The Estate of James R. Sohr, a painter and sculptor who spent his life creating images and objects that excite senses and challenge minds in ways comparable to no other artist, is proud to announce an exhibition of his works.
We are even more pleased to be offering an opportunity to see Jim's ingenuity and craftsmanship in works that have never before been seen in public until now.
The opening will be on November 9, 2024, at Art Conscious, 6601 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA, 70032, Tel. (504) 388-8325, in the emerging Arabi Art District.
Jim was born before World War II in Waukesha, Wisconsin, founded by "Yankee" settlers descended from the Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. Encouraged by his family to become a math teacher, Jim attended Waukesha High School and Carroll College. Ever the iconoclast, he loaded his belongings into a car one day and drove to New Orleans, to the French Quarter, an enclave for other iconoclasts, painters, poets, writers and free thinkers, at a time when the city had little tolerance for them.
Jim was arrested in the infamous raid on the Quorum Club, a private club at the corner of Chartres and Esplanade, where Blacks and whites could listen to music and poetry together and talk to each other, which was then illegal. Jim became a manager at the Quorum and was again arrested on a dubious charge of selling a matchbox's worth of marijuana to an undercover agent. He left for San Francisco, another bohemian enclave, where he was picked up as a fugitive and extradited to Louisiana. For his crimes he was sentenced to seven years in prison at Angola. In that terrible place, he found refuge in the art room. The prison recognized Jim's self-taught talent and let him continue painting and drawing. It hung some of his work there in the prison, and some of it got through the gates, where it sold. He was released after three years.
As if the absurdity of his life, his imprisonment, the solitude and sanctuary he found in art, his mathematical inclinations, and his sheer skill at making things were predestined to combine, Jim drew and painted the reverberations of his life and experiences from the depths of his own mind and soul. His technical exactitude, displayed in intricate preliminary sketches on graph paper, and his mastery of composition and color, will be on display at the show.
After Hurricane Katrina Jim renovated a house in Chalmette. He disdained sheetrock and built his own furniture. It became his studio, where he worked relentlessly, often all night long. He started using remnants from the demolition to create sculpture. A twenty-foot-tall Zohr Bird reigns over his living room and hundreds of paintings occupy the house. From outside, it looked like any other house. Inside lay fantasia.
Great artists don't create because they want to; they do it because they have to. Influenced by Dali, Chagall, Picasso, Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss, Jim defies categorization. His works are sometimes bawdy, often tender, frequently satirical, and some are pure comedy. Another inmate artist once called it "abstract primitive cartooning." It is multitiered with myths and meanings that reward close and continual examination.
Jim knew his work was not for everybody. Although some of it hangs in the Ogden Museum, at NOMA, and at New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, it did not achieve the wide appreciation it deserves. We aim to change that.
Who knew the big, tall guy in working man's clothes hawking the pool tables of Chalmette was an important American artist? Almost no one, until now. For collectors this is a ground floor opportunity to acquire original works of an unsung genius. For art lovers it is an experience you will never forget. Join us.
For more information, visit www.zohrbird.com.