Heeding the Still, Small Voices of Nature

by Mimi Greenwood Knight

Northshore Nature Artist Jake Dicks

THE DANISH WORD “ENKEL” loosely translates to “beautiful through simplicity.” Northshore artist Jake Dicks has spent a lifetime paying homage to the spirit of enkel and to his idyllic childhood exploring the flora and fauna of South Louisiana and Mississippi. He says, “I was lucky to have both my parents at home with me growing up. My mom knew from the moment she met my dad that she wanted to stay home and raise her kids. She even put her art career on hold to homeschool us. But she taught art classes to homeschool groups, so I grew up learning art from her.”

Dicks received a different kind of education from his father. “My dad is a super outdoorsy and adventurous person. As soon as I could fit in a backpack, they started taking me everywhere. There are pictures of me at the hot air balloon festival in New Mexico, strapped in a baby carrier, when I was just an infant.” The family lived in Gulfport, Mississippi, for a few years, and Dicks spent long days in a fiberglass boat with his dad exploring and camping on the islands in the Gulf. “My dad always had a fascination with the little things in nature,” he says. “We’d spend days on Cat Island, where I’d find horseshoe crabs and other creatures and Dad would teach me about them—how they lived, what they ate. He was better than a nature documentary.”

The family returned to the northshore, where Jake and his buddies spent entire days on the banks of the Tchefuncte River. “We’d fish with homemade harpoons and just explore and be kids,” he says. “It’s amazing how many things you can find to do when there’s no TV at home. Anytime I found something I didn’t know about I’d do extensive research to learn about it. I drove my poor mom crazy coming home with pocketsful of frogs and other things.” Dicks filled his childhood bedroom with rocks and crystal, animal bones, snake skins, wasp nests and beetles.

One night, the family watched a documentary about American glass sculptor Dale Chihuly. “I was mesmerized by the melting glass and thought it was the coolest phenomenon,” Dicks says. “I told my dad how much I wanted to do that, and he said, ‘Well, I have a torch in the garage.’ He and I melted a piece of beer bottle and I was hooked.” Dicks saved up his money, bought himself a proper torch and as many glass rods as he could afford, and started making and selling simple glass teardrop necklaces. “I earned enough money to pay for most of my first car,” he says. “It was my first artistic moneymaking endeavor, and it was much more fulfilling than mowing lawns.”

When he headed off on scholarship to Louisiana Tech, no one was surprised he chose a wildlife major. Unfortunately for Dicks, before he’d completed his education, the school dropped that major and switched him to forestry. “It wasn’t my cup of tea,” he says. “So, I came back home, got my Merchant Marine credentials and worked on boats for a few years. It was an extremely dangerous and demanding job.” His years working on the water only increased his fascination with the natural world.

Finally, Dicks broke the news to his parents that what he really wanted to be was an artist. “My dad said, ‘Great! Where are you going to live?’” he laughs. “I’d learned in high school that it was possible to make money selling jewelry, and why not do what you love?” Working on the boat offered Dicks stretches of time when he was onshore but off work and could start experimenting with his next artistic challenge, preserving all those lovely, tiny things in nature by setting them in resin.

“Anything that’s going to rot can be preserved in resin,” Dicks says. His first project was a yellow jacket queen. He was so pleased with the result that he moved on to ferns, flowers, butterfly wings, honeycomb, moss, snails, beetles and even snake fangs and spiders, showing others the beauty and symmetry in these tiny creations that most of us walk right past. With the help of Instagram, he soon had an enthusiastic following and started getting requests, like setting funeral or wedding flowers in resin as a memento. “When a loved one dies, I can take one of the flowers from a funeral arrangement and set it into a necklace or earrings,” he says. “My cousin went to Lebanon and was really touched by the cedars of Lebanon. He brought home leaves and pressed them in his Bible. Then, his wife snuck some to me, and I was able to set an entire branch in resin for her to give him for his birthday. Another cousin calls his wife ‘Sunflower,’ so I made her earrings with sunflower petals.”

Not all his work is in resin. Dicks makes delicate earrings with animal bones and teeth. It’s amazing how lovely water moccasin vertebra can be dangling from an earring, or a black widow spider floating in a tiny globe necklace. “The drive behind most of my art is to find something in nature I think is beautiful that other people probably haven’t experienced,” Dicks says. “When a friend comes over with his little kids, I can say, ‘Have you ever seen a snake fang?’ and then hand them one. They can handle it, even though it’s delicate, and they can see it perfectly and safely while it’s encased in resin.”

Dicks makes larger resin pieces, too, “stillscapes” combining elements, such as moss on the bottom with the skeleton of a lizard or bird with lichen growing on top and maybe a bee flying into the scene with the whole thing preserved in resin. “I really enjoy making the big pieces,” he says. “But if I mess up, at any point during the process, it really shows.”

Even as he perfects his resin technique, Dicks is looking toward his next challenge. “I’m getting into primitive flint napping, using bone, stone or copper tools to break flint and create knives,” he says. “I make purses and backpacks out of turtle shells and usually have a waiting list for those. I enjoy making things like that that are utilitarian but still grounded in nature.”

Wherever his art takes him next, he hopes to continue helping the rest of us see the beauty in the tiny things that fascinate him. “Regardless of the life you live, there’s a connection to nature,” he says. “Nature is a place where people can come together and meet on common ground.” The work of the northshore’s own Jake Dicks is helping make that common ground anything but common.