Join Rachel Reichert, manager, and Byron W. Folwell, architect and design consultant, as they discuss the City of Boise’s massive restoration project to preserve internationally celebrated outsider artist James Castle’s home, workspaces, and physical legacy.

Boise Main Library, Marion Bingham Room.

James Castle (1899-1977) was a self-taught artist, born deaf in the tranquil settlement of Garden Valley, Idaho nearly 120 years ago. Presumed to have very little language, Castle communicated primarily through his production of images drawn on found materials, such as discarded mail and food containers, with an improvised ink of his own saliva tempered by soot from the wood burning stoves of the various residences that quartered him throughout his life. His distinct drawings, assemblages, and books explored the interiors of buildings, the external landscapes, and the animals and people that filled his environment, and yet Castle’s work equally explored his own interior, the housing of a soundless landscape which he appeared to roam by touch, such was the tactile and immediate, yet practical nature of his artistic impulse.

Image Credits:
James Castle (1899-1977)
Untitled, n.d.
Found Paper, soot
5 ¾ x 7 3/8 in. (14.6 x 18.7 cm)
Unsigned
CAS09-0371
© 2015 James Castle Collection and Archive L.P. All rights reserved.