piece of music, Manic called for visual components that added depth and texture while helping tell the emotional stories Halsey was giving to the world.
Dessie created incredible paintings and drawings, then used her own proprietary recording method to turn them all into stop-motion animations to go along with the seven singles. After watching them, it’s almost impossible to hear the songs and not immediately see the striking visuals Dessie turned them into. She breathed new life into these already beautiful songs and gave millions of fans around the world something awe-inspiring to remember them by.
Bobby and I caught up with Dessie as she was cleaning up her studio after completing the massive Halsey project. She showed us how she made them, including a makeshift camera setup that recorded her painting, drawing and animating each video frame-by-frame in a process that allowed for virtually zero editing. She had to be perfect. And she was.
DUKE LONDON: How was it working with Halsey on these videos?
DESSIE JACKSON: Throughout my career as an artist, I’ve worked with a lot of friends, I’ve worked with a lot of musicians who I knew or that were in the local scene. It’s always been friends of friends or something that I’ve worked with. It was scary branching outside of that and working with an artist that I listen to on the radio. It’s really cool but also a little scarier.
Intimidating?
Intimidating! But it also has a lot to do with me kind of being like, “oh I’m good at this. I can do this.” It’s amazing to know it’s working and people are seeing that and are noticing and they’re willing to trust me and what I’m making. I think that has been the best part of this whole experience. They trust me and they’re confident in my ability, which makes me more confident in what I can do and way more hopeful for projects coming up in the future. It feels like a “pinch me” situation.
It seems like you were allowed to have more leeway creatively as far as using your own style. How much of a collaborative effort was it?
I think it was a huge collaborative effort. I really tried to do the songs justice. I was listening to the album, which I genuinely, honestly love. I can relate to a lot of it and I think that was really helpful. I think her work and my work are very reminiscent of each other and it felt like the ingredients went together. Everything made sense. It was a super collaborative effort from the concepts to the final product.
Process-wise, how do you hear something and visualize it and put it to paper?
It’s tough. Any musician that I’ve worked with in the past, I try to give the whole song or album a full listen from beginning to end. I process it like a whole piece and then go in and listen to the full thing over again, listen to it again, and then I start to take notes. I’ll write out the lyrics and I’ll see what comes to mind when I think about those words or what symbols come to mind.
How do you use color or texture to match the vocal feeling?
I think it’s pretty straightforward but maybe it’s not for everyone. [Laughs] For example, sometimes I’ll use charcoal for something darker, which gives a really nice grainy, gritty feel. For something that is a more fluid song, I would use paint. For something that evokes joy, I would use pinks or bright colors. So, it all changes depending on the song.
Have you done a lot of projects like these in the past?
No. I’ve made a few stop-motion animations before but nothing that I had to align with music or that had specific cues. I didn’t have any instructions to do that but I decided that I wanted things to change at different moments of the song as the chorus came in or specific verses would come in. I’ve never done that. Essentially, I had to sit down and take a moment to actually storyboard and create everything, where in the past it was more of a freehand, free-flowing project.
What kind of challenges does that present when you have to do it all in one take?
It’s hard because I feel like I’m using a lot of parts of my brain. I’m using the part where I’m the director looking at the timestamps and the storyboard, making decisions on how I want things to unfold while I’m also an actor who’s putting the marks on the paper.
You’re having to think 50 steps ahead.
Exactly, yes! Again, dealing with materiality, for example, there are only so many times you can layer paint and there’s drying time involved. There were moments when I was literally watching paint dry. I had to think more creatively and be like, “Alright, I’m working on the right corner but that paint needs to dry, so now that can be a part where the lyrics can be on top and I’m going to start working on this other corner.” It was difficult exercising that much focus for a long period of time without being able to break. I mean, I took small breaks, I needed to eat [laughs] but I wouldn’t walk away from the piece for longer than an hour. It just took up a lot of brain energy. Towards the end, my body hurt because I was leaning over a desk for so hours and hours and hours.
A lot went into it physically and mentally. There are not too many mediums of art that require that much math.
Yeah and I’m awful at math — and my dad’s a math teacher. I’ve always been bad at math. The entire time, I felt like the math meme, trying to figure out all the moving parts at the same time.
How much easier does a regular painting seem after this?
Oh my goodness, it’s just so much more straightforward when you’re only dealing with one medium as opposed to layering on top. Painting is still a beast in its own way but I can’t wait to make a painting again. I truly cannot wait to just make a drawing and also not have it be so accurately documented, too. When I finish a piece of work, I can decide how I want it to be displayed, which is the beauty of a painting, drawing, making a sculpture, etc. You have some room for decision making at the end.
Whether it’s done or not.
