Timeline and Chronology for 50 years - E. Alana James Artwork

Timeline & Chronology for 50 years

50 years of being an artist and only now do I see that the thread that ties my life and my art together is a passion for the “little, personal” stories about life. People exist in places and that and the times they live in determine so much – most of which can be portrayed in art. I hope you enjoy the chronology and please get back to me by email at alana@ealanajames.com if you see things or have ideas that come to you. This is my way of sharing the deepest part of my life and I’m curious what it may mean to you.

The 1970's

1975

Artists Studio

This is the last piece from my first series still available. They were watercolors playing off of renaissance work where musical instruments replaced people in the setting. This was based on a German print.

€3000,00

1975

Family Portrait: The Players

This was one of my final drawings that did not include photographic collage. Once I convinced myself I could draw anything, I didn’t have to. I am the child in front with my Mom. My two sisters are in the rear and the façade is California St in San Francisco in the early 1800s.

€3000,00

1979

People entering subway car

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

The Life in the United States series shots were taken on a summer holiday.

€50,00

1979

Lovely Older Ladies

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

The Life in the United States series shots were taken on a summer holiday. They were so pleased when I asked if I could take their pictures. Lovely aren’t they?

€50,00

1979

Subway ride

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

The El in Boston – my first subway ride – I was so excited!

€50,00

1979

Couple in park

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

I never knew the story about this scene, taken surreptitiously, but something was definitely going on here. What story would you make up?

€50,00

1979

New reflecting the old

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

Denver Colorado, 1979 when all glass buildings were new on the scene.

€50,00

1979

Subway Dancers

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

This was a magic moment. Standing in a boring space, waiting for a train, and then it is transformed by this couple and their “boombox” turning the station into a dance hall. The train arrived, the music stopped and all went back to the way it was.

€50,00

1979

Shop window NYC

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

Sometimes we just have to stop and see the beauty in reflections in glass. New York City, 1979

€50,00

1979

Crazy Bruce

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

A brother of someone I knew – a gonzo crazy man at times, but utterly charming.

€50,00

1979

Nothing Suits Us Like Our Union Suits

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

Look at the sign on the bus that was going by at the time I was capturing work life in the US! A perfect artistic moment.

€50,00

1979

Man Confused by Clothes

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

Another magic moment – this time in a park in Chicago. This man had all his clothes laid out on the ground and was examining them – to me it was as though he was asking, “what do I do with this?”

€50,00

1979

Boston Woman on Stool

The Life in the US Series of Photographs - Each Just a Moment in Time

She was so lovely I just had to stop and ask to take her picture. She agreed, put her cigarette and other things off to the side to make a better shot. A great moment in time.

€50,00

The 1980's

1980

Message in the Rocks

The end of two bad love affairs that, taken together took up almost 20 years of my life. The message in the rocks are under the man (ex husband) in chair on the top of dead horse point in Utah, USA.

€3000,00

1983

The Zappa Quilt

The Zappa quilt had two distinct outcomes in my work. On the one hand, I thought I wanted fame and when I had even a taste of it I did not like the bitterness there and I stepped away, changed my direction and my art went more or less underground. On the other hand, this remains my greatest work if measured in the level of connection to human life that it engendered.

1985

Republic Plaza Blues

Steve was a wonderful warm hearted man who was frustrated with his life and he drank too much. He worked in construction and occasionally had to hock his tools to pay the rent. He made the mandolin that he played.

€3000,00

1985

Or a Reasonable Facsimile Thereof

This work was commissioned by a friend to discuss the similarities of himself and the person on the magazine. 30 years later I’m not really sure of all the details but it is Christmas in Denver, Colorado in the background.

1986

Collage Self Portrait

Having lived in Colorado then New York and back again in Colorado, having faced life when it felt like a desert, this collage hints at the strength I had regained both in the image of myself in the mirror and with the mix of the butterflies with the phoenix tattoos.

€3000,00

1986

Just Plain Country Folk

This family had lost their 16 year old son just prior to my meeting them. They raised great Danes and I interacted with them over the few years after that tragedy. I learned that, while life and death are held differently in the minds of farm families, the death of a child still completely disrupted their lives.

€3000,00

1989

Dogs and Others Sculptures for Two women show @Core New Art Space Denver Colorado

During this show I used collaged photographs, printed on paper cardboard cutouts and drawn over to bring the visual elements in the two dimensional work out in the room to involve the viewer. The piece on the wall to the right was a collage of smaller drawings I had done of parts of the US as I travelled for my work in sales.

1989

Sculpture of Salesman for Core New Art Show

This is one of the salesmen I worked for during that phase in my life. The best thing about that work was the travel and on the wall to the right you will see more small drawings, collaged together, this time of a different part of the country.

1989

Travel Sculpture "Help At the Curb" for Core New Art Show

At the time regular travel was just becoming part of my life and therefore had a mystic about it. This was another tall, collaged and drawn image set out in the gallery to engage the viewers. Looking at the image with the eyes of 2022 I wish the man helping at the curb had been white and the traveler a black business man, then it would have been futuristic as well.

1989

Family Diversity Sculptures for Core New Art Show

The shorter man in front is Ron Blanchett who introduced me to the wonders and hardships of gay culture at the time. My relationship with Ron is untainted with anything but joyful memories. He was a delight. One of the great gifts we can have in life is true love at the end of our lives. Chevy (standing behind Ron) was that for him.

1989

Family Diversity Sculptures for Core New Art Show

The heterosexual couple are my niece and her now ex husband, while the older man in the gay couple was my dear friend Ron Blanchett who died of aids within a year or so of this show. Of course diversity in couples has expanded so much since then.

1989

Family Diversity Wall -Sculptures for Core New Art Show

This is how I put the full wall together, juxtaposing hetero and homo sexual couples – imagine now having only two choices as the norm and only one of them truly “acceptable.”

1989

Two women show @Core New Art Space Denver Colorado

This shot is interesting because it show that there is very little visual difference between the “pure” drawing and the two collage drawings on each side. The same can be said of my digital collage and oil paintings today.

1989

Self Portrait wall @Core New Art Space Denver Colorado

Two ideas on this wall. The balloons that I hold represent ideas and memories tht I learned to let go of through a meditation where they just float up into the sky. The Carnival shots represented to me the juxtaposition in life of the seemingly playful with the harder truth of life working a carnival.

1989

Travel For Work

Images of what travel was like at the time.

The 1990's

1992

Self Portrait of Wholeness

This self portrait was done as a test of whether I could move the scrapbook collage techniques I had been learning closer to fine art. The main photo, which I call rugged integrity was taken by one of our nephews as we explored a beach in California. With a not to Tibetan design I incorporate emotional, mental , physical and mental attributes in the four corners.