Art in the Moment: James A. Faulkner

James A. Faulkner works with fragments—pieces of old photographs, vintage ephemera, and found materials that he layers into collages dense with memory and meaning. A designer with over three decades in broadcast, print, and multimedia (including two Emmy wins), he's now devoted primarily to his collage practice, exhibiting and selling work nationally and internationally. Looking at his pieces, you can almost hear the rustle of old newspapers, feel the texture of aged paper between your fingers.

Courtesy of James A Faulkner

When I ask him about creating art in our current political moment, he's refreshingly direct: "I prefer to keep politics out of my work." It's not avoidance—it's intention. While the world churns with anxiety and division, Faulkner has made a deliberate choice to focus elsewhere.

"Trying to stay positive and focus on the beauty of my surroundings," he tells me. There's something quietly radical about this stance right now. Not radical in a performative way, but in the deeper sense of protecting something essential. His collages become a kind of sanctuary—spaces where texture and color and the poetry of forgotten objects matter more than the news cycle.

But he's not naive about the pressures. "I feel slightly more vulnerable and worry about my future," he admits when I ask if the political atmosphere has changed how he thinks about his role as an artist. The vulnerability is real. The concerns about arts funding are real ("Yes indeed, it concerns me greatly"). Yet he keeps working.

His collages tell their own kind of stories. In one piece, vintage photographs of figures mingle with musical notations, architectural details, and fragments of text that feel like overheard conversations from another era. There's something about the way he combines these elements—not chaotic, but layered in a way that suggests all these fragments of time and experience exist simultaneously, right here, right now.

Courtesy of James A Faulkner

"Turbulence can bring about great art," he reflects, "are desire and desperation to create, be seen and heard." (I love that slight grammatical slip—it reads like pure thought, unfiltered.) He's thinking about how difficulty has always pushed artists to say something that couldn't be said any other way.

When I ask what role artists should play during political upheaval, his answer is beautifully simple: "Keep creating, we should celebrate our work on a daily basis." Not protests or manifestos, but the quiet daily practice of making something that didn't exist before.

There's wisdom in that choice to celebrate daily creation. His collages become acts of preservation—not just of old photographs and vintage materials, but of a way of seeing that insists beauty and memory and texture matter as much as headlines. Maybe more.

"It is a challenge, but artists supporting artists during this period," he says when I ask how this moment might be remembered. The grammar wobbles again, but the meaning is clear. We're holding each other up. We're making space for each other to keep working.

His advice to artists twenty years from now? "Keep your dream alive, do not be swayed by negativity and hate."

Simple words, but they land with the weight of someone who's chosen hope as a daily practice. Someone who understands that sometimes the most political thing you can do is refuse to let the world's chaos stop you from making something beautiful.

Looking at his work, I think about all the fragments we're living through right now—the broken pieces of news and fear and uncertainty that fill our days. Faulkner shows us another way to hold these fragments: not as evidence of everything falling apart, but as materials for something new. Something that celebrates the daily act of creation, no matter what's happening outside the studio walls.

Follow James A. Faulkner's work at jamesafaulkner.wixsite.com/faulknerdesign and on Instagram @collage_antecedent

Courtesy of James A Faulkner