James Surls

Although James Surls has lived in Carbondale, Colo., since 1998, he remains one of Texas art's most iconic figures, both for his sculpture and for his contributions to Houston's contemporary art scene.

So he takes satisfaction in the fact his 2009 exhibition of seven outdoor sculptures along New York's Park Avenue is getting an encore presentation at Rice University.

"I don't really consider myself a Colorado artist like I did consider myself - and do consider myself - to be a Texas artist," says Surls, whose widely exhibited sculptures express harmony with nature and are informed by his readings of mythology, science and Romantic poetry. "I just think there's a difference in the sensibility. ... And for God's sakes, I lived there 50 years of my life. How can you possibly ever take that out of me?"

Three of the bronze-and-steel sculptures featuring Surls' flower-, diamond-, vortex- and needlelike forms have been installed in a green space near Brochstein Pavilion. Another three have been sited near the central campus parking garage beneath McNair Hall, and the seventh stands in front of the BioScience Research Collaborative on University near Main.

Surls kicks off the exhibit Magnificent Seven: Houston Celebrates Surls, which remains on view through Aug. 31, with a lecture at noon Tuesday.

While Rice is hosting the same pieces that lined the Park Avenue median strip last year, the contrast between the sites makes the two shows totally different experiences, says Jonathon Glus, CEO of Houston Arts Alliance, the nonprofit agency that manages the civic art program and administers arts grants.

"In New York, the site is formal, very dense, and you have the cavern of those towers," Glus says. "The scale (of the sculptures) is completely different when you're on campus. They feel much larger, and they truly feel more organic on campus because they're sited on the grass. They're not in planting gardens, where you have flowers around them (as on Park Avenue). ... A number of them look like they've just sprouted out of the grass."

The Surls show joins Bernar Venet: Monumental Sculpture, an exhibit of the French artist's work on view in Hermann Park through Sept. 30, as a second temporary show of public art. While Surls fields more requests to donate work for charity auctions than he can accommodate, he agreed to give a sculpture for a fundraiser the nonprofit Texan-French Alliance for the Arts held for the Venet show.

Glus says he's delighted with the proximity of the two shows.

"One of the great 20th-century American masters of sculpture is at Rice, and literally across the street is one of the great 20th-century masters of French sculpture, so the timing and the siting couldn't be better," Glus says.

The Rice Public Art Program and HAA are co-presenting Magnificent Seven, the first temporary outdoor exhibition for both entities.

Glus says the idea of bringing the Park Avenue works to Houston grew out of a conversation he had with Judy Nyquist, who sits on HAA's board and on Rice's public art advisory committee, shortly after both had visited New York in July.

A few days after Glus and Nyquist compared notes on their favorable impressions of the Park Avenue exhibit, Glus approached Surls during the opening of the artist's exhibition at Barbara Davis Gallery. Surls embraced the idea of bringing the sculptures to Houston, and the several-month search for a site began.

"We looked at everything from Memorial Park, Upper Kirby, all over downtown, along the bayou, Montrose, Museum District - all of the major areas where there's a concentration of traffic of some kind," Glus says. "We just started winnowing it down. ... Ultimately, it just felt most right to place them all on the campus so there would be a concentration together."

Beyond offering a chance for Rice's and HAA's public art programs to join forces, the university siting resonated with Surls' history as a teaching artist, since he founded what is now the Lawndale Art Center while teaching at the University of Houston, Glus says.

Nyquist rallied individual donors to fund the cost of transporting the sculptures from New York to Houston and installing them. Rice picked up the tab for security and other costs associated with hosting the works, and the city contributed a grant to cover marketing and education costs, Glus says.

Surls says he's honored to have a university of Rice's prestige hosting his work, and he relishes the chance to return to Houston.

"It's home, and I love going back," he says. "Of course, now I get to go back under different circumstances. I'm not just some jugbutt on the street anymore."