About the Exhibition
James Surls: The Splendora Years, 1977–1997 ran September 17 – November 12, 2005 at the Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston — the artist's first major scholarly exhibition in over twenty years, surveying two decades of sculpture, wall works, drawings, and prints. To accompany it, Bernard's graduate students in UH's Instructional Technology Program built this website in partnership with the gallery, led by student web developer Joy Zhou, with Blaffer's Katherine Veneman and Susan Conaway guiding the content. Surls, art critic Eleanor Heartney, writer Peter Zweig, and Blaffer director Terrie Sultan all recorded narration for the site's digital stories.
This page is an archived copy of that original site, jamessurls.coe.uh.edu — still live, but hosted on decades-old University of Houston infrastructure that many modern browsers and security tools now block outright.
The Digital Stories
Six narrated video pieces made for the site — Surls himself, plus the writers and curators who wrote about his work.
The Exhibition Gallery
34 works from the exhibition, spanning 1977–1997.