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 as soon as the notable Art Students League of New York scholarly Hans Hoffman (1880–1966), and Bumgardner acknowledged the last scholarship perfect by Hoffman, a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. Using his scholarship, Bumgardner studied next Hoffman in Provincetown in 1957, during which times he became connections 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 goings-on 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 sham and visual artists who united in a series of annual "Bang, Bang, Bang Arts Festival" happenings in Richmond.