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BOISE STATE PROFESSOR TO GIVE PRESENTATION
ON ARTIST JAMES CASTLE 
Boise State English professor Tom Trusky will present an exhibit,
lecture and reading on the artist James Castle at
7 pm on July 21, 2005 in the Rude Girls Room of the Sandpoint
Library. His presentation is sponsored by Lost
Horse Press and the East Bonner County Library.
Trusky is an expert on the Idaho artist. Castle was born in 1899
in Garden Valley and was labeled for his entire life as deaf,
mute, illiterate and mentally challenged. He is now thought to
have been autistic. He never learned to speak, had a limited ability
to read and write and seemingly refused to be taught to sign.
His primary form of communication was the tens of thousands of
drawings and illustrations he produced during his lifetime.
Houses, domestic scenes, family members and friends were endlessly
rendered in what some have termed a primitive “folk art” style
from crude tools and supplies — ink made from soot and saliva,
pens fashioned from twigs or sticks, and canvases scavenged from
scrap paper, cardboard, books and the many catalogs that flowed
through his parents’ general store and post office. Even when,
late in his career, family, friends, curators and artists purchased
paints and brushes for him, he preferred to make his own tools.
Amazingly, although unschooled, he was able to grasp the concept
of several artistic principles, including vanishing point perspective.
Largely undiscovered and unappreciated during his lifetime, he
is now considered by many art historians to prefigure a number
of major schools and isms off 20th century art. Castle died in
1977.
Trusky has written a biography of Castle, Castle: His Life and
Art, and has published several articles about him.
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