Richard W
James
Richard W. James received his BFA from the University of Tennessee at Martin (2001), and after years of studio work in between, ultimately completed his MFA in ceramics at the University of Kansas (2016). He has since been a long-term Artist in Residence at The Archie Bray Foundation, and is headed to a new Art Professorship this fall. James creates figurative sculptures by combining ceramic forms with objects, materials, and processes that closely relate to his rural upbringing, integrating soft and hard materials and construction methods such as stitching and assemblage. The characters in his work seem to fail to understand the objects with which they interact, as the artist considers how past information can be misinterpreted based on present need, a type of cognitive dissonance, he says, from which we all suffer.
