James Surls
American
(Terrell, Texas, 1943 - )
James Surls was born in the small, east Texas town of Terrell in 1946. He grew up in a house his carpenter father built. He learned to use hand tools by helping his father and brother clear land and build fences, barns, and other structures.(1) In college at nearby Sam Houston State University he discovered art and immediately began working with wood because of his childhood affinity for the material. He studied sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, taking an MFA degree, then returned to Texas in 1969, settling into a teaching position at Southern Methodist University in Dallas for six years.(2) Later, he also taught at the University of Houston and ran the Lawndale Art and Performance Center, an innovative and successful alternative space in Houston’s museum district.(3)
When Surls, a self-described “bushwhacker,”(4) was teaching in the early 1970s, he thought: “Man, I’ve got to get out. I have to go back to the woods. I want to go back to what I know the best, to the place where I’m most psychologically comfortable.”(5) In 1976, he found that place outside Splendora, a small town in the “Big Thicket,” the piney woods north of Houston. He moved there with his wife, artist Charmaine Locke, and hewed a home and studio out of the forest. At first, the home and studio were the same space. They slept on the porch and cooked outdoors. Surls recalled, “I always thought of us as living in a green envelope. It was filled with holly trees and magnolia trees and pines, and it’s green all year.”(6) Surls prowled the woods, scavenging fallen timber but rarely cutting trees because of his respect for the plant life around him. He assembled hand tools and power tools including chain saws and bulldozers and electric hoists for handling monumental sculpture materials, eventually constructing a 12,000 square foot studio and a complex of living and working spaces. Then, in 1998 he closed that chapter of his life and moved on to the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, outside Denver.
Upon meeting Locke at SMU and then putting down roots together in Splendora, his art blossomed.(7) A solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston led to more exhibition opportunities around Texas and beyond, including New York galleries.(8) His engagement in the Texas arts community through his work with Lawndale and his role as a mentor to younger artists led to recognition in and outside the state.(9) By the time he reached traditional retirement age, Surls was recognized as an “old master” of sorts, a prolific, mature artist whose sculptures and drawings manifest a signature style, a personal morphology of spiky, organic and often anthropomorphic forms typically wrought in wood and steel. In his later work early this century, he has also made monumental bronze casts of his carved and assembled sculptures. In 2009, the New York City Parks Public Art Program mounted a temporary exhibition of seven of Surls’ monumental sculptures on Park Avenue while two New York galleries displayed his small sculptures and energetic drawings laden with the artist’s whimsical and idiosyncratic iconography.
Throughout his career, Surls has created floral forms, diamonds and pyramidal shapes, knife-edged objects, and images of eyes. He has included his own profile in some sculptures, and has brought himself into other works with titles like I See Five and Nine.(10) Surls’ sculptures embody personal meanings that defy easy understanding by critics, historians, and the average viewer. Still, his work is recognized by inclusion in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, and many others.(11)
(1) Michael Berryhill, “Conjureman: Texas-based sculptor James Surls returns to the elemental to rebuild the world,” The Journal of Art, Special Report: Abstract Art vol. 4 no. 6 (June/July/August), 1991: 58.
(2) Janet Kutner, “James Surls” in Surls (exhibition catalog) (Tyler, Texas: Tyler Museum of Art,, 1974), no pagination.
(3) Wendy Paris, “James Surls,” Sculpture Magazine (Jan./Feb. 1991), 18.
(4) Kutner, James Surls.
(5) Berryhill, “Conjureman,”58.
(6) Stewart Oksenhorn, “James Surls’ works: An unpolished beauty,” Aspen Times Weekly, circa 1999, accessed from archives at www.aspentimes.com 26 August 2009.
(7) Surls said, “Charmaine brought something to my art life, and personal life, that I did not have…. Now I had a muse, an inspiration, a source that fed something into my soul that was not there.” (Oksenhorn, “James Surls’ works.”)
(8) His subsequent solo shows include Delahunty Gallery, Dallas, 1979; Robinson Galleries, Houston, 1979; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, 1981; Akron Art Museum, 1982; Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, 1982; Honolulu Academy of Art, 1984; just to name a few.
(9) Janet Kutner, “Surls has always mentored well,” Dallas Morning News, 26 June 1993, pp. 1C and 3C, mentions his receipt of the first Legend Award established by D-Art Visual Arts Center founder Patricia Meadows to honor people who furthered the arts in the state. She also cites Surls’ receipt of an NEA fellowship and an Artist of the Year award from the Houston Area Art League.
(10) See Me, Knife, Diamond, and Flower (1999) illustrated in Susie Kalil, James Surls: Walking with Diamonds (Houston and El Paso: El Paso Museum of Art in collaboration with Houston Artists Fund, 1999), pp. 24.
(11) Kutner, Dallas Morning News, says Surls’ art is in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney, Guggenheim, National Gallery, LACMA, SFMOMA, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. She also mentions gallery representation by Marlborough.
