James Castle : The Coats of James Castle - A Plane of Singularity

James Castle

The Coats of James Castle - A Plane of Singularity

Published by Primitive Books.

98 pages, Hardcover, 230 x 290mm, Edition of 500

Note, Japanese-bound; some pages remain folded, evoking a sense of intimacy within JC’s work.

A Plane of Singularity contains an extraordinary collection of coats: coats as objects, coats as portraits, coats as postulations. Dozens are made from folded, cut, stacked, and sewn paper. Others appear as drawings, calibrated to the edges of the paper on which they are rendered. Coats are one thread to follow in the singular art of James Castle.

Completely self-taught, Castle used materials culled from his immediate surroundings in rural and isolated areas of Idaho. These included salvaged paper on which he drew with soot gathered from the family woodstove, applied with hard-carved wood sticks he fashioned himself. Color was inherent in the paper or applied using a method of Castle’s own invention.

Through these pieces, one discovers a sustained, internally coherent universe of making, in which the everyday is woven into the very fabric of artistic explorations and experimentations. The result is an astonishing body of work,  one that celebrates a lifetime commitment to finding wonder, beautify, fascination and intrigue in what so many of us only see as a humble fold of cloth.