IBUR
St. Louis based multi-media artist, James Ibur, is a Professor of Art and Coordinator of Ceramics for the Department of Communications, Design and Creative Arts at Saint Louis Community College-Meramec. He is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator with emphases on functional and sculptural ceramics, painting and drawing and is also a songwriter and musician with one solo record (Floating-2024) and four records with his band, Flying House (including Blood Red Moon, 2025).
He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions regionally and nationally in his thirty-plus year career. He received an MFA from the University of Illinois/Champaign-Urbana, studied at UC/Davis and a BA from the University of Colorado/Boulder. Ibur completed residencies at both the Archie Bray Foundation and Banff Centre for the Arts.
Artist Statement
My functional work is to be used. The outer surfaces are often covered with images of iconic natural landscapes with humorous and, at times, dystopian imagery.
Sometimes, utility has to give way to the idea of function without being actually usable. I am interested in that intersection, at times, and also the idea that the “vessel” can breathe. This legitimizes the idea of container and containment which gives access to the inner and outer components of the “story”.
The 2D works connect iconic forms in atmospheric landscapes (inner and outer) suggesting complex narratives. Water, falling figures, clouds that eat each other and spaceships are all vehicles for magical narratives.
The protagonist, the bearded king-part airplane, part road, part self-portrait, is clearly on a journey that is often "leaving" or "arriving" or "surviving" the challenges of animals and storms and a dynamic star-scape all the while warily interacting with buildings and a mountainous landscape.
This animation, a music video called Floating People, is the first major synthesis of my songwriting and musicianship and my visual work.
