James Castle: Perspectives
Introduction & Language
Audio Recording
Introduction
James Castle (1899-1977), born in Garden Valley, Idaho, has been internationally celebrated for his prolific, lifelong artistic practice and contributions as a Deaf artist. His art provides a unique visual record of seven decades of life in rural Idaho. Castle’s artistry has fascinated a networked community of scholars who have largely depended upon dated accounts from family and friends to help tell his story. The chronicle and impact of Castle’s life experiences continue to be shaped by the research of educators, Deaf culture scholars, filmmakers, archivists, and art historians.
Those who are captivated by the art and life of James Castle tend to develop a sense of ownership over these narratives. As a result, multiple perspectives exist about Castle’s education, art training, artistic inspirations, identity, and foundational experiences. Featuring Boise Art Museum’s Permanent Collection of artworks by James Castle, this exhibition explores the role of art in historic Deaf education, James Castle’s formative experiences at the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind (1910-1915), and the Deaf perspectives represented in his artwork.
Organized by the Boise Art Museum | Guest Curator Kathleen Keys, PhD
Boise Art Museum’s community collaborators include BAM’s Deaf Advisory Working Group (DAWG), who have been sharing their lived experiences of Deaf culture and advising on ways to welcome the Deaf community.
Special thanks to BAM’s DAWG, Steven Snow, Mikkel Nelson, Khanh Dang, Andrea Wachowski, and ASL Deaf Talent Tara Adams
Supported in part by Boise State School of the Arts, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Charles Redd Center for Western Studies
Language
In collaboration with Guest Curator Kathleen Keys, the Boise Art Museum has created James Castle: Perspectives with an approach that is deliberately different from the traditional interpretive model. We are preferencing American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary language and offering minimal written English on the walls of the exhibition.
This method is intended to:
1) welcome our Deaf community to the Boise Art Museum;
2) present a unique, immersive opportunity to consider the artwork of James Castle in a new way, from multiple points of view; and
3) increase appreciation among all audiences for the experience of James Castle as a Deaf artist.
Written text and audio descriptions are available through QR codes, cell phone guides, and on BAM’s website. Large print binders are available for check out at the admissions desk.
Deaf Identity: The Gooding School 1910-1915
Audio Recording
James Castle attended the Idaho State School for the Deaf and Blind in Gooding, Idaho, for five years, thriving in a community of Deaf peers. Known as the Gooding School and a “combined methods” school at the time, it taught both oralist and manualist methods. Fingerspelling and signing, used in manualism, were more beneficial for those who were born deaf. Language development was also advanced by students’ frequent use of fingerspelling and signing outside class. Relatives recall Castle using similar visual communication with his Deaf sister Nellie, who had attended schools for the Deaf in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho, and with his mother long after he left Gooding.
Rumors that Castle was dismissed from the Gooding School as “uneducable” lack substantiation. Plausible evidence instead suggests his departure was due to school overcrowding, family needs, or health issues. Castle’s years at Gooding, marked by education, camaraderie, and a lived community of Deaf identity, left an indelible impact on his life and artistic journey. Separation from this vibrant community was undoubtedly painful, but the visual and social experiences he gained deeply influenced the art he made throughout the rest of his life.
Art & Deaf Education
Audio Recording
Castle never received or pursued formal academic art studies; nonetheless, the integration of art, and especially drawing, was fundamental in early Deaf schooling. Teachers studied drawing methods to facilitate image-based teaching on blackboards, slates, and workbooks assembled by students. Castle’s art reflects many of the visual learning strategies central to Deaf education to aid language acquisition. This included the practice of identifying or making pictures and connecting those images with words and actions through “picture teaching” and “object teaching” in the Deaf curriculum.
Deaf students likewise participated in manual and industrial training programs, often utilizing basic freehand, mechanical, and geometrical drawing or perspective, as tools for increasing visual communication and vocational preparation. Influenced by national educational reforms, this training built skills in observation, dexterity, design, and draftsmanship.
This extended context reframes Castle’s education as fundamental to his lifelong artistic practice. Viewing his art through the lens of historic Deaf schooling situates his work within the Deaf traditions of visually oriented teaching, learning, communication, and making.
Artistic Foundations & Teachers
Audio Recording
Superintendent Taylor’s teaching at the art-enriched schools for the Deaf in Texas and Nebraska undoubtedly shaped his integration of art into education at Gooding. Faculty with experience using drawing as a teaching tool or exposure to specialized art teaching at other Deaf schools likely encouraged these skills in Gooding students.