When to say when, which is one of the biggest challenges. For this, it was more A to B where it was meant to be consumed as a video. It’s meant to be read as a lyric video. You need to be able to read the lyrics, it’s totally something else. That was kind of interesting, too, constantly looking at a work in progress and not knowing entirely how it would look until all the different layers were done.
Did you add the fonts on the lyrics as well?
I hired animators for that. They were all handwritten by me except the Korean. The interlude by SUGA of BTS, I didn’t write that.
I was about to say, you also learned Korean?
[Laughs] No but the animators certainly had to piece things together. They animated the lyrics on top which is great because there was just no way I would be able to write them out and time them -– not yet at least.
Does this change how you listen to music? Do you kind of visualize it as you listen now?
Yeah, and I think this project just made me gain a whole new level of respect for music video directors and producers because I technically directed and produced these. That blew my mind, just all of the moving pieces.
The phenomenon of lyric videos is really only a couple of years old. A lot of times, they’re kind of an afterthought and a stopgap between the single dropping and the music video being released. But seeing how much work went into these lyric videos gives an entirely new appreciation.
I think that’s what made the project so cool and what I really loved about it. They really did want to make something bigger.
And you’re working on another music project now?
Yes I am. I don’t think I can talk about it but that should be coming out shortly, too.
Is this an avenue you want to go down and explore?
Yeah, I think that’s also a huge surprise throughout this whole process. Personally, I feel like I struggle knowing when a piece is done and being happy with the final product. It’s so easy to go back and say I have to change this or that’s not really the right composition, you know? It’s hard for me to step back and appreciate what I did but with these kinds of projects, I have that moment where it’s done and I can just be proud of what I made. It’s difficult but that “aha” moment at the end when all 3,000 or so frames are put together and it’s rendered, seeing it put together has been probably the biggest accomplishment I’ve experienced in a longtime with my work.
You created a whole new process.
I saw a funny tweet and a few comments that were like, “what animation program is this?” or somebody even tweeted “@adobeaftereffects you need to work with this person! This is crazy, make a preset!” I don’t even know what they were saying. I’m not that keen on video editing. It made me laugh because I wanted to tell them I’m just making a flipbook. The most basic animation that ever was is what we’re doing, just with a nicer camera and a light fixture. But at the end of the day, it operates the exact same way a flipbook does. It’s just funny seeing people asking what app or program was used to make it.
How did you get here and where are you from?
I’m from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Oh, PA. I was born in Pittsburgh.
Really? Woo! I’m from Philly, so I don’t fuck with any Pittsburgh sports [laughs]. But yeah, I’m from Lancaster. That’s where my family is from and I went to high school there.
Isn’t that Amish country?
It’s definitely Amish country. There’s a church at the end of my street, there’s a horse barn in my backyard, there are cornfields, dairy farms. Lancaster County is huge but definitely in a rural area.
What were you “supposed” to be when you grew up?
The whole time it was an artist. In kindergarten dress up, when they asked what we want to be when we grew up, I wore a beret. Like how corny, as a kid I was like an artist wears berets and I’m going to be an artist. I had a smock on. I’ve always drawn my whole life. I would hide in my room and draw a lot. I kind of always had that and I think that’s really lucky to know you had a thing and enjoyed the thing and work on the thing.
I’m guessing your parents were really supportive.
Yeah, both of my parents were educators but they weren’t artists. I never went to an art museum until I was in college in Philly. I didn’t know what that was. I knew what an art museum was but I was never in a real one. I went to school at Temple in Philly and went to art school there, Tyler School of Art, got my BFA. I remember my first semester as a freshman being so intimidated because all of my classmates knew artists. They knew about famous artists and could talk about art history and I didn’t have a clue. I was like, “how the fuck do all of these people know this already? I thought we were starting school now.”
At that point, where were you at with your art? Were you just drawing or what mediums were you working with?
In college, I started uploading my artwork onto Tumblr. Not really my school projects but more so illustrations.
Is that still live?
Yeah … [laughs] it is! I changed the URL. It used to be DessieDoesArt.tumblr.com. SO BAD. I think that’s how Bobby found my art.
At that point?
Yeah, I remember posting my work on Tumblr and eventually getting validation from people online. It was cool, I remember the first time a piece got reblogged or whatever. I got like 100 and was like holy shit this is crazy! But it was tough because I was in school working on projects. I wasn’t waiting for a degree. I was kind of doing that in the middle of everything and continued to do that throughout college. I ended up making a shirt for The Hundreds in college. At that time, that was the “aha” moment. Like “holy shit this is crazy! I’m from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These people are from LA, I’ve never even been to LA. I don’t even know what LA looks like.” I thought it looked like Hollywood, just the starwalk. [Laughs] It’s not.
