About James
James Bond is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He holds a degree in Fine Art, Sculpture from St Martin’s School of Art, London.
He has been carving wood and deepening his art practise for 44 years.
For over 25 of those years he has designed, managed and run social art projects for the public in their own settings, with a specific focus on working with young men, in collaboration with public bodies in the South West of England. These are now run through a Community Interest Company (CIC) which he set up: Carving Community. In 2013 a police study found that one of these projects, at Beacon Heath Arena Park, resulted in a 98% reduction in anti-social crime in the area.
In the Jubilee year he was presented to her Majesty the Queen at Exeter University. In 2009 he was also sent by the Home Office to The Hague to represent the UK in the European Crime Prevention Awards.
James started out as a trapper, fisher and hunter, working from 13 to 16 on a Devon country estate as a gamekeeper’s assistant and wood carver. He emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 21, working in the timber industry and as a self-employed carver, theatre prop and set maker.
He then traveled extensively, later returning to the UK and gaining his first class honours degree in Fine Art at the age of 30.
In 1995, James met cultural thinker James Hillman in Devon and was invited to study with him in the USA. James later became Artist in Residence at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California.
The influence of Hillman and his request to break art and creativity out into the everyday has been James’s pursuit for the past 27 years and has taken art projects into the public’s own settings, including others in a creative adventure as a part of their everyday.
From October 2014 to April 2017, James was employed by Age UK Exeter as the Manager of the Men In Sheds project. In this role he was responsible for supervising and supporting two paid staff plus a team of volunteers and ensuring the older men who used the project really got the most out of it.
Men In Sheds provides meaningful activity, company and support to around 60 older men with a wide range of needs from loneliness and isolation to physical and sensory disabilities and mild dementia.
Alongside the community work James has made artworks which include sculpture for upstate New York and many public and private commissions in the UK, working mostly in wood and bronze castings.
A Brief History of my Art Practice
J S Bond 24/07/24
Art practise history and some experiences
While I was studying at Central Central St. Martins over 30 years ago, my concern then was the context of art. The dilemma I had was that I was very much a maker and engaged with materials. Carving wood Wayback when I was 13 years of age. I got in to central Saint Martins on a direct entry, because of my portfolio from 10 years of work initiated by myself. I got a 1st class honours degree.
In the second term of the first year I left the sculpture department and went to The Critical Fine Art practice (CFAP ) course, because I wanted to creatively work without making an end product object, I explored performance art and installations, but found that the denial of matter and making process with materials was fundamental to form and aesthetic enquiry.
After returning from Romania in the summer where I studied how the wooden churches were made in Moldavia I wrote to the head of sculpture to request my return to the sculpture department.
After Central St. Martins I went to Glasgow School of Art to further the work on the MA Environmental Art course, [I left after the first year].
Since then I’ve maintained my art practice on an individual level with many media, mainly wood but taking moulds from the wood and spending time with a foundry man in Gloucester learning to vacuum and sand Cast.
A lot of the work has mainly been in social setting in the public every day lives starting on housing estates in Plymouth back in the 90s when there was lots of deprivation and neglect and I worked with practical creativity with materials and dynamic processes as part of a group process, mainly with the young children on the streets, but also engaging with the parents where eventually we came together and cooperatively made big structures together like seating and public shelters out of huge fallen tree trunks.
My main influence and which has deeply affected my work is working alongside James Hillman in the USA where we spent time together in creative dialogue settings exploring the idea of art and where is the environment. These were highly influential and I managed to go to quite a few of these gatherings over a period of six years.
I have a vast body of work from the past 30 years working as an Environmental Artist this has been delivered as public sculptures and community participation projects in partnership with Housing Associations, Councillors, Youth Offending teams and local authorities.
The work has involved making large sculpted seating shelters and benches out of fallen trees as a group creative process with local people in parks and open spaces close to where they lived .
The projects proved effective in engaging with hard to reach young people from neglected areas of society because of the dynamic creative process applied. The origins of these ways of working were initiated while studying at Central St Martin’s and Glasgow School of Art 33 yrs ago.
My most prominent achievements include:
1990 Public Park Sculpture Commission Exeter Council 1992 Sculpture commission Verulamium Park St.Albans
1993/2000 Working on Housing Estates in Plymouth with young people making Art structures
1996 Artist residence at Esalen Institute Big Sur California
1996/1998 participant of 5 seminars on Art and Environment with James Hillman at California, Newyork, Adirondacks
1997 Private Commission Adirondacks USA Sculpted Loon [Black throated Diver] nesting raft with Tree Swallow nesting accommodation
2005/2018 seven Community [mainly y/p]sculpted seating/shelters in local parks Devon
2019 Insect Habitat sculptures commissioned by the River Exe Flow project
2022 Crediton Lybrary community Bench Project at the Town Square
2022 Live West North Taunton housing Estate community made sculpted bench
2021/2023 Five senses sculpture for Sensory Garden commission by Cavanna Homes
2023 2Heart pillars commissioned by Barretts Homes Exeter
2025 Habitat seating shelter housing estate Vistry group Chudliegh
James' Art
Below are a few examples of James’ work.