Elmer Talbert, a Gallaudet College graduate who was deaf, joined the faculty in 1911 as a manual and industrial training teacher. As a native signer, he used fingerspelling and signing to communicate with students. Training classes taught practical skills for independence and prospective employment and nurtured visual creativity through hands-on learning and making.
The school’s interior and exterior environments, including the construction of a dormitory and a new industrial training building, likely inspired students’ visual and spatial learning. Books, images, and drawings were integral to classroom learning and communication development, offering resources and encouragement that piqued Castle’s curiosity and greatly influenced his innovative and prolific artistic practice.
Religious & Spiritual Imagery
Audio Recording
Images of angels, holy figures, crosses, biblical scenes, and Christ’s crucifixion were repeated in a small subset of Castle’s larger body of artwork. Although the Gooding School was secular, “moral instruction” and regular chapel services perhaps reinforced Castle’s familiarity and interest in religious themes and imagery.
Mrs. Ota T. Taylor, Superintendent Taylor’s wife, and another Texas colleague who joined the Gooding faculty may have implemented Sunday School activities inspired by the illustrated Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, similar to those they offered in Texas. According to a 1911 Idaho Leader article, students occasionally attended off-campus religious services. It also describes Superintendent Taylor’s signed interpretation of a sermon given for the entire school population at the nearby Episcopal Church.
Raised in a Catholic family, Castle absorbed religious influences through family customs and rituals, periodic church attendance, and the prayer cards and religious calendars he eventually preserved and repurposed. These artworks demonstrate his exploration of spiritual and religious cultural imagery.
Methods & Materials
Audio Recording
Castle’s use of discarded materials and self-made tools underscores his artistic resourcefulness and ingenuity. He transformed everyday objects into intricate drawings with the inventive techniques of applying a soot-and-saliva mix with sharpened sticks or using wiped soot washes. For color works, Castle often roughened and abraded food packaging to disrupt the waxy surface prior to applying extracted dyes from crepe paper and other colorants.
Although initial family lore claimed that Castle rejected store-bought art supplies, in 2008, art conservation scientific analyses revealed his subtle use of several traditional art materials, including wax crayon, oil pastel, chalk, colored pencil, tempera paint, fiber-tip markers, as well as household laundry bluing and makeup. These added materials increased the complexity and scope of his palette.
His methods, materials, approaches, and techniques are reflective of a deep and exploratory engagement with texture, form, and meaning. Overall, Castle’s material choices and artistic practices highlight his immense creative depth and his ability to repurpose the mundane into the extraordinary.
Artistic Identity
Audio Recording
Since James Castle was first recognized as a significant artist in the 1960s, curators, writers, and scholars have applied various labels to describe him. These terms, ranging from ‘naïve artist,’ ‘folk artist,’ and ‘outsider artist’ to ‘self-taught artist,’ have evolved within the shifting lexicon of art terminology. Each label, however, has proven challenging to define and insufficient to fully contextualize Castle’s lived experiences. As new insights about his life and work emerge, the terminology continues to evolve.
Castle’s lifelong artistic practice seamlessly combined art making with curation and preservation. He created thousands of artworks, transforming everyday materials into a distinctive, comprehensive, and communicative visual language. Through display, grouping, and bundling of his artworks, Castle curated visual narratives that reflected both his surroundings and imagination while simultaneously building his own collections and archives. These curious practices reveal Castle’s abilities as an artist of complexity and also as a curator and archivist. These methods in particular have significantly contributed to the enduring interest and exploration of his life and artwork.
Gratitude
Dr. Kathleen Keys, a university art educator, has long examined the role of art in historic Deaf education, drawing from the American Annals of the Deaf and conducting archival research at Gallaudet University and schools for the Deaf in Idaho, Texas, New Mexico, and Kentucky. As an outsider to Deaf communities, cultures, and educational practices, she acknowledges that this research offers only an initial, partial, and incomplete understanding of these incredibly rich and complex histories.
Kathleen extends her sincere gratitude to Boise State University ASL Lecturer Kristi Dorris for her collaboration in working with the art, art education, and ASL students contributing to the development and implementation of the extended exhibition programming.
Support for this project and its programming was generously provided in part by the School of the Arts and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Boise State University and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.
