My family and I own three James Sansing works acquired over the past few years. Our first piece is a large sculpture, an intricate assembly of cement, wire, metal braces, rubber, found objects and miniature models of boxes and doors, which took James well over a week to painstakingly install in our home. At first glance, the sculpture seems challenging with its darker tones, enormous size and jumble of broken pieces of cement and plaster. And yet, my wife and I, as well as visitors to our home, are drawn to it by the work’s intimate, enchanting detail and delicate beauty. We take great joy in living with James’ sculpture and have since acquired two smaller works.
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James works in varying media and dimensions, ranging from his larger installations, as previously shown at Ampersand and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, to smaller, handmade books, photographs, works on paper and, most recently, castings of concrete and graphite. Despite these physical differences, much of James’ art seems to share a common theme and inspiration, the sublime beauty of decay. The art is rich in images of things which existed in the moment of their viewing but carry the memory of their past: found objects, crumbling swimming pools, broken freeways, dangling cement, dust and most prevalent, imagery from the ruins of an abandoned home for troubled juvenile girls.
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When I acquired our first Sansing piece, I was unaware of the source of its inspiration in James’ experiences in late adolescence and his early 20’s visiting the ruins of that strangely beautiful place, which have since been torn down. James had risked arrest, regularly sneaking into the home as it stood derelict, surrounded by chain linked fence. In solitude and in the sanctuary of the home’s litter and decay, James found his own psychological harmony as well as a treasure trove of debris, broken fixtures and furniture and crushed boxes. Also in the refuse, Sansing found soiled, yet enchantingly beautiful journals, hand written by the counselors recounting the stories and lives of the troubled girl residents. These journals’ stained, moldy pages are the subjects of the two smaller Sansing works in our home.
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Living with Sansing's work, we feel unexpectantly at ease and comfortable, possibly approaching how James himself felt as he took refuge in the juvenile hall. I admire James’ success in experimenting with new and novel artistic formats yet consistently incorporating his memories to convey the subtle wonder of decay and the return of manmade objects to nature and dust.
JEFF LANE 2007
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I think of Rothko, the alienation he seemed to suffer, the light that was in him, awake in his paintings.
I think of carbon. The paintings are dark and shiny. Diamonds are made of carbon.
The paintings have holes in them.
There are holes in the dark, where one can see through to the white. The thought makes me happy. I see what you are saying…I am grateful to be here.
JARED WALKER 2007
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