100-Year-Old Sculptor Looks Back | James Lee Hansen - 📍 Battle Ground, WA

James Lee Hansen, a 100-year-old artist from Battle Ground, is considered one of the most innovative and important sculptors in the Pacific Northwest. Making over 700 pieces during his lifetime, his work has been seen all over the country from Portland to Washington, DC. What an honor to talk to someone who’s seen a century of artmaking. 

🗺️ Visit him at jamesleehansen.com.

👀 For pictures, video, and more, visit the episode page.

⭐️ Find Jim’s work in the wild at:

• Maryhill Museum
• Portland Art Museum 
• Clark College: The Guardian
• Clark College: Naga Spore #2

⭐️  Thanks to our sponsor, Oregon ArtsWatch!

Transcript

100-Year-Old Sculptor Looks Back | James Lee Hansen 📍 Battle Ground, WA

Adriana: James Lee Hansen is 100 years old. He's a sculptor who lives in Battle Ground, Washington, and he has over 700 works of art to his name that are seen all over the Pacific Northwest and nationally. He's been recognized by the Washington State House of Representatives. His work has been seen at the Whitney Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Washington DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Portland Art Museum, Maryhill Museum, Clark College, and everywhere you can possibly imagine in Vancouver.

To be in the presence of somebody with so much skill, so much generosity and humor, and frankly, so much life experience, gives us a chance to really think back on the last 100 years when so much has happened. James Hansen has been here making art and thinking about what it means to be a person in the world, interacting with the planet around them.

In 1994, Jim Hansen gave a eulogy for his friend painter Don Sorenson, and in that eulogy, which I'm gonna read a little bit of today - you can find the whole thing on his website if you're interested - he really sums up, I think, a lot of what he believes it is to be an artist in the world. He said something really beautiful on an Oregon Arts Beat interview.

He said that his job as a sculptor is made easier because he just has “to reach down and get the earth dust of stars and start making something.” He says, “I just have to have the earth.”

Here's what he said in that eulogy. 

“But in the spirit of all the solitary artists of the past, long before the frenzy and the requisite hype of our exhibitionist culture, we observed that a painter paints for a private vision.

It is that abrasive rub of consciousness between the spirit and mundane realities that gives artists their cause. There exists an ephemeral strata, a fragile, thin domain between the temporal and divine. A wonderland of the spirit where the artist's vision manifests the substantive imperatives, and like that great friction that grinds earth to molten heat and forms the gems and metals of our earth, so too the rub of life between spirit and substance gives us the fire of creativity. 

But what we see in the end are the works that artists leave behind, which gives testament to the hope that there is a beauty and spirit beyond the flesh of our mortal, being beyond the panoply of disappointments and regrets, beyond unrequited love and ambition.

We build cultural structures to the material evidence of that ephemeral spirit we call “art” and we pay it just homage. But it is much more than canvas and paint. It is much more than stone and metal images. Much, much more than the collective icons of art history. It is what transcends our mortal existence as our poor prayers probed into the why of it all.”

From this, you can hear that James is not just a sculptor but a poet. He speaks of art the way I only wish I could. 

I had the very great honor of sitting with Jim and his wife Jane, in their gorgeous home. They live right next to his massive studio, and you'll hear me ask him about his property right at the beginning of the interview. Here's what's hard to describe. Much of his work is huge. It's massive. He's a sculptor who works first with iron, creating a skeleton of a form, and then he sculpts onto that form with wax.

Then that wax is covered with a plaster cast. Then the wax is melted out. Then the bronze is poured in, then the plaster cast is taken off of the bronze, and then he shaves it down so the metal is the shape he wants, and then it gets painted, so the color or “patina” goes on. This process is so, so hard to capture on a podcast.

So, my friends, here is the thing. I want you to please, please click the link in the show notes to go to the incredible website that Jane and Jim put together. There you're going to find photos of his work that captured the mid-century energy perfectly. You'll see a timeline of Jim's life, videos, et cetera.

You must see his work to understand the importance of it. And the good news is you can literally see it all over the place from the Portland Art Museum entrance to the Maryhill Museum and so on. 

