OCT 14TH 2021

Do artists, musicians, photographers, poets, writers, skateboarders, the list goes on, come to a point in their life where it's time to push a reset button? Is the work we do eventually just become "old news"? Is it time for something fresh and different? Lately I've been feeling this way about my work. This is a shift I could only have come to with time. A moment like this would not have been in my sight five or ten years ago. So goes the old saying, artists are their worst critics. For me, this has never been so much truer as it is during these days. Proceeding into the future through this pandemic, one has all the ambition in the world. And now that the dust is settling, we return to work, shows go back to opening, people gather again. Therefore, I think to myself, "did I do enough?" or "is the art I make of any importance?"

With each completed collection, finished piece, or even sketch, I still feel it is never good enough, there is always room for improvement.

With all that said, why do I feel this way? Is it due to my own suffering? Or the impact social media has on me, feeling I need to compare myself to what seems the success of others? Is not simply creating the art not enough? Where do I expect to be?

A great Tibetan artist once told me, great art is works created about the artist's own story. I've often wondered what exactly does that mean to my work? I've made pictures across landscapes from Joshua Tree to southern India and more. Through these there is an underlying tale of where I am at the time in my life and how that experience affected me. Yet, now I am asking myself what about my home? Where do I come from?

Last October I began taking reference photos in the streets of the San Bernardino, the largest city where I live. A city within the Inland Empire, this is where I come from, a reflection of who I am. That city and most of all of the Inland Empire is the landscape of myself. There are many forgotten corners throughout these cities with a long history.

One of the first study drawings I began working on is of a man riding his bicycle right in front of me as I snapped a photograph of an old pawn shop on Baseline Ave. in San Bernardino. Originally wanting to work on sketches of the pawn shop, as I looked closer at the photo, his expression to me said it all. With a raised eyebrow and look of confusion, saying in his eyes "who would care to take a picture of that old abandoned pawn shop?" I did a couple sketches of his expression because to me he said it all in that one photograph. Who would care to capture the life here on these streets? I want to.

- James

Location photograph by Yulissa Mendoza