American
(Terrell, Texas, 1943 - )
James Surls was born in the small, east Texas town of Terrell in 1946. He grew up in a house his carpenter father built. He learned to use hand tools by helping his father and brother clear land and build fences, barns, and other structures.(1) In college at nearby Sam Houston State University he discovered art and immediately began working with wood because of his childhood affinity for the material. He studied sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, taking an MFA degree, then returned to Texas in 1969, settling into a teaching position at Southern Methodist University in Dallas for six years.(2) Later, he also taught at the University of Houston and ran the Lawndale Art and Performance Center, an innovative and successful alternative space in Houston’s museum district.(3)
When Surls, a self-described “bushwhacker,”(4) was teaching in the early 1970s, he thought: “Man, I’ve got to get out. I have to go back to the woods. I want to go back to what I know the best, to the place where I’m most psychologically comfortable.”(5) In 1976, he found that place outside Splendora, a small town in the “Big Thicket,” the piney woods north of Houston. He moved there with his wife, artist Charmaine Locke, and hewed a home and studio out of the forest. At first, the home and studio were the same space. They slept on the porch and cooked outdoors. Surls recalled, “I always thought of us as living in a green envelope. It was filled with holly trees and magnolia trees and pines, and it’s green all year.”(6) Surls prowled the woods, scavenging fallen timber but rarely cutting trees because of his respect for the plant life around him. He assembled hand tools and power tools including chain saws and bulldozers and electric hoists for handling monumental sculpture materials, eventually constructing a 12,000 square foot studio and a complex of living and working spaces. Then, in 1998 he closed that chapter of his life and moved on to the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, outside Denver.
Upon meeting Locke at SMU and then putting down roots together in Splendora, his art blossomed.(7) A solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston led to more exhibition opportunities around Texas and beyond, including New York galleries.(8) His engagement in the Texas arts community through his work with Lawndale and his role as a mentor to younger artists led to recognition in and outside the state.(9) By the time he reached traditional retirement age, Surls was recognized as an “old master” of sorts, a prolific, mature artist whose sculptures and drawings manifest a signature style, a personal morphology of spiky, organic and often anthropomorphic forms typically wrought in wood and steel. In his later work early this century, he has also made monumental bronze casts of his carved and assembled sculptures. In 2009, the New York City Parks Public Art Program mounted a temporary exhibition of seven of Surls’ monumental sculptures on Park Avenue while two New York galleries displayed his small sculptures and energetic drawings laden with the artist’s whimsical and idiosyncratic iconography.
Throughout his career, Surls has created floral forms, diamonds and pyramidal shapes, knife-edged objects, and images of eyes. He has included his own profile in some sculptures, and has brought himself into other works with titles like I See Five and Nine.(10) Surls’ sculptures embody personal meanings that defy easy understanding by critics, historians, and the average viewer. Still, his work is recognized by inclusion in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, and many others.(11)
(1) Michael Berryhill, “Conjureman: Texas-based sculptor James Surls returns to the elemental to rebuild the world,” The Journal of Art, Special Report: Abstract Art vol. 4 no. 6 (June/July/August), 1991: 58.
(2) Janet Kutner, “James Surls” in Surls (exhibition catalog) (Tyler, Texas: Tyler Museum of Art,, 1974), no pagination.
(3) Wendy Paris, “James Surls,” Sculpture Magazine (Jan./Feb. 1991), 18.
(4) Kutner, James Surls.
(5) Berryhill, “Conjureman,”58.
(6) Stewart Oksenhorn, “James Surls’ works: An unpolished beauty,” Aspen Times Weekly, circa 1999, accessed from archives at www.aspentimes.com 26 August 2009.
(7) Surls said, “Charmaine brought something to my art life, and personal life, that I did not have…. Now I had a muse, an inspiration, a source that fed something into my soul that was not there.” (Oksenhorn, “James Surls’ works.”)
(8) His subsequent solo shows include Delahunty Gallery, Dallas, 1979; Robinson Galleries, Houston, 1979; Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, 1981; Akron Art Museum, 1982; Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York, 1982; Honolulu Academy of Art, 1984; just to name a few.
(9) Janet Kutner, “Surls has always mentored well,” Dallas Morning News, 26 June 1993, pp. 1C and 3C, mentions his receipt of the first Legend Award established by D-Art Visual Arts Center founder Patricia Meadows to honor people who furthered the arts in the state. She also cites Surls’ receipt of an NEA fellowship and an Artist of the Year award from the Houston Area Art League.
(10) See Me, Knife, Diamond, and Flower (1999) illustrated in Susie Kalil, James Surls: Walking with Diamonds (Houston and El Paso: El Paso Museum of Art in collaboration with Houston Artists Fund, 1999), pp. 24.
(11) Kutner, Dallas Morning News, says Surls’ art is in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney, Guggenheim, National Gallery, LACMA, SFMOMA, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. She also mentions gallery representation by Marlborough.
Artist Objects
