James Bumgardner

James Bumgardner (1935 - 2015) was an expressionist/figurative painter, multi-media artist, and stage set designer who was a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of art in the VCU School of the Arts. As an undergraduate student at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), Bumgardner was encouraged by his mentor Jewett Campbell to study with the notable Art Students League of New York instructor Hans Hoffman (1880 – 1966), and Bumgardner received the last scholarship given by Hoffman, a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. Using his scholarship, Bumgardner studied with Hoffman in Provincetown in 1957, during which time he became friends with gallery director Richard Bellamy and artist Jan Müller. In 1963 in Richmond Jim Bumgardner and Jon Bowie co-directed a series of multi-media events or "happenings". The first was called "Synthesis" and was influenced by the productions of Allan Kaprow and the ONCE Festival of New Music of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After "Synthesis" Bumgardner and Jon Bowie invited notable outside performance and visual artists who joined in a series of annual "Bang, Bang, Bang Arts Festival" happenings in Richmond.

As a youth, James Arliss Bumgardner studied painting at St. Leo's Catholic Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with Sister St. Denys, who had been a restorer at the Vatican Museums. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for one year before deciding to focus on a career in art. Another year of art study was spent at Salem College under the instruction of Ed Shewmake, and in 1965 the college added art by Bumgardner to its collection. In 1955 he switched to Richmond Professional Institute in Richmond, Virginia (afterward re-named Virginia Commonwealth University), where he studied with Jewett Campbell and received his BFA before beginning his teaching career.

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