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| A friend recently introduced me to the work of James Castle (1899-1977), a self-taught artist from Idaho. Castle was born deaf and did not learn to speak, sign, lip-read, or write, instead using art as his main form of communication.* |
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He created his work with found materials: "papers salvaged from common packaging and mail, in addition to food containers of all types."* And he made his own inks and "colorants" using methods that he invented for himself.* One such method involved mixing "soot from the woodstove" with saliva and sometimes water;* to create colored ink, he would use "laundry bluing, face powder, or color leached out of crepe paper by soaking."* Castle then applied the ink with sharpened sticks and homemade cotton swabs.*
Castle's finished work comes in a range of forms---drawings and "colored wash pieces"* to assemblages and handmade books. His work is intimate--the interiors of buildings, farm scenes, animals, people, giving us a sense of what life was like for this man from rural Idaho. The work is also remarkably fine.
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