Jim Barnes was born in 1955 and he grew up in Newark, Delaware, a small college town. After traveling around the US for a year he temporarily settled in Sacramento, CA where he began studying art with a concentration in photography. In 1980 he returned to Delaware and in 1984 he earned a BFA degree in fine art photography and graphic design from the University of Delaware. He returned to California and pursued a career as a photographer. When Jim came to the realization that photography was more about reacting to a situation or "decisive moment" and less about creating, he turned to sculpture as a way of getting more involved in his art. He bought a welding torch without a clue as to how to use it, and began sculpting. With steel sculpture Barnes had found an art form that definitely was not reactive. He discovered it was dirty, loud, violent and potentially dangerous. He found that great realease that happens when a piece of art emerges through the violence and fire of these techniques. For Barnes, sculpture is the third dimension that is missing in painting and photography. Sculpture allows you to walk around it, feel it, sometimes climb on it.
Barnes never paints anymore and rarely does photography anymore. A friend
who taught Jim the basics on welding once said "There is something about boys
playing with fire" and it is true. There is something facinating about playing
with fire. Like a lot of Seattle artists, he recently began studying glass blowing.
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