Emerging Artist Sloppy James

Sloppy James is an emerging artist and beginning freelance designer, poet, and writer. He makes art to be happy. He lives to create engaging works that have never been attempted before.
Tucked away in his slightly cramped studio in RVA, he knows that there is not enough time for all the ideas.

When did you start working as an artist?
I’ve always been working on something creative throughout my life (starting with endless illustrations as a youth, and then I moved heavily into photography during my 20’s). Around 2001 after a poetry-phase, I started getting into
You state you are an emerging artist, what was your background prior to this?
I was working for Children’s Services in San Francisco when I started
Around 2006 I moved to Canada (Montreal) to dedicate myself to learning this craft. The move was extreme, but I wanted to be in a place where I didn’t know anyone, and I could spend my time solely working on
I think I definitely have a style, but I’m not tied to it – I can create in any style. My style though was born from the ‘Mission School’ movement that was taking place in San Francisco in the ’90s and early 2000s. ‘Mission School’ is an urban, graffiti-
With my bottle ‘That the sky is above us, even when we do not see it’ (image
As a poet, writer and artist, do you have a poem that accompanies your sculptural-collage work?
I usually add words and small poems to my works to help convey the stories.
I’m currently working on tiny dioramas about wartime rape, and I’m gathering the words that hopefully will bring a better understanding to what is happening, and make the impact of the dioramas that much stronger.
Can you tell us more about your pseudonym, Sloppy James, and why you go by that?
I started using the moniker ‘
For me, because I’m so borderline obsessive about the quality and content of my work, the pseudonym ‘sloppy
Image copyright Sloppy James. Text and Image provide by the artist. Title of the work:
‘That The Sky Is Above Us, Even When We Do Not See It’
Learn more about the artist through his blog: http://sloppyjames.tumblr.com/
See more of his work: https://sbaustin.carbonmade.com/