James Drake

Biography James Drake is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was born in Lubbock, Texas (1946) and earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree (1970) from the Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles, where he studied with his mentor Lorser Feitelson. His drawings, video, sculpture, photography, printmaking and installations, investigate the human condition, emotions, and systems of communication, oftentimes through allegory to underscore the cyclical nature of history. During his time living in El Paso, Texas, issues related to the USA/Mexico border became a central theme in his body of work and the broader universal context he explores. The subject matter of Drake's artwork situates geo-political and social histories, as endlessly repeating narratives. Temporal-spatial relations are crucial to his art. The crossing, the transition, that most gives his work its power is that which cuts apart, yet links, the declared and the concealed, the public and the personal. Seminal Works Tongue-Cut Sparrows (1996–2007) Tongue-Cut Sparrows was inspired by a system of sign language Drake observed women standing outside a jail in El Paso, Texas, used to communicate with prisoners on the inside. Fascinated by this inventive form of gestural communication, Drake became curious if the women could integrate quotes from literature and poetry into their sign language. They agreed to let Drake record their visits on video and worked with him in selecting texts to sign from the writings of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, Chicano-Apache American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, Cormac McCarthy, as well as William Blake, William Shakespeare and Alighieri Dante. The series evolved into multi-channel video works, photographs, printmaking and large-scale charcoal drawings. In the photo-realistic drawings, images of the figures are joined by some of the words that were communicated between the couples. Often, there is a breakdown, or strain, in the communication—a tension that is emblematic of Drake's ongoing interest in the social dynamics of borderlands. City of Tells (2002-2021) City of Tells is a series composed of drawings, split-screen video and an artist book. The work incorporates depictions of animals, portraits of family, friends, and diverse historical and contemporary influences such as Diego Rivera, Dante, Bruce Nauman, Murray Gell-Mann, La Malinche, Delacroix, Homer, Michelangelo, Herman Melville, and Goya.