Lamp lighter

You might say a light bulb went off in James Violette’s head about seven or eight years ago when he decided to build his first lamp.

A self-described “craftsman” who makes a living by doing cabinetry work and making furniture, Violette liked to roam thrift shops and yard sales in the Portland area — where he lived before moving to Eugene in 2008 — and find old lamps from as far back as the 19th century. Ho would tinker with them and fix them up.

Then one day, he decided to build his own. He got some copper tubing and some tripod legs, figured out the engineering and put “like, a reflector on it,” and voila.

A lamp was born.

Then he made another. And another one after that, and he hasn’t stopped.

But did he think that this new hobby would lead to his very first lamp exhibit years later?

No.

“But, you know, it’s just grown into it,” the 48-year-old Violette says. “I have enough people who are interested.”

Thus, “Shadows and Light,” an exhibition of almost 40 of Violette’s luxury lamps, opened with a private showing Wednesday night — 12-12-12 for those who believe such dates might shine an aura of good luck — at the Broadway Commerce Center in downtown Eugene.

Today and Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, the exhibit is open to the public. And yes, these high-end, hand-crafted lamps are for sale.

Selling them, however, is not the “big goal” of this show, Violette says. It’s about getting his work out there so local architects and designers and others who might be able to help him build up this adventure can see it.

“He’s an amazing artist,” says Jill Hartz, executive director of the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, who is hosting the exhibit, along with Frances Bronet, dean of the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts, and Denise Sprengelmeyer, owner of Modern, a design and gift shop on East Fifth Avenue in Eugene.

Modern has a few of Violette’s lamps for sale, ranging in price from about $200 to $1,000, Sprengelmeyer says.

“They’re fabulous,” she says. “They’re very well-made — clearly by a craftsman. They are modern in design and have a vintage aesthetic as well.

“They work well in a variety of decor,” from homes built in the 1920s or ’30s to home interiors that recall the new modernism of the 1950s, Sprengelmeyer says.

More of a craftsman, he says

Hartz met Violette through his partner, Eugene hair designer Blu Clark. Then she hired him to do some work at the museum.

The lamp exhibit was her idea. Hartz thought “it would be great for James to have a spot to show his lamps,” for people to see his “body of work.”

They are, after all, not just lamps, Hartz says. “They are sculptures; art.”

Violette isn’t so sure.

“I think of myself as more of a craftsman than an artist,” says Violette, standing in the 1950s, one-story home he shares with Clark in a cul-de-sac in Eugene’s Harlow Road neighborhood. “But yeah, when you break it all down, there’s an artistry to this.”

Violette was born and raised in Maine. He began nurturing his craftsman skills in a cabinetry shop there when he was about 20.

Violette builds his creations in the garage, but they can be found all over his house. He uses acrylic, aluminum, chrome, fabric, plastic and fine woods to create his lamps, and only uses LED or other energy-saving bulbs, as well as dimmers and remote controls to operate them.

Once he’s done the design work on his computer, it only takes four or five days to make one, Violette says.

After the design work is done, Violette shows the image through a projector hanging from the ceiling onto the wall in his shag-carpeted TV room.

He calls one creation a “chrome bubble lamp.” It sits the corner of his modern living room like some futuristic piece from a distant century. But other pieces evoke a sense of the mid-century modern architecture of the 1950s.

Violette sometimes will find fabric from half-century-old curtains at a Goodwill store and glue the fabric to plexiboard, then insert a long, thin LED tube inside. Many of his creations bring out effects he never imagined.

“If you check out all the shadows from these lights, that’s just as important to me as the light,” he says. “Look at them. Look at the effect.

“It’s all ambience and lighting, so it’s a big bonus when you light something up and it does something you didn’t expect.”

The head of one lamp consists of two circles of white plexiglass a few inches apart, chrome paper wrapped around. Violette turns on the lamp to show how you can see through the chrome paper to the bulb, whereas before you could not.

“Yes!” he says.

Two of his most recent works are Z-shaped pieces made of Peruvian walnut, with LED tube lights encased in metal.

These, he is very excited about.

But he has no intention of making more of them; has no desire to mass-produce his lamps.

“I just would really rather create one-of-a-kind pieces,” Violette says. “Yeah, that’s a much better way to go.”