James Surls

In 2009, five Surls bronze-and-steel bouquets were set up on Park Avenue by the New York City Parks Public Art Program and the fund for Park Avenue.

In 1997, he moved from Splendora, Texas to Carbondale, Colorado.

He is best known for large sculptures that are roughly hewn and derive much of their power from a close connection to nature and raw materials. His drawings and prints are largely monotone. Surls' work is particularly organic and primal. Having built a career in the 1980s and 1990s as a Texas artist, Surls relocated to a Colorado ranch and removed his work from for-profit galleries.

Surls earned a BS degree in 1966 from Sam Houston State University. He continued his studies and received a MFA degree in 1968 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he studied sculpture under Julius Schmidt.

Surls has three daughters from his first marriage to Martha Ann Gebhart from 1965 to 1972. His second marriage was to Linda Samuels, she was from New England and they had met at Cranbrook Academy of Art. His third marriage was in 1978 to Charmaine Locke in Liberty, Texas, she was a former student of his at Southern Methodist University.

James Arthur Surls (born 1943) is an American modernist artist and educator, known for his large sculptures. He founded the Lawndale Alternative Arts Space at the University of Houston in the 1970s.

James Arthur Surls was born April 19, 1943 in Terrell, Texas. His father Joe William Surls was a carpenter and a cattle breeder. His mother Martha Lucille Surls (née Ramsey) had been made an honorary Cherokee Nation elder as one of "The Wisdom Givers". He was raised in Malakoff, Texas and spend much of his childhood helping his dad with chopping wood and building wooden structures. Surls attended Malakoff High School. After high school he attended Henderson County Junior College and transferred to a junior college in San Diego. While in San Diego he received notification of the military draft and had to return to Texas to file for deferment.