Creator of the fanciful and famous P.G. Butterfly House, J Jackson, passes away.

The house that love designed, the brightly colored and decorated P.G. Butterfly House in Pacific Grove, was known around the world and attracted visitors and fans from everywhere, including some very famous ones. In turn it brought fame to its humble creator, J Jackson, who passed away on Sunday, Nov. 1, at the age of 83.

Hillary Clinton once called Jackson, but Jackson thought it was a joke, recalls his friend Keith Larson. After they chatted, Clinton followed up by sending him a photograph of herself. Despite the attention he received for his fanciful creation, he remained humble. “I don’t think he realized how famous he was,” Larson says.

His wife Sonja Jackson was the reason J began combining a whimsical array of colors with thousands of butterfly figures, mirrors and lights affixed anywhere and everywhere where a blank surface could be found, on and around the tiny house of less than 900 square feet. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at age 18 and slowly lost vision and is now legally blind. She can see bright colors, which is why Jackson chose the pinks, yellows, aquas, purples and oranges that cover the exterior of the house on Ninth Street.

In a 2007 Weekly story about unique homes that included the Butterfly House, contributor Stuart Thornton wrote that the house “would be best described (with a timeworn cliché) as a labor of love.” Cliché or not, that’s exactly what it was, Jackson's labor of love for Sonja.

The transformation from modest bungalow to piece of fanciful art began with a some wood someone was throwing away that Jackson used to create a large, brightly colored butterfly that Sonja would be able to see, according to a story Larson wrote for the 2017 book Life in Pacific Grove. It was on display outside of the house and was so well received by those who saw it the couple decided to do the entire exterior in different colors and butterflies.

“It was his expression of himself of the beauty and how much he loved Pacific Grove,” says Sonja, referring to P.G.’s "Butterfly Town U.S.A." nickname. “My contribution in a sense was pretty small.”

As the house became better known and more people came around to see it—including tourists from visiting cruise ships or those who had seen the house on social media, or in one case, in a photo of Jackson and the house on the wall of restaurant in China—the Butterfly House became a labor of love for Jackson who enjoyed meeting and talking to new people, Sonja says.

Larson recalls there were times when famous television stars drove by the house and struck up conversations with Jackson, who wasn’t big on following the medium. ‘“You really don’t know who I am, do you?’” they would say, according to Larson. Jackson was friendly to everyone no matter who they were.

“It was really a magical place,” says Larson. “J and Sonja, there was something very interesting and magical about them and what he did there.”

Larson met Jackson when he interviewed him for the book. Jackson began calling Larson, an artist, for advice and help, including painting the driveway and sidewalk, since Jackson had run out of other places to paint. Yet Jackson never considered himself an artist, Larson says.

“He called on me for advice sometimes. I would say, ‘J, you know the colors, what you're doing is good.”

Besides Sonja, Jackson is survived by his twin sister Nancy Roper, of Massachusetts, and two nephews. There is no memorial planned. At some point there will be a small ceremony at the Central Coast Veterans Cemetery where Jackson’s ashes will be interred. He served in both the U.S. Army and the Marine Reserves.

In years past Jackson collected donations for the Blind and Visually Impaired Center of Monterey County, also located in P.G. and a help to Sonja, by selling ceramic butterflies to people that were then affixed to the “Wall of Love,” a retaining wall in front of the house. The butterfly donations are no more but Sonja asks that if people are so inspired they donate in Jackson’s name to the center: blindandlowvision.org/give.