Robert James on Art, Music, Shyness and Growing up OC — Part 1

Posted by Dex_Dexter

February 12, 2008

What follows are transcribed excerpts of my interview with Orange County artist “Robert James”. Be sure to check out more of this fun and interesting interview in the first garbage culture podcast — to be released soon.
On file sharing, copyright and P2P:

I like to think it’s all good. Wow — great things can be done with this and look at all the possibilities…You know my mind doesn’t work that way, like oh how can I screw someone over with their art or music or whatever? I don’t think that way.

On the reactions of his family when he started sharing his art this past year:

I’ll tell you what I did because it was real recent… just this past Christmas, and it was partly because I was broke, but I really buckled down and I did a lot of paintings, and I spread them all out — to my nephews and nieces, and my brothers… I did a major painting for my little brother, and everyone just flipped out it was really rewarding, it was one of the most rewarding experiences with art in a long time.

On growing up in the OC:

I was real fortunate that the kids that I grew up with and the crew that I grew up with all really creative people, all of them — musicians and artists… and nuts and loners and comic book geeks… Just really interesting people, really creative people. Writing songs and listening to music and creating art and skateboarding. We were really cool kids who at a really young age were all doing really creative stuff and listening to a lot of great music. In fact most of my friends were musicians, and I think that art for me — that was a way for me to be involved.

On his favorite BBQ record:

There’s this record called East Autumn Grin by Mathew Ryan and it’s really just a great BBQ record.

[Show as slideshow]