Juxtapoz Art and Culture-Spring_2019

18 SPRING 2019

REPORT

James Stanford

Light and Life in Las Vegas

James Stanford’s dad packed up the household

in the 1940s, and drove from Texas to Las Vegas to

coach high school football. The older sons donned

shoulder pads, but the youngest, a strapping figure

who looks like he’d be comfortable guiding a horse

on the high plains, had broader ideas for himself

and Las Vegas. An ambassador for this western City

of Lights, James helms Smallworks Press when not

creating the coruscating mandalas that culminated

in Shimmering Zen at 2018’s Asian Art in London.

I visited him and wife Lynn (a Mighty Muse!) in

their stomping grounds where I toured the Neon

Museum, Yayoi Kusama’s Inifinity Room and

wandered through a mesquite grove in the middle

of town.

Gwynned Vitello: Am I off-base in describing

you as someone who is compelled to seek

harmony, but wants to go about it outside of

proscribed boundaries?

Jim Stanford: My older brother was a terrific artist,

a cartoonist, and that certainly impressed me

when I was a small child. From the time I was

16, I knew I wanted to be an artist, and I drew all

the time. I sort of knew the difference between

drawing what was in front of me from the stored

set of symbols that most children have when they

draw. My brother did that, as well, but he had done

enough life drawing at art school to draw figures

off the top of his head.

Where you at that stage at 16?

I wanted to be able to do that, as well, and, at 16,

I also discovered a book called Vision in Motion by

the Bauhaus-influenced artist László Moholy-Nagy.

I learned about Dada, Futurism, all the isms of the

early twentieth century, about Picasso, Lee and

Matisse; and one thing I realized they all had in

common was that they were academically trained.

I made up my mind to go to college and study art

and learn to paint in an academic way. I realized

that after they did that, they threw it all away.

This fits my impression of you, appreciating

structure but not wanting to be bound by rules.

I graduated from high school in 1966 and was up in

the San Francisco Bay Area by September. I wanted

to get out of Las Vegas because then it was such a

small resort town. There were no museums! I didn’t

go to one until I was 20 years old. I learned about

art through books and magazines. During that

time, many of the major magazines had artists on

the covers, and that really stimulated me.

So I’m surprised to learn that you first majored

in English.

I loved writing. I loved poetry, short stories

and all, so I thought I would maybe become

an attorney; and admittedly, my parents were

pushing me toward that sort of goal. But I sat in on

life drawing classes, and I loved the quieting of the

mind, the extemporaneous experience of trying

to master proportion and line. I would draw as

much as seven or eight hours a day. One of the

teachers noticed, and I was offered a scholarship if

I majored in art, so I got my BFA.

That’s when you painted Revelations, which was

inspired by a trip to Europe.

I went to the Prado everyday when we were in

Madrid, and I was so blown away. I had never

seen Master paintings before and I underwent a

revelatory experience, which many years later

I discovered is called Stendhal Syndrome. It

turns out the French philosopher and writer has

Above: AWAZ (Indra’s Jewels), Digital montage of Las Vegas vintage neon signage