{"id":35686,"date":"2018-05-06T14:16:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-06T20:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35686"},"modified":"2025-11-10T21:24:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:24:34","slug":"unconfined-the-layers-of-janell-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/unconfined-the-layers-of-janell-james\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconfined: The Layers of Janell James"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Simon Blundell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI figure if a girl wants to be a legend she should just go ahead and be one.\u201d Attributed to the American frontierswoman known as Calamity Jane, the quote hangs prominently in Janell James\u2019 studio. It says plenty about the talented and determined Utah artist featured in UVU\u2019s Woodbury Art Museum this month alongside Art of OUR CENTURY<\/em>, an annual juried exhibition of new works from across the country.<\/h4>\n

James has been gathering paintings from her many collectors for her important retrospective A Decade of Art<\/em>, a show that promises to display the evolution of her style, one grounded in the traditional fundamentals learned in the atelier system but not afraid to experiment with form and method. Though she recently branched out into some intriguing and well-received abstractions, James, 43, has focused mainly on painting trees: whether leafy maples, stately pines, or slender, near-naked aspens, she renders them wonderfully and in tune with nature, with the exception of her tendency toward Fauvist coloration. She took this arboreal theme, she suspects, from Connie Borup, her AP high school art teacher who was later her University of Utah instructor, a well-known landscape artist who for many years specialized in painting just trees and now has widened her canvases to include ponds and explorations of the reflections and shadows made by light on leaves, rocks, branches and twigs (Borup\u2019s show ending May 11 at Phillips Gallery is a revelation).<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

James, however, has worked diligently to come up with a process she believes is all her own. As she describes it: \u201cCombining the layers of classical realism, and an old technique from the 18th century \u2014 reverse painting \u2014 I found a way to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary landscape art. I took that technique along with the very traditional process of oil painting that I was already using, and glazing, and layering, and wanted to break it up into something more dynamic and contemporary, and to come up with something uniquely mine<\/em>.\u201d She paints on all 10 sides of five panes of acrylic, and while each pane is a painting unto itself, it is not until all five panes come together that the final painting can be revealed, complete. \u201cAs if looking into an antique kaleidoscope or stained glass, each becomes a \u2018living\u2019 painting as the daylight and shadows interact within the painted panes,\u201d she says.<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Photo by Simon Blundell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The artist observes that acrylic paint bonds nicely to the acrylic. \u201cIn fact, it bonds so quickly that I really have to be very certain of my brushstrokes. You try not to make mistakes, just interpret the painting and be free with it and, it\u2019s all about paint, you just see what it comes out as in the end. You never really know \u2014 I mean, I have an idea. I work from a composition.\u201d James takes her own photos, crops them and manipulates them a bit on the computer. \u201cI get my jumping-off point and then I just build from there,\u201d she says. \u201cFrom the back forward, so it\u2019s almost like a sculptural process as well as like a layering and glazing process. You know, the shapes are almost pixilated. From a distance they look traditional, more realistic. A lot of times people think they are looking at a 2-D image and then they get up close and realize that these things are 3-D, and they look abstract.\u201d<\/h4>\n

It all started at 300 Plates at Art Access when they began giving out acrylic plates instead of metal printers\u2019 plates to paint on for their annual fundraiser. \u201cThe first year I didn\u2019t know what to do with the acrylic plates, and the second year I just grabbed a few extra in case I made a mistake \u2014 and also I wanted to try something out because Paul Davis always said 20 percent of your painting and creating should be experimental.\u201d Unsatisfied with her first attempts using her traditional technique, she started a new piece, then laid that on top of another. And then another on top of that. \u201cI had watched Disney animation growing up and knew about cels and there are always influences but to see this come to life from my own soul was so amazing \u2014 you feel like you reinvented the landscape, in a way.\u201d<\/h4>\n

