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James Michael Starr James Michael Starr is an American collage and assemblage artist currently showing in galleries around the U.S. His work was recognized in each of the last four Critic's Choice exhibitions of the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, and he was one of 14 artists representing the U.S. in the 9th International Exhibition of Contemporary Collage in Paris, France. From the time of my earliest memories, my family recognized and even celebrated the artistic talent they saw in me but did not know how to develop. Throughout my early years I struggled along on my own, doing what I could to honor what I felt was a gift, never quite knowing what it really meant to be an artist. Even as I planned my education, I heeded the advice I encountered everywhere: that pursuing fine art as a career was frivolous and impractical. Whether or not that would have proven true for me I don't know. I do know that by the time I was in my early forties, with two decades in commercial art behind me, years of bottled-up self-expression were taking their toll. I had to find the relief valve or suffer the consequences. The very personal narratives of Frida Kahlo and the work of Austin artist Julie Speed struck something deep inside me, and around 1994 I began doing collage and assemblage, which remain my only media. My collage and assemblage work is largely about appropriation - I rarely if ever incorporate anything of my own creation into my work, acting instead as agent to combine scavenged elements I consider to be beautiful and which become even more so when they are brought together. Illustrations from old books, aged wood and strange but strangely familiar mechanical parts - all join in the wedding. The only exception, the only thing I feel I can add to the grace of these decaying objects, is a little of my own handwriting, something to prove that I was part of the ceremony. Resume Gallery Showings Allene LaPides Gallery, Santa Fe Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art, Sarasota (FL) Bennett Galleries, Knoxville (TN) Blossom Street Gallery, Houston Boyd Gallery, Dallas Galerie Bourbon-Lally, Montreal Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston Horton Gallery, Philadelphia Koplin Gallery, Los Angeles MainSite Contemporary Art, Norman (OK) Parchman Stremmel Galleries, San Antonio Stone By Stone Gallery, Dallas Susan Cummins Gallery, Mill Valley (CA) Centre de Documentation sur L'art du Collage, Sergines, France Solo Exhibitions Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, July '03 Conduit Gallery Project Room, Dallas, May '03 Oklahoma Christian University, Oklahoma City, Nov. '00 Stone By Stone Gallery, Dallas, Sept. '00 Stone By Stone Gallery, Dallas, June '99 Mountain View College, Dallas, October '98 Jurored Exhibitions Dallas Visual Art Center Critic's Choice, June '01 Juror: Steven Nash, formerly Associate Director and Chief Curator, The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Christians In The Visual Arts A Presence Seen, June '01 Juror: Mary McCleary, Professor, Stephen F. Austin University Dallas Visual Art Center Critic's Choice, June '00 Jurors: Sara Kellner, Director, Diverseworks, Houston Carla Stellweg, Director, Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio Chris Cowden, Director, Women And Their Work, Austin Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival 15th Annual Fine Art Exhibition, April '00 Juror: Joan Davidow, Director, Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington Texas Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana 27th Annual Juried Competition, March '00 Juror: James Surls, Artist McKinney Avenue Contemporary 1999 Jurored Exhibition, November '99 Juror: Terrie Sultan, Curator, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Dallas Visual Art Center, Critic's Choice, July '99 Juror: James Surls, Artist Austin Visual Arts Association Dada Moon Fall Show, September '98 Juror: Kathryn Davidson, former Curator, Austin Museum of Art and the Menil Collection, Houston Dallas Visual Art Center Critic's Choice, May '98 Jurors: Elizabeth Ferrer, Director, Austin Museum of Art Stephen Vollmer, Curator, El Paso Museum of Art Dallas Society of Illustrators 14th Annual Juried Exhibition, December '97 Curated, Invitational & Group Exhibitions "Elemental," Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, April '03 Outsider Art Fair, Puck Building, New York City, January '03 "The Summer Show," MainSite, Norman, Oklahoma, July '02 "Collecting Mixed Media," Bennett Galleries, Knoxville, Tennessee, July '02 ArtColle 2002, Paris, France, April '02 "Loteria," Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, May '02 Outsider Art Fair, Puck Building, New York City, January '02 "Boxes Boxed," Mira Mar Gallery, Sarasota, Florida, January '02 "Mirror Images," Boyd Gallery, Dallas, November '01 "Sculptural Sycretism II," Collin County College, Plano, Texas, Oct. '01 Emerging Artists, MainSite, Norman, Oklahoma, July '01 "The Walk-In Show," CIVA Conference 2001, Irving, Texas, June '01 "The Dream Life Of Objects," Stone By Stone Gallery, Winter '00 Dallas Visual Art Center Member Show, Winter '00 Sculpture 2000, Blossom Street Gallery, Houston, Summer '00 The Lamplighter School, Dallas, February '00 Dallas Visual Art Center Member Show, Winter '99 The Gallery Apartments Penthouse, Dallas, August '99 Neiman Marcus Christmas Windows, Dallas, Christmas '98 Dallas Visual Art Center Member Show, Winter '98 Interview Q: What's your take on assemblage and such precursors as Cornell (of course), Kienholz, Rauschenberg, or even Schwitters. And Frida Kahlo as noted in your biography. JMS: In the second decade of the twentieth century, when Cubist Picasso attached three-dimensional materials to his canvases and Dadaist Marcel Duchamp proclaimed everyday objects to be sculpture (what he called "readymades"), they were using collage and assemblage to break with the accepted definitions of art. But by the time self-taught Joseph Cornell was constructing shadow boxes in the basement of his mother's house in Queens thirty years later, the art of appropriation was accepted by many as legitimate (or at least recognized as part of the vocabulary of Surrealism). In the following decades, Robert Rauschenberg would adapt it for Abstract Expressionism and Ted Kienholz for social and political commentary. Working with paper ephemera and found objects instead of paint and clay was no longer a shock to anyone. I knew none of this when at the age of 40, I saw an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's paintings at the Dallas Museum of Art and was struck by her very personal narrative. I was shaken as much three years later by the beautifully aged components in the collage and assemblage work of Austin artist Julie Speed. As I searched for my own voice, these two themes came together and I found myself constructing tableaus of objects worn by time, in which I also recognized the dramas being played out in my own life. Q: What is your take on the pieces in this show? Pick out two or three pieces (like In This Dream and Pulled in Two Directions) and give me your explanation of them. JMS: If it is still possible to be a surrealist after the passing of the 20th century, I suppose that, at least in my manner of working, I fill the bill. Although most everything I create will become overlaid with personal meaning or a measure of autobiography by the time it's complete, nothing starts out that way. Rather, in the early stages of an idea, I look at the clutter of objects of all kinds lying about my studio and start to see both the harmony and the conflict suggested in the various combinations. It's only well into the construction of a piece that I'm usually struck by how it portrays some current drama in my life. For instance, "In This Dream" began when I noticed the mystery and sense of separation imposed on any object seen through the ground glass of an old view camera, especially on an otherwise mundane glazed head I'd had lying around the studio for several years. As I constructed a platform for this combination, I thought about how this dreamlike life I'd created for myself - one in which I could devote myself so fully to making art - also carries with it the risk of alienation, separating me from the most important people in my life. So that, not only am I living a dream, but I may also seem detached, separate and thus unreal - dreamlike - to those I love. Similarly, "Pulled In Two Directions" portrays the duality I must practice everyday: giving myself the freedom necessary to create and at the same time keeping a grasp on the practical issues of everyday life, like maintaining the discipline required to be in a marriage. Q: Why is collage and assemblage your only media? JMS: Just as in the work itself, my focus on collage and assemblage reflects both a tangible, rational process and an involuntary revelation of hidden truths. So on the rational side, I am dissatisfied with my own drawing and painting abilities and am reluctant to work in any media that requires those skills. But on the unconscious side, I think the choice is actually a positive one and reflects one of my fundamental spiritual beliefs: that I and the world around me may be faulty, faded and subject to decay but not beyond redemption and restoration. James Michael Starr, Dallas, TX, USA |
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