by

Jim Storm

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

- Emily Dickinson

"My needs are shrinking as I continue to jettison the dead weight of possessions, debts, desires. I value kindness, tenderness, humor, humility, honesty, and generosity above all else, and I try to make art and write poetry that expects as much of me. I know my work can be funny as hell, as well as absurd, dark and difficult, reflecting the depravity of a world of lies, greed, inequity, and selfishness."

Jim Storm

"Jim Storm holds up a mirror in which I see my own dark humor, silliness, and bedrock insanity.. He shows me that my Bosh/Brain has a pal.  

His paintings are “full of the devil” as my parents would say.   Full of outrageous irreverence, and a fair share of gore.  They are also full of the sweetness of the ever present bunny, which plays a leading role in this collection..  

And like me he is unschooled, which makes his technique as interesting as the end results.

Jim’s paintings  are worth more than a glance."

Joan Baez

 As I try to recover some meaning from the ‘80s, a decade spent making art, creating spaces to live in on very small budgets, and… partying; sometimes the excess of it all overwhelms me. We were young. Back then Jim was an artist. No apologies. People who knew of him and people who really knew him, like me, considered him the “West Coast Basquiat”.
     
As it turned out, living on the bi-coastal expressway, I knew both of them. They were remarkably alike in demeanor. Shy-seeming, but not shy. Full of ******* mirth when things were ******* funny. Serious as hell. Loved drugs.

Basquiat OD'd and Storm traded that kind of death for another. He raged on through the ’90s, not getting clean and sober until 1997. Much of his brutal and tortured art during that period was lost. What remains is in this exhibition.

As he put himself together he wrote poetry, publishing his third book of poems and photographs Itself the Struggle in 2007. He had moved to New York City and found himself the perfect job with the NY Botanical Gardens, as head of the Art Department in the Children’s Garden, a union job (DC 37) that he held for eleven years, earning a decent pension.

After his book came out, he quit writing poetry for a decade. He painted and made assemblages, many of which we have included in this retrospective of his work.

Along the way he discovered a brand of Zen Buddhism that made sense to him.

And that brings us to now-73 years old, crossing the country in his van, working in monasteries like the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in Northern California, or working as a door-to-door canvasser on political campaigns, such as Beto’s in his beloved state of Texas where he was born and raised.

Jim has never shown his art publicly and in more ways than he would care to acknowledge, never wanted to. Maybe he lacks that self-promotion gene, or maybe other forces intervened. All we can do now is bring our mind’s eye to the party and look and feel his art with all the clarity, dimensionality, and absurdity intended by it.

Danny Vinik
Curator
Pidgin Palace Arts

Book an appointment here.

jpegs and hi-res tiffs available here.

Date:

Opening November 12th, 7PM through to December 10, 2022

Location:

Pidgin Palace Arts, 1110 S. Sixth Ave / Tucson, AZ 85701