James is a multidisciplinary artist based in Louisville, Kentucky. His work explores ritual, destruction, and transformation through a process he calls ashwave — a method of creating art from smoke sessions, where all present ash directly onto canvas. The result is both spontaneous and spiritual, as faces and figures emerge naturally from the residue, later guided with acrylic but never forced.

Fugett’s current body of work, Memento Ardere — Latin for “remember to burn” — includes the Ashy Face Collection, a series of pyro-abstract paintings born from community and chance. Each piece documents not just a moment of creation, but a shared breath, a lived memory, and a trace of presence.

By presenting some works unframed or in disconnected frames, Fugett challenges the idea of completion and containment. The materials are often burned, reused, and layered across canvases, transforming destruction into visual memory.

Through ashwave, Fugett turns smoke into story, fire into form, and ashes into archive.