ML - Aspen Peak

2013 - Issue 2 - Winter

Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak

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VIEW FROM THE TOP Turning Palm from the mid'80s family collection. 72 THE ARTIST'S WAY James Surls shares his thoughts on community and creativity. *On moving to Colorado: "This place is riddled with interesting people leading what I would call creative lives. I felt at home here [when I moved from Houston]. There were not as many visual artists, but there was a group of artists here who were high-end, serious, and devoted, and worked toward their goals." *On creativity: "If you go out too far in your head and you cannot come back, you might be crazy. But if you go out as far as you can go, and you still come back, you can be an artist." *The champion: "Jim Calaway started the Surls Center project in Carbondale. He had a creative life as an entrepreneur, and now he's a product of that Aspen Institute thinking, which is how you finish well. How do you spend that money that you made? What can you do for a community with it? He loves this community, he loves Carbondale, and he's done plenty of things here. Here's what he says: 'I don't need a thank you.' But, yes, he does. He's a very giving man." PHOTOGRAPHY BY BROOKE CASILLAS continued from page 71 philanthropist and former chair of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, suggested creating a museum, and he had the influence and the resources to make it a reality. "He saw it through city councils and town hall meetings," Surls says. "I just cannot give the guy enough credit." This support from the community is testament to the power of Surls's work—massive, rugged sculptures made of bronze, steel, or wood, inspired by natural forms such as branches, antlers, and leaves. He started sculpting in Texas in the 1960s. "I'd find a piece of wood and carve out of it what I saw in the wood. That's letting the wood dictate the terms," he says. "All my art came from [nature]." He earned an MFA from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and began teaching at the University of Houston in the 1970s, showing his work regularly at regional galleries and museums. In 1979 he founded the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, a rollicking, avant-garde space that hosted exhibitions by local artists, as well as performances by Allen Ginsberg, Spaulding Gray, and the punk band Black Flag—a glorious, notorious show that ended with 23 Houston police cars descending on the center. "That was as freewheeling as you could get. Literally, it just rolled from moment to moment like an express train," Surls says of those early days at the Lawndale Center. "All I did was say yes to a lot of people—yes, you can do this. It was a risky thing, and fun and exciting and built a powerhouse of a community." In 1997, Surls moved from Texas to the Roaring Fork Valley, because his wife, Charmaine Locke, wanted better schools and a better climate for their four daughters. "My wife said she was going and asked if I'd like to come with her. I said, 'Yeah, I would,'" Surls recalls with a chuckle. They bought a property near Carbondale, where Surls also has his studio. In an era when many contemporary artists delegate the construction of their pieces to a workshop of craftsmen, Surls remains hands-on. "I do all the woodwork and much of the steel work myself," he says. He is helped by just one person: Tai Pomara, who has worked as his shop foreman for 16 years. Throughout Surls's career, LEFT AND BELOW: nature has remained his touchSurls between the upper and stone and his inspiration. "Last lower studios with Big Bronze week there was an elder from the Walking Eye Ute tribe who came to my stuFlower, 2009, dio," he says. "He told me that he in background; core of Large stood outside in the morning and Wall Flower, let the first light hit the palm of his 2002. hands, then he rubbed his face, so he considered that he was rubbing light on his face. And I thought, man, that's pretty good…. It makes a connection between you and what humanity has decided to call nature." He adds, "I get up before the sun comes up. I don't put my palms to the sun, but I stand outside and listen, and I do make art about what I hear outside in the morning before it comes into existence." AP ASPENPEAK-MAGAZINE.COM 071-072_AP_SP_VFT_WIN13_SPR_14.indd 72 10/30/13 12:18 PM

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