The Old Jail Art Center
West Texas Triangle: Surls
June 20th – August 21st 2009
West Texas Triangle: Surls
3rd Annual Triangle Show: The Old Jail Art Center is pleased to join with its partners in the West Texas Triangle Consortium of Art Museums to present a region-wide exhibition of the work of James Surls this summer. Other aspects of Surls's work are appearing at the Grace Museum, Abilene (major exhibition); the Museum of the Southwest, Midland; the Ellen Noël Art Museum in Odessa; and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. In 2007, the West Texas Triangle museums presented the work of Texas sculptor Jesús Moroles, and in 2008, the work of Joe Barrington.
East Texas native James Surls is known for his rugged work in wood. Since moving to Colorado nine years ago, his imagery and sculpture have been transformed into something more pastoral. Four of the Triangle museums will have a major drawing and a sculpture by Surls to show this summer, while the Grace Museum in Abilene will mount a full-fledged exhibition of Surls's new work.
Surls's work in the Stasney Center © 2009
James Surls is an internationally renowned artist known for creating monumental wood and metal sculptures. Based on natural forms, Surls' constructions are created using his own iconic imagery of diamonds, vortexes, needles and flowers. Surls' repetition of forms has created a personal visual language of his own, making each sculpture both a unique work and part of interconnected series. Born in East Texas, James Surls has been based in Colorado since 1998. His artwork has appeared in numerous international and national solo and group exhibitions. He has works in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. Surls was instrumental in bringing a national spotlight to East Texas, where he worked and lived from 1977-1997, in part by becoming the founding director of the Lawndale Annex, a dynamic alternative space. Surls was given the Living Legend Award by the Dallas Visual Art Center in 1993.
Comprising a sparsely populated area roughly the size of Ohio, the West Texas Triangle is easily accessible from I-20 and I-10.
