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Email: jim@daysculpture.com |
Jim Day grew up on a farm near Texarkana, Texas. From an early age, he was fascinated with the East Texas forests that surrounded his home. He remembers that when it came time for a school project, he usually chose something to do with trees, such as making a dried leaf collection in the fifth grade and planting pine trees as an FFA project the next. Professionally trained as a psychologist, he studied at Texas A&M University and East Texas State University and earned his Ph.D. degree in Experimental Psychology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. After nearly thirty years of teaching and research at the university level, he now sculpts full-time. In 2001, Jim retired and moved with his wife Cherry Day to their home near Whitehouse, Texas where together they established Day Sculpture Studios. Although she sculpts in a different medium, Jim enjoys the inspiration and collaboration that occurs in his special relationship with Cherry. Jim’s sculptures are one-of-a-kind carvings from “found wood.” He personally collects the wood he uses from Texas and surrounding states at places where it naturally occurs--driftwood piles, brush piles, and creek bottoms. He usually works with the stumps and roots of mesquite, walnut, bois d’arc, oak, and other hardwoods. As an avid backpacker and camper for most of his life, he very much enjoys his trips to remote areas to collect wood. |
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Generally, Jim’s sculptures are stylistic or abstract in nature; his representational works include varying amounts of realistic detail. Often incorporating natural, non-carved features of the weathered wood in his work, his goal is to produce a form that suggests movement and flow and that combines his artistic idea with the inherent beauty of the wood. Jim endeavors to evoke in the viewer of his work a positive emotional experience, rather than an intellectual or rational one. He hopes the viewer will be initially drawn to his sculpture by its design and overall visual beauty, but he also hopes the viewer will then touch and examine the piece closely so that she or he can appreciate the craftsmanship involved in producing it.
Jim has not had formal academic training in visual art. He has had, however, a fine mentor who helped him get started as a hardwood sculptor. Subsequent to that early mentoring, he has been a devoted student of sculptural design and wood craftsmanship. |
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From Jim’s experiences as a teacher and scientist, he brings to his art a deep interest in human emotions and family relationships, an interest that is frequently reflected in his sculpture. As examples, he often does stylized pieces that suggest positive human emotional experiences, playfulness, or healthy relationships, and he often chooses titles for his abstract pieces that suggest the human propensity for personal growth and happiness. For him, the process of finding an old piece of wood and revealing its underlying beauty by his carving is a metaphor for the life-spanning development of human potential and realization of one’s own beauty through growth and self-understanding. |
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