| JAMES SERVAIS
Born in September of 1948 in Pasadena, California
EDUCATION:
Pasadena City College AA
San Francisco Art Institute BFA & MFA
Like so many other young people that graduated from art school in
the 1970's, my plan to teach art was derailed by limited prospects
then available in this noble profession. I worked instead at remodeling
art
galleries and shipping and crating
art. It was an eye-opening time, literally, as I had the daily opportunity
to look at art - to really look at art. Life soon took one
of those delightfully unexpected turns when I met the woman who would
change
everything. We married and my
world
was suddenly
much larger.
My father was a contractor and building houses as he did seemed the
most obvious route to meeting my new responsibilities. I started
designing
houses, a role my wife, Gillian, subsequently took on along its accompanying
piles of paper work. Running the crews and doing most
of the special elements (curved staircases, iron work, light fixtures
and stone work) were my jobs. Our structures were rustic and
hand crafted
of
plaster, stone and recycled wood. These houses brought us our 15
minutes of fame on the Home Show, graced magazine covers and achieved
some
financial success. And the most rewarding creative project of this
period was our son, Jamie, who was born in 1988.
I continued to work on my sculpture whenever I could making about
10 pieces a year, plus commissions and a few gates and fountains.
In 1989 I had a show at Topher
Delanie
Gallery in San Francisco.
October of 1991 brought another of life's unexpected turns, this
one not at all delightful: the Oakland Hills fire. We lived and
worked in a house of our own design on a stream, surrounded by
redwoods. The
fire destroyed our home and most of those we had built in these
beautiful hills. The next few
years are a blur. We rebuilt, for ourselves and many of our neighbors.
I went to work helping to settle insurance claims, writing legislation
on fire safety and building issues, and form a neighborhood
group and a volunteer fire department. I attended hundreds
of meetings.
Near
the turn of the century we made the conscious decision to slow
down. We scaled back the construction end of the business and I
applied myself
to producing
sculpture -
lots of sculpture. In the last two years I have completed a number
of large commission pieces, had studio shows and sold a gratifying,
artist-affirming amount of my work (about 20 pieces in the last
year).
I have been a businessperson for a long time and learned the value
of putting forward one's assets. In addition to creative energy
and innovation, my virtues include:
Financial stability.
The ability to generate a large volume of work, including commissions.
Professional quality crating, shipping and installation of fine
art, sculpture and paintings alike.
Successful generation of publicity. |
