The Parrish Art Museum - East End Stories

James Croak has lived in Sag Harbor since 2009. Part of a generation of sculptors that includes Kiki Smith, Robert Gober and Juan Munoz, he arrived on the art scene in the '70s, at the end of the golden age of abstraction. Educated at The University of Illinois in Chicago, Croak's first pieces were massive abstract metal sculptures. It is only after he had moved into an old fire station in a rundown section of Los Angeles that Croak abandoned the abstract impulse and returned to figural work. "There was this bizarre emotional circus going on outside the walls of my studio and I kept looking at the abstract art that I was making and became increasingly aware of a schism between the world outside and the world inside, my studio that is. I was reminded of Francis Bacon's conclusion that the truly powerful emotions in life can be expressed only through figurative work, " he told Barbara Bloemink of the Smithsonian. Croak became a leader in reintroducing content into figurative sculpture. In 1984 he left the West Coast for Brooklyn, New York and began creating his "dirt" sculpture made with a combination of dirt and binder that he invented in 1985. The results of Croak's technique of casting dirt in molds, similar to the process used for wax or plastic, can be seen in his Dirt Baby editions, Dirt Man series, and Hand editions. His most recent work is a series of night landscape photographs.

[An in-depth interview with Barbara Bloemink, Curatorial Director, National Design Museum, Smithsonian along with a presentation of the artist's dirt molding method can be accessed on the artists' web site, http://www.jamescroak.com/html/interview/index.html]