Rush Jackson (they/he) (b. 1996, South Orange, NJ) is an independent graphic designer and artist living and working in Brooklyn. Jackson earned their BFA in painting and drawing at the University of the Arts (2019) and was awarded the Crosscurrents first-place full-tuition scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (2017). In 2018, they were awarded the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to study at the Yale/Norfolk School of Art.
Jackson has exhibited at venues including ICA Philadelphia, American Medium, High Tide Gallery, Icebox Project Space, Vox Populi, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. They have designed publications such as The New Black Vanguard (Aperture, 2019, with Mark Owens),To the Front: Black Women and The Vote (AFRO and Afro Charities, 2020, with Jerome Harris),Jonathan Lyndon Chase: Big Wash(Fabric Workshop and Museum, 2021), Shikeith: Notes towards Becoming a Spill (Aperture, 2022), and In the Black Fantastic (Thames & Hudson, 2022). Other notable design work includes crafting visual identity systems for the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, Anacostia Community Museum (forthcoming), Abdu Ali’s as they lay, DeVonn Francis’s Yardy World, and design for Housing Works’ entrepreneurial businesses and healthcare centers throughout New York City.
Jackson has been a collaborator at the Center for Afrofuturist Studies in Iowa City since 2019, and has given lectures on contemporary design practice with Poster House Museum, Google Design, and the Maryland Institute College of Art.