James says she doesn\u2019t want to be known \u201cas the gal who paints trees, I want to take it further: I want to take this process that I\u2019ve created and made my own into abstract, and even into figurative work because there\u2019s so much movement possibility within these layers. I can already play around with depth. You can see here the trees and sky are closest to you and the mountain is further back. I\u2019ve got so many things I want to do and the problem is staying focused.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

She\u2019s always had multiple interests \u2014 she grew up a tomboy, active in sports (basketball volleyball and soccer in high school, at Rowland Hall) and the outdoors (mountain biking, hiking, running). She discovered an openness to travel with her father, an importer-exporter. At 8 she went to Korea and China for the first time and saw \u201cmillions of men in gray and black business suits with ties on and white shirts underneath riding thousands and thousands of bikes on the streets.\u201d The cities were filled with rickshaws, but you\u2019d get picked up at the airport in a Mercedes or Rolls Royce, because that was the taxicab system. \u201cI kind of felt important. We went to Beijing, and we saw the terracotta soldiers. When I was 12, we went to India. I remember naked babies bathing in gutters. The poverty. And how wonderful people still were.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHolding Light,\u201d acrylic on multiple panels, 30\u2033 x 24\u2033<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

She also inherited Glade James\u2019 entrepreneurial spirit. She grew up in Sandy, \u201con the 6th<\/sup> hole of the Willow Creek Country Club,\u201d so she always saw golf balls when they landed in the creek. Every summer from the age of 6 until she was about 14 she would have four to six \u201clemonade and golf ball sales,\u201d where she sat right by the gate with a folding table and sold golf balls back to the unlucky golfers. (And lemonade, too, of course.)<\/h4>\n

She went to the U of U and studied Parks, Recreation & Tourism, and for a single credit spent three months in the outback in northwestern Australia in the Kimberley region. \u201cWe were the first people that weren\u2019t Aboriginals to go down the Drysdale River,\u201d James says. (They were in portable kayaks, and yes, there were crocodiles.) \u201cWe spent two weeks with the Aboriginals learning to make boomerangs and spears and catch fish. I went hunting with them one night to catch a sea turtle,\u201d she recalls.<\/h4>\n

She graduated college, worked for the Park City Marriott as a salesperson, then for the Hotel Monaco where she built up the entertainment industry there. \u201cI booked Bruce Springsteen and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and all the big bands coming here. After that I moved to Park City, I got married and I started working for the Park City Jazz Festival and I did that for six years.\u201d Later, her now-ex-husband encouraged her to focus on her art. And Paul Davis told her not to get a BFA or MFA, just craft her own schooling, take classes from artists she admired. But he did suggest an atelier, if she wanted something more structured, and James ended up at the Bay Area Classical Artists Atelier and studied under Ted Seth Jacobs \u201cwho comes under the lineage of Caravaggio. So for me it was all about learning about form and line. I did that for two intensive years.\u201d<\/h4>\n

That was in 2006. Then she spent a year in Helper, returned and had her first show out of her studio, where she sold 22 pieces. She began showing locally \u2014 A Gallery, then Trove, then Coda in Palm Springs \u2014 and did well. \u201cI don\u2019t have any work from 2010 to 2012,\u201d James says. \u201cThose were my A Gallery days and I sold all of it. They got me started. In fact, this painting [she says, pointing to a smaller work] the Nordstrom representative came in there and wanted it to be big, so it\u2019s in the entry to the women\u2019s shoes at City Creek. It\u2019s 5\u2019 x 4\u2019 \u2014 the biggest painting I\u2019d ever done then. I knocked out the ceiling in my studio so I could get the piece up high enough to paint it.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPalm Desert,\u201d acrylic on multiple panels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Right now her studio is filled with 46 pieces waiting for transport to the Woodbury Art Museum, located in Orem\u2019s University Place Mall, while her home is filled with works by her peers. Uncluttered and well but simply furnished, the bungalow is filled with art \u2013 an enviable collection, with work from John Bell, her \u201cpartner in art and love and life\u201d; and from much of the Helper art community, where she spent considerable time over a six-year period (Paul Davis, David Dornan, Marilou Kundmueller, Charles Callis (six of his), Anne Kaferle, Silvia Davis); Salt Lakers, too: John Erickson (\u201can aspen tree, the first real piece of art I bought\u201d), Paul Vincent Bernard, John Sproul, Trent Call, Paul Redd-Butterfield, Travis Tanner, Blue Critchfield, Darryl Erdmann, Susan Gallacher, Lucia Heffernan, Sam Wilson, Ben Steele . . . did I say enviable? There are more.<\/h4>\n

