We caught up with the brilliant and insightful JAMES LAMBERT a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
JAMES, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Taking risks in art and education is hard to do but leads to more creative freedom. I always find that when my students are able to drift away from habits or a burden of concern about having things turn out right, that more personalized options emerge for their making. I do recognize that success and failure feel deeply personal, if the process gets depersonalized, the motive behind the effort gets hard to sustain.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I had to drop a project I was really psyched about. I needed help milling large wooden wall-paintings of some CAD files I had and lockdowns shut down all my leads. I ended up making an intimidating choice to buy a laser cutter which radically altered what the idea could be. Those ideas I was harboring grew into the January series and circumstance really made them what they are.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I grew up in Alabama and moved to New England to go to college at RISD and then MassArt for graduate studies. Since then, in addition to maintaining my studio practice, I have enjoyed teaching art in various colleges and working as a paper maker.
I’m a compulsive type and find that fits well with the learning and effort it takes to make interesting things. One thing it has helped me with is sticking with an idea even when it didn’t work right away. In drawing classes, students often have clear ideas of the result they think they are supposed to produce, and bristle at their perceived errors, but paper doesn’t let you erase completely, and I am always happy about how the artifacts of process are visible. The lesson is
that expectations aren’t very creative and can lessen growth and pleasure.
John Berger, in “Ways of Seeing” says that “the relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled”. That’s been a safe assumption in my own practice. I like to dwell on matters like reflection, translation and visualization; all of those subjects rely on having two of something or of one thing being like having two of something.
Finally, I’m very lucky that when I’m not in my studio, I am in a studio-based classroom. It’s a real privilege to see all the ways people figure out how to do things and apply their own expressivity to those ends. It gives me a lot, and I work hard to return that creativity back to the classroom.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I’ve been lucky to have some great mentor figures and collaborators over the years, but it took me a while to see how abundant those persons are. As a younger artist, I just limited those interactions and relationships more than necessary. Earlier, I said that taking risks opens up more creative freedom, and I think people do that too. So that is something I’d share with younger artists: take time to see what others are doing and connect as much as you can.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
To some degree or another, most of us consume a lot of cultural material on apps, and I worry about how comfortable it is to participate in creative products that way. Like my earlier example of a band performing for a tepid crowd, artists need feedback and support. If people want the benefits of a lot of culture in their environment, they need to make effort to see things in person and talk about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: jameslambert.net
- Instagram: jameslambertstudio
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/james-lambert-911ab92a
Image Credits
Taken by me