His debut project, The House That Haunts You, premiered on Halloween 2025 as a sold-out, one-night-only experience in Woodstock, New York, staged inside his live/work studio—both site and subject.

His practice sanctifies the discarded: materially, psychologically, and culturally, through site-specific installation, sculpture, seasonal ritual, performance, and life-as-art.

Working with antiques, found objects, textiles, fragrance, and memory, Marilyn builds immersive worlds from what others leave behind, as well as from his own psychic remnants.

The name James Marilyn is an inheritance of unrealized possibility. James was a name his mother once considered but never gave him; Marilyn, the name she would have chosen had he been born a girl. In reclaiming both, he engages dreaming, queer performance, and personal salvage as artistic method.

Before James Marilyn emerged, he was, and remains, Josh Tierney, a creator of cultural narratives and experiences for brands and institutions ranging from Gucci to The White House.