User:Berardi-pilgrim/sandbox

= James Byrd =

James Dale Byrd (born August 2,1935 in Gloster, Mississippi) is an American artist best known for his abstract paintings and enameled steel structures. Many of his large pieces are in private, corporate, and museum collections across the country. Much of this and other work can be seen on his website, jamesbyrdart.com. James_Byrd.jpg, 1989

Born:

James Dale Byrd

August 2, 1935

Gloster, Mississippi

Nationality:

American

Known for:

Abstract paintings and enameled steel structures

Partner:

Mary Gullekson, 1974-present

Spouse:

Lillian Sanchez (1957-1972)

Children:

Jennifer, b 1960

Tiphanie, b. 1964

Kimberly, b. 1967]]

Life
James Byrd is a self-taught artist born in Gloster, Mississippi in 1935, midway through the Great Depression. In 1941, his family moved to Stockton, California, where his father found work as a carpenter in the wartime Stockton shipyards building Liberty Ships. In 1942, his family moved to Sunnyside, Washington, where his father opened a cabinet shop. There were no galleries or art programs in the small towns in which he lived growing up, leaving him to follow notions of his own invention. After graduating from Amador High School in Pleasanton, California in 1953, he walked in and got a job as an illustrator at Westinghouse Electric Company in Sunnyvale, California, making airbrush renderings of design concepts for the Polaris Submarine Program.

In 1970, he quit his aerospace job, moved to San Francisco and rented a building south of Market that a century earlier had been the offices of The Enterprise Brewing Company. Here, he spent the next 40 years making art.

Today he lives in San Francisco with his long time partner, Mary Gullekson, where he continues to make art and write fiction.

Work
1950s - Paintings

Inspired by the explosion of Abstract Expressionism, artists such as William deKooning and Franz Kline, he began to make larger, bolder, nonrepresentational work.

Early 1960s - Mixed Media

Works made of shaped structures painted over with provocative imagery, and soft shapes of printed fabric stretched over wooden armatures resembling airplane wings to be hung on the wall.

Mid-1960s - Paintings

In the mid 1960’s, Byrd made mostly oil paintings akin to the Bay Area Figurative School.

Late 1960s - Mixed Media

Intrigued by a culture hoping to prolong life through artificial means and mechanical gimmickry, Byrd composed a small series of semi soft structures mocking the frailty of humanity, using a great variety of materials, including found objects and cast pieces.

Early 1980s - Paintings

Byrd spent a good part of the seventies and eighties painting large oils on canvas and gouache on paper, many of which were exhibited in solo shows at ADI Gallery, San Francisco; Dubins Gallery, Los Angeles; van Straaten Gallery, Chicago; and Judith Christian Gallery, New York, to name a few.

1990s - Enameled Steel

In the late eighties, Byrd designed and built several large electric kilns in which he fired steel panels covered over with granulated glass. Each panel required multiple firings at 1450 degrees, each manipulated to match the next. As many as 50 firings were sometimes needed to make one piece of art, and since the true color of the fired glass is far more brilliant than that not fired, most of which looks like sugar, years of experience was needed to know each color’s properties. The finished panels were then adjoined on wood racks to create works of multiple pieces. Many of these large works are in private and corporate collections around the country. By 1985, acquiring material for the enameld steel work became increasingly difficult. This, amomg other reasons, brought him back to painting.

Along with painting, Byrd has created many digital designs for sculpture, as well as a large portfolio of Archival Pigment Prints. Category:Artists Category:Sculptors Category:American artist Category:American sculptors Category:Living people Category:Painters from California Category:1930s births Category:21st-century painters Category:21st-century American painters Category:Sculptors from California Category:American male painters Category:Abstract expressionist artists