Her passion for her peers is not just a personal interest. She has matched it with her entrepreneurial spirit. She helped put together the recent show of Helper artists at Finch Lane Gallery. And in 2013, she helped launch Sketch Sundays at Squatters<\/a>. She also has a philanthropic side, with a focus on Huntsman Cancer Institute in honor of a beloved aunt and has donated numerous paintings to be auctioned at their galas as well as for display in the hospital and in the children\u2019s art center.<\/h4>\n

James continues to find exercise and the out-of-doors exhilarating. Besides hiking, jogging and walking (or running) and paddle boarding with Bell and\/or the dogs (Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, Jasper, a big male, is 10 and Roxy 11), fly fishing, cycling, mountain biking and mountain climbing (typically sans ropes, though she acknowledges \u201cdoing some crevasse crossing with ropes in the Swiss Alps once. Amazing serenity.\u201d), she boxes, too. Even owns her own pair of black Venom gloves and orange wraps.<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Out back, her spacious studio is as cluttered as her house is orderly. But wandering around, you realize it is shipshape clutter where memorabilia is kept in its precisely allotted space. There are treasure shelves filled with a vintage Mickey Mouse phone, a gnome, a couple of charming paint-by-number works done by her mother, Jessie James. (\u201cMy mother says she married my father for his last name.\u201d) Pointing out two crocheted toys, James says, \u201cMy great-grandma made the little dog, and the gingerbread man, too.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Seeing her latest piece, it\u2019s clear she\u2019s working big. In fact, she says, at 43\u201d x 43\u201d this is the largest piece she\u2019s ever done in her new style. \u201cI start initially painting on the back. There are three or four different colors. I just started painting on the front. A little bit further down the road I\u2019ll start painting on the front of this one [points to a different pane]. You can see how even the mirror reflection . . . and it will create shadows, too. But there are still three more panes to go. I\u2019m trying the redrock this time [instead of a tree]. It gets more abstract this way. It\u2019s like jazz music: it\u2019s interpretive, improvisational. You have to listen to the painting, see where it wants you to go and follow it.\u201d<\/h4>\n

James says again that she\u2019s contemplating moving in a new direction. \u201cI want to grow and explore. There\u2019s so much possibility. I\u2019m working on being an emerging national artist at the moment and then I\u2019d like to be an emerging international artist. And I\u2019d like to be in a museum collection. That hasn\u2019t happened yet. But I believe you can be a commercial artist and<\/em> a museum artist. You can be both. It\u2019s all about what you believe. I don\u2019t want to be confined to one thing. Ever.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n <\/a>\n <\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Art of OUR CENTURY: Coalesce, Exploring Intersections in Contemporary Art, <\/em>featuring Janell James: A Decade of Art,\u201d <\/em>UVU Woodbury Art Museum<\/a>, University Place Mall, Orem, May 10-July 14, opening reception May 15, 6-8 p.m. Juried by Chauncey Secrist and Mark Slusser; curated by Megan Ah You.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Simon Blundell \u201cI figure if a girl wants to be a legend she should just go ahead and be one.\u201d Attributed to the American frontierswoman known as Calamity Jane, the quote hangs prominently in Janell James\u2019 studio. It says plenty about the talented and determined Utah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":36656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[1183],"class_list":["post-35686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-janell-james"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/JanellJames-256-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 20:52:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35686"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98417,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35686\/revisions\/98417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}