James Surls is one of the most important sculptors working in America today. His art blends natural forms created of wood, steel and bronze with sophisticated imagery and content. His self-expressive sculptures are both powerful and mysterious.

Surls was raised in the “piney woods” of Splendora, Texas and for many years his art was inspired by the East Texas landscape. In 1998 he moved to Carbondale, Colorado. According to Surls, “A person’s art has to come from a place. You get comfortable in your terrain and you use that, you draw from it, conjure from it. I conjure from the earth, the woods. Even the violent part of it. My stuff is all earth stuff. Sun and rain and wind and grass and birds and trees.”