Born and raised near the Joshua Tree in the California desert, artist James Lostlen is inspired by the natural landscape. “Growing up deep in a canyon with a lot of wildlife and nature around, including stones, was a different experience than a lot of people would have,” he tells Business of Home. “My great-grandparents were local rock-hound presidents, so I was immersed in the world of stone very early. I’m fourth-generation in this small town, so I think those are pretty heavily shaping components to my upbringing.”
Lostlen went on to have a career in tool manufacturing—specifically precision measuring tools—as well as manufacturing cabinet lighting and hardware. That niche background influenced the way he looks at making. “I have the ability to place things with more exactness than most would think imaginable,” he says. “I’ve sharpened my eye for detail [and] the ability to utilize tools to manipulate the object with exactness.” He started dabbling in stone sculpting about a decade ago, and five years ago began working in the field full-time, carving locally sourced metamorphic stone into lighting and functional objects—“an extreme hobby [that has] expanded into an art studio,” he adds.
Lostlen’s lifelong appreciation for the material is evident in his work. “The thing that draws me to stone is it’s the obvious medium of choice in the desert. I have an abundance of [it]. I live essentially on an old quarry. It’s such an abundant medium, it only makes sense to find a way to showcase it in a way that honors it,” he says. “Four decades of learning about the desert and understanding it and the nuance of it all, I feel an obligation and responsibility to educate others and bring them closer to nature, because ultimately, if you can have a little piece of nature in your home and appreciate it, it will help you be a better caretaker [of the environment].”
With that sense of stewardship in mind, his process starts by finding the right stone rather than by leading with functionality or design. “I like to find a stone that really moves me and think of a way to add in a little bit of function,” he says. “When you have a strong idea of what you want to do, it’s almost guaranteed to be a very lengthy process of finding a stone to execute that concept on, because it’s so challenging to find one with all the qualities that you’re after. So it’s nice to be flexible with your creative process and start backward in that manner. There are fewer compromises made that way.”
That artistic process is evident in Lostlen’s recent Lunar Stone lamps—named the winner in the Accent Pieces category at the 2025 IIDA/WestEdge Design Fair awards. The architectural wonders showcase the organic material, with the light source carved inside the stone, illuminating its core. “There’s this natural curiosity of what stone looks like inside, and this piece shows you right there. It’s polished, and you can see the juxtaposition. I’m happy that I could showcase these pieces in a way that gets people to stop and look at them,” he says. “The whole concept is to get people to appreciate what is considered ubiquitous and abundant—to stop and say, ‘Wow, this is really special.’ That’s a powerful thing, to get someone to [see] one of the most common stones on earth as something exotic or rare.”
Lostlen exhibited his process for the masses in an 18-minute YouTube video where he hand-carved a 25,000-pound boulder into an outdoor soaking tub, drawing nearly 7 million views and further displaying his talent of turning something raw and natural into something sculptural and usable.
Looking ahead, Lostlen wants to take his work to a bigger scale. “I just spent three months building a hydraulic station to make the Lunar lamps 10 times larger. The goal is to make these large statement pieces in a multitude of installation sites, but to make them life-size—taller than a human, like 6 to 8 feet tall,” he says. “There’s this natural attraction toward scale, I believe, and specifically with stone and large sculptural pieces.”
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