Jim Jackson - 2018 Al Stohlman Award Winner

Al & Ann Stohlman Award Foundation 2018 Awards Presentation

On the evening of Saturday, May 19, at 7:30 p.m., an enthusiastic crowd filled the atrium at Sheridan College’s Whitney Academic Center – with standing room only left for the Sheridan Honors Night presentations of this year’s World Leather Debut awards and the Al & Ann Stohlman Awards.

The Al Stohlman Award for Achievement in Leathercraft recipient with James (Jim) F. Jackson of Sheridan, Wyoming. He has been creating with leather all his life, learning the basics of “this rewarding and complex trade” by working with his father, head saddle maker at Ernst’s Saddlery in Sheridan, Wyoming.  He credits Bill Gardner for giving him insight into the tools and methods used in designing and building leatherwork.  He pursued a career in the Fine Arts, earning a Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees at the University of Wyoming. While there, he taught design classes and was the curator of exhibits in the university’s art museum, along with tooling belts and doing special order leatherwork for King’s Saddlery.

Moving back to Wyoming in 1989, he spend 30 years working full time for King’s Saddlery, while continuing to create works of art in his home studio.  The time spent working in the King’s shop he considers to have been a privilege and honor. Over the past 35 years, he has completed works for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, as well as for Anthony Hopkins, Ted Turner, David Letterman, Tom Seileck, Wilford Brimley, Robert Redford, Lyle Lovett, Tommy Lee Jones, and many more. He has conduced lectures and demos about the process of leather carving, taught classes and seminars at the Rocky Mountain Leather Trade Show, “Gathering of the Masters”, Los Angeles, the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and most recently in Tokyo, Nara, and Kyoto, Japan. In 2017 he was named Master Leather Artisan of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists. Jim has moved his workspace to the world-class Brinton Museum near Big Horn, Wyoming, where he continues to create and teach.

Laier, Tony & Reis, Dot (2018). Al & Ann Stohlman Award Foundation 2018 Awards Presentation. Leather Crafters and Saddler's Journal, 28(4), 62-64.