ABOUT
Jackson McDade is a sixth-generation American, a product of the California Gold Rush, who was born and raised in Ontario’s Ottawa Valley. Toronto is where McDade graduated from OCAD University, majoring in Interior Architecture, and it was here that McDade began working in custom cabinetry and large scale, commercial displays. Toronto was also where McDade became involved with contemporary art, and the founding of The Money House, an influential exhibition project continuing to this day in the form of Instant Coffee.
After relocating to New York City in 2001, McDade began a long association with designers Charles Schwarz and Claudia Kalis. With Schwarz McDade worked primarily in the development of architectural environments, bringing ideas into peoples homes and helping them blossom in casual but colorful statements of subtle elegance. Still early in the decade, McDade began consulting with Chelsea gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co., assisting with numerous installations of works from the their stable of internationally renowned artists.
McDade opened his own art space called HQ in Williamsburg Brooklyn in 2007, a space remembered for the first solo shows of several significant artists today. Also in 2007, McDade began his work with the designer and collector Edward Cabot, an understated purist whose clientele maintain homes from the Berkshires to Fifth Avenue, Oyster Bay to London’s Chelsea. McDade thrived in this environment of spotless balance and restraint. Working in either stark contemporary or pre-war neo-classical grandeur, no effort was spared to create the perfect symmetrical distance and relationship with the owner. For McDade Cabot’s work provided a synthesis between the practicality of architectural design and precision of art installation.
In recent years, McDade has primarily consulted with floral event company Fleurs Bella, non-profit art space Forever and Today, and Claudia Kalis Design. Recent projects with Claudia Kalis have had the added focus of creating environments to support the crucial development of infants and young children. With Fleurs Bella the common denominator has often been the theater of organic form, somewhere between a secret garden and a theatre set, analogies compounded by numerous projects for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. At Forever and Today, McDade has had the pleasure to work on sophisticated installations with artists who have had concurring and subsequent shows at the MOMA and the Armory, such as Slavs and Tatars and Liz Magic Laser.