Living the Creative Life: James Lee Hansen

We went up to Battleground, WA, last week to visit sculptor Jim Hansen and his wife Jane, who had invited us to tour their “compound” and have lunch.  They have 13 acres just north of Vancouver and it was a rainy but beautiful fall day.  The “front yard” is the perfect place for sculpture, but then the sculpture is so terrific it looks good anyplace–like the deck for instance:

and while most is cast bronze, there are other choices, including cement.

After touring the house we went out to the studio, where a just few sculptures are sitting around:

(These things are so beautiful and just ASK to be touched…and this might be the only venue where you actually CAN touch them!)

The studio has the delights of most studios–the evidence of work being made.

Jim talked to Roger about work in progress:

and showed us where the molds are stored

Jim has been amazingly prolific as an artist, and Jane is in the process of compiling a catalog raisonne of all the sculpture.  They are photographing everything still in their possession :

and Jane explains that a white string means the photographing is complete

We then took a walk down to the gallery–a separate building at the front of the property where prospective clients can visit and see some of the beautiful, muscular pieces on hand:

By now our tummies were all growling for lunch so we walked back up to the house passing the studio

wherein there is a nice wall with the marks of all the grand children as they grew:

Back in the friendly and warm house we settled down for a terrific lunch, and a toast to the artist and the cook:

YUM!!!!

On the way home I noted that everything had begun to look like a James Lee Hansen sculpture: