I write, design, teach, and study law in New Orleans. In 2001, I co-founded Red Antenna, a creative studio in New York City. I’ve also taught several courses in design at the Pratt Insitute and Parsons School of Design. Currently, I’m finishing up a big book about the American landscape called The Awful Making of an Optimist, which will be published on W.W. Norton in 2011. In my spare time, I take photographs of old factories and try my best to be chivalrous. I’m also working on Civic Center with my colleagues Candy Chang, Dan Parham, and Stephen Baker.

Before studying film and graphic design at the University of Michigan, James switched his major no less than six times (including the ever-popular Japanese Literature in Translation) and held 23 part-time jobs (selling oriental rugs, developing photographs, gas station clerk, and delivering pizzas).

In 2001, James moved to the big city, where he worked as a freelance designer for a few Madison Avenue companies before realizing that he did not care if another chocolate bar or cellular telephone was ever sold again. At this point, he was ripe for discovering the manifestos of the Constructivists, Ken Garland’s “First Things First” declaration, and the broad ranting of Adbusters and Émigré. Design as a means of education and empowerment; he dug it. None of these things were mentioned to him during his schooling, so he enrolled in the education department at the Pratt Institute, where he received a Master’s Degree in Design Education in 2004.

Also in 2001, he founded a creative studio and record label called Red Antenna with Candy Chang, Stephen Baker, and Dan Parham. Launching a traditional record label in the same year that the mp3 achieved popular currency proved to be a challenging business decision. Some might even call it ‘doomed’. Nonetheless, several well-received techno records were pressed and even sold to people, and the Red Antenna experiment continues to produce intriguing projects today.

In addition to writing grants and serving as a program director for after school design programs in Brooklyn, James has also taught several undergraduate and graduate couses in design and history at the Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. He also taught first grade, middle school, and a few months of high school. Middle school was the scariest experience, followed by undergraduates who are addicted to Facebook. The best students to teach are first graders and graduate students because they want to be in the classrom (really, they’re just excited to be out in public).

After eight years in New York City, he moved to Helsinki to get some perspective before returning to Freedomland, driving around for a while, and deciding to go to law school in New Orleans. Now he’s beginning to dream of living off the land in New Mexico or Utah.