This episode is short. Jim is a hundred years old, friends, and I didn't want to tire him out with my incessant questions, but you get to hear his voice, which is a gift, and you get to hear from Jane, too. And it's important to acknowledge the importance of Jane as Jim's partner and the person who is managing the preservation, cataloging, and sale of this massive, massive body of work. So go listen to Jane. Go listen to Jim. And then go look at some art. It will make your heart sing.

Welcome to, I’m Into This Place, your deep dive into the local arts, culture, and heritage of Clark County. From fabulous new restaurants to quirky art installations to the historical sites you never even knew to look for, we’re inviting you along. Whether you're a Clark County connoisseur or just starting to get to know her, get ready to fall head over heels for this place we call home. I'm your host, Adriana Baer, and I'm into this place. Let's go.

Adriana: So I read. A bit about you moving to this property, but when I was driving in, I saw all your sculptures along the drive and out front. I, I would just love to hear about this home and studio that you've created. 

Jim: Well, when I heard the, uh, freeway’s going through my old, old studio area, I had just received two commissions. So I told 'em they would have to let me know if they were going to take my property, and otherwise if I got started and uh, had to move, it would be more expensive for them.

I didn't have time to tromp around the county and look at property and  it seemed like this was big enough for a studio. So the Burnt Bridge Studio in Vancouver was a pretty big studio. And then right away I had to figure out how to get a big studio that could handle the equipment that I had in Vancouver and I had to bring it out.

So I told the person that I had going to build the studio, I said, just double everything. 'Cause I wanna have a bridge crane for the whole studio. So that's how I got started. 

Adriana: One of the things I'm really curious about is just, is there a core memory for you of early days engaging with art, creating art? What was the spark?

Jim: Oh yes. My mother, my mother read to me every morning and, uh, before I went to bed, Wind and the Willows and, uh, books like that. Aesop’s Fables and Mother Goose and the Grimm Brothers. And, um, all those sort of things, more or less gave me a very good background, you know, uh, Chicken Little, uh, the sky is falling and, uh, you know, and this sort, all these things that just appear to be real, but they aren't.

Adriana: Hmm. So with your mom reading you those stories, how did those kind of translate into visual art for you or wanting to make stuff with your hands? 

Jim: I would make a little model of a Buddha or a little wooden ship that came up the Columbia. I got extra credit for making little things. So incense, burners and anything like that, you know, being able to start a fire with a stick.

Adriana: And it's interesting because, you know, you, you kind of identified making little models and fire. And I feel like that's where you ended up spending so much of your creative life was in building things that are 3D using heat and power to do that. Is the process for making something very large scale and small scale similar?

Jim: Oh, well, everything I make is, would fit in the palm of your hand. 

Adriana: Oh. 

Jim: Yeah, see, that way I could see it from every angle, you see? It could go this way, it could go this way, could go this way. So it works from any way you look at it. It is like solid music. 

Adriana: Wow. 

Jim: In other words, you have to hear it from different places to hear good music and have an ear for music.

And so I think almost everything's a trinity. It starts out as a binary. There's two: there's light and darkness, day and night. But, when you think about it a little, there's two ends and there's a middle. So there you have a trinity. And then the more you know, the more you don't know 

Adriana: When you make, when you go from this small to the full size, do you do it in stages? So you build a version that's medium and a version that's the full size and then that helps you figure out the structure and the weight of it as it's getting bigger? 

Jim: Yeah. Everything I do, there's, everything's a variation of those small ones I do in my hands. I really don't make a reproduction. Everything is a variation. 

Adriana: I heard you say in an interview that you start the piece, but time finishes the piece. Because of the patina that comes on it. Is that a good thing to you? Or is it frustrating that you never quite know? Or is it exciting that you never quite know? 

Jim: Oh, well, gosh, it has to be exciting. There's no. There's no center and there's no circumference. That's unknown. You don't have a center and you don't have a circumference. Everything is always changing. That's what I, I keep thinking: how can anyone ever be bored? It's only when I quit being able to do my best work… if I can't do that, I don't do any work. I think about it and then I make up stories about it. 

