James Surls: In the Meadows and Beyond
by Jeanne Chvosta (Editor), Southern Methodist University Press: August 2004, 176pp. (hardcover)

James Surls is one of America’s foremost living sculptors and one of the most fascinating creative forces on the international art scene in the last several decades. His works have been shown in both national and international solo and group exhibitions and are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the Dallas Museum of Art.

This volume is the first full-length examination of the art and life of James Surls. In a seminal essay, art historian Mark Thistlethwaite discusses Surls’s personal history, beginning in East Texas and continuing in the Colorado meadows. He describes Surls’s visual language of eyes, knives, diamonds, and flowers and the influences that have shaped him as an artist. In addition, the volume contains an interview with the artist, a tribute by his wife Charmaine, and commentary by Mark A. Roglán, curator of the exhibition In the Meadows: Recent Sculpture, Drawings, and Prints of James Surls (January 24-April 20, 2003).

Sixty-two black and white and ninety-eight color illustrations, including images of early works, are featured in this catalogue, which showcases more than sixty pieces forming the core of the Meadows Museum exhibition.