How did the relationship with Bobby develop from him finding you on Tumblr to the point where you’re designing a t-shirt graphic?
I joined Instagram in the very early stages and so did Bobby, so there just weren’t that many people on the app and I think most of them were artists. This was when there were all of those weird filters and borders. I don’t even remember if hashtags were a thing yet. I remember him following me and telling me he liked my work. He said, “Let’s make a t-shirt!” It was really cool because the t-shirt was named the Dessie and it was a charcoal drawing of a skeleton face that was kind of me but wasn’t me.
What was it like opening the package with your t-shirt inside?
It was really cool. I gave a bunch of the t-shirts to my family and I have a video of my very old Grandpa wearing it, which was so funny and cute. It was great. It was just really nice to see an object made from my work, especially mass-produced. People were sending me pictures of kids wearing them.
How did that t-shirt change how you felt about your art at that time?
Not to sound corny, but that was a huge step for me. Not even industry-wise or fine art-wise, but in my confidence. It validated my work, for better or worse. It was certainly a driving force for me and led to me working more aggressively on my personal stuff. I wasn’t questioning myself as much after that. In art school, you get a lot of mixed messages about what an artist is and what an artist should do. I think it was really cool to have that crash course. Figuring it out before I had my degree to wave around meant that my instincts were right. It taught me to trust myself more and to keep putting my work out there for people to see.
What did you do after you finished art school?
I stayed in Philly for about another year, then I went to New York for a year. But my last year in Philly, I was in New York every weekend because it was just a bus ride away. I would just take the MegaBus for like 14 bucks and it would take two hours. A lot of my friends lived in New York so it was ideal. Whenever I went to the city, it was just the best time because it was always on the weekend and I was always hanging out with my friends. I loved New York and wanted to be there. Then I moved there, and I realized that New York wasn’t the weekend every day and it was tough. I was fresh out of college, I was broke, and living in Brooklyn. I didn’t know what to put first, the studio or work. It took me awhile to figure it out. Then, I came out to LA and I’ve been here for about four years. I really like it. It took a while to like it, though. How long have you been here?
Five years in April.
Don’t you feel like it took at least two years to feel at home here?
For sure, it feels like a long vacation for a while.
I’m finally feeling like this is home and this is where I actually live. I love the east coast and Philly and can see myself maybe ending up there again.
I love visiting.
Yeah, that’s home base but I’ve grown to really love LA.
What do you love about LA and how is it different than NYC for you?
I remember the first week I lived here, I was in line at Starbucks getting a coffee, and the barista was just chatting with someone else in line and being very casual. I was like two people back in line, tapping my foot like a mad person. I was about to lose my shit. And then I looked around and nobody else had an issue with it. I was the problem. I needed to chill out. I had to learn how to not be as aggressive and uptight. And I think I am still pretty uptight for west coast standards but I’ve definitely chilled out a lot. From my experience, I just feel like creatives I’ve met here are very open, whether that means just meeting up or it means collaborating or looking at your work. It’s a little tougher to nail people down on the east coast because everyone is so on schedule and avoiding distractions.
How has living in LA affected your art?
I definitely pull from a brighter palette of colors since I’ve been here. There’s more flowers and rainbows and stuff like that in my drawings here. But I don’t know if that’s a reflection of my environment or if I’m just in a better place mentally now. My work is definitely more vibrant here than it was. It’s easier to leave your house here.
How have you balanced work and art?
It’s tough, but you do what you have to do. It’s a thing that isn’t really talked about, either. People go on Instagram and see an artist or musician or actor and they think that’s all that person does full-time. And I’m sure some of them do, and at some points my art has been all I’ve been doing. But it’s a constant ebb and flow, and I’m always figuring out how to get money to buy supplies and make the thing. It’s an ongoing cycle. I don’t think there’s any shame in working. Sometimes, I talk to people — and maybe this is just an LA thing — and it’s like a secret that they work a regular job. And it shouldn’t be a secret.
As your art becomes a bigger piece of your pie, how does that feel?
It’s really exciting. And I have a lot of momentum right now. I’m feeling a lot of outside validation for my work but even more importantly, I’m feeling more validated internally. I’m just proud that I did it. I pulled it off. I don’t want to sound like an asshole but I’m finally giving myself a little pat on the back. It’s progress. And it makes me appreciate the journey I’ve taken so much more.
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Next, you can catch Dessie working with fellow Pennsylvania-native and The Hundreds collaborator Samii Ryan on an exclusive capsule collection to be released in February. About the project, Dessie said, “Samii and I have been friends for years and I’m really excited to be working with a friend that I have so much respect for. It’s VERY cute and cozy!”
Photos courtesy of Bobby Hundreds