Adriana: One of the things that is documented so beautifully on your website is your early days at the Portland Art Museum School and how a lot of your classmates were doing realistic sculpture. 

Jim: Yeah. 

Adriana: Sort of classical Renaissance traditional thing, and don't tell anyone, but your work is so much more interesting to me.

You know, when I studied art in school, we were studying mid-century and this was it. You were just making the most quintessential pieces of your time. For you, does it come, do you have an idea, a vision first and then you make it? 

Jim: It is not a thought process. It's instinctual. I think if you were ever at sea in a storm, the sea's rough. You don't think about moving to the center. You do it instinctively. You don't, “oh, well let's see now the tip's gonna tip this way. Let's think about that.” No, you don't. You just do it. And that's how I feel that, that art's about.If you have to think about it, reason gets in the way of instinct and you lose something.

And, uh, that's what happens to a whole lot of murals that people get paid to do for kind of promotion or commercial promotions and all that sort of thing. And, of course you have to have some money to buy groceries and, so you, you do that sort of thing, but you realize that your best work is instinctual.

Adriana: At this point in the conversation, Jane jumped in and offered to take me out to Jim’s studio.  So what you’re about to hear is us inside of this massive warehouse type space where there are a ton of Jim’s sculptures.  Some are getting preparered for sale, some are getting repaired, some are  getting new patinas put on, and some are just there for historical posterity.  Jane’s created a little bit of a museum of his finished work and also of his process. So what you’re about to hear is Jane explaining to me, standing in the back of his warehouse studio, how Jim went from the seed of an idea or an impulse, into a finished product.

Jane:  So here's a small equestrian. And you know, this is nine feet tall now. 

Adriana: And that's wax what you're holding in your hand. 

Jane: So you can see where he starts. And then he'll make a mold so that he can pour wax. 

A bigger sculpture that has to have some, uh, if you're gonna make it, you have to start with the skeleton which is made out of metal. And you weld that together and then you add your clay onto this skeleton. And Jim starts out with just thin things and keeps adding until he gets he wants. And then you have to make a plaster cast take the form off of the piece. You've got a plaster cast first. And then you pour the wax in. And you make that shell of wax. He works on the piece itself and creates all the texture that he wants. So then you put this in an investment mold, you flip it, and burn out the investment mold.  Which then leaves this image inside the mold. And then when you flip it back like this, after you've burnt out the wax, you pour the bronze. And then they do what's called chasing the metal. Creating the texture and then the patina is put on.

Adriana: And that's kind of like painting the patina. Yeah. 

Jane: Exactly. That's the difference between Jim and a lot of other people’s work. Is that he actually starts from the beginning to the end. He did have help, of course, to do all the casting. But the finish work was done by him.

Adriana: oh, Jim and Jane, thank you so much for sharing some stories with me today for explaining how you think about this work and also some of the processes of this work.

It's been an incredible honor, so thank you so much.

And now is the time of the show where we get to hear from you. This is our Community Voices segment where you call in and let us know your favorite places in local arts culture, and heritage. Community Voices is sponsored by Johnson Bixby, their financial planning and portfolio management team combines technical expertise with genuine care, helping you make informed confident decisions at all stages of life and plan.

For Life's Possibilities. Advisory Services by Johnson Bixby, SEC, registered Securities through Private client services. Member Finra, SIPC. 

Guest: Hi, I'm Fiona and I really like Gold Cup Coffee House. 

Guest: My name is Nicholas Dill and I want to give a shout out to my friend photographer Jeff Gracz, for being a keystone of the Vancouver photography community for many years.

Adriana: We'd love to hear from you. What are your favorite spots in Clark County? Who really deserves a shout out? Give us a call and leave a message, or send us a voice note via email. All the details on how to do that are in the show notes.

I'm Into This Place is produced by me, Adriana Baer. Editing and mixing for this episode by Shawn Lee Martin. We recorded at the home and studio of James Lee Hansen. You can find out more about him and us at imintothisplace.com. See you out there.