The World is Not The Earth: James Castle, Austin Eddy, John O’reilly, Blair Saxon-Hill and Timmy Straw
April 18–May 30, 2015

Adams and Ollman is pleased to present The World Is Not The Earth, a group exhibition featuring James Castle, Austin Eddy, John O’Reilly, Blair Saxon-Hill and Timmy Straw.

James Castle created a complex, personal and fascinating body of work over a lifetime lived on family farms in Idaho. Born profoundly deaf, Castle made elegant landscapes and interiors, for which he is best known, as well as three-dimensional constructions and books and drawings of texts and symbols, all using found paper, soot and spit. This latter group of works, more impenetrable and personal, are rooted in appropriation. Castle copied and collaged images and text from packaging, newspapers, advertisements and books. His poignant text works, such as Labor Day, featured in this exhibition, show him drawing text as image that he then cut into pieces and reassembled. He often made reference to his own art work. Three-dimensional constructions feature prominently in his atmospheric drawings of interiors. Books made by the artist appear to catalog his two-dimensional work. On view will be a selection of works that feature aspects of his appropriation, assemblage and collage.  

Austin Eddy’s work is marked by spare moves, limited color and an economy of forms that coalesce around the idea of still life and portraiture. Eddy’s blunt, cut-out shapes, often fashioned from bits and pieces of his own works, have deep art historical references, but as he arranges them within shallow space, a personal lexicon develops. This method of collaging simultaneously feels intentional and inquisitive as the artist expresses a raw narrative.

John O'Reilly transforms collaged photographs, images from art history and clippings from pornographic magazines into intimate and seamless spaces that, at first, read as plausible and familiar, but then reveal themselves to be disorienting. Incongruous and disparate imagery–a man’s tongue probes the mouth of a figure from a painting–create scenes that exist between reality and artifice as O’Reilly stages an often jarring and transgressive alternative to known or simple narratives.

An amalgamation of carefully arranged images and objects, Blair Saxon-Hill’s two- and three-dimensional works are poignant and poetic feats of material play. Appropriating from a range of sources including books, personal notes, her own works of art and images of material culture, Saxon-Hill cuts, rips, photographs, paints, folds and layers until she creates an experience or image which seems essential and believable. In this way, her works–staged and cinematic–use a photographic logic while contemplating our complicated relationship to contemporary images and image-making.  

The quiet, but powerful music of Timmy Straw evidences her interest in lyric poetry, religious cadence, minimalist piano, the folk song, pop music and everyday speech. Straw lends us lyrics from an unrealeased song to title the show and will do a live musical performance at the gallery in conjunction with the exhibition.

installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


installation view: The World is Not The Earth


John O’Reilly
Hart Crane Series, 2009
polaroid, color coupler, halftone montage
12 15/16 x 19 1/2 inches

Blair Saxon-Hill
For Those Who Look (There is a Beer in the Branches), 2015
oil on newsprint, wood, gravure book pages, hand dyed newsprint, 1950s photograph, late 20th c. painting on canvas, verso of crumpled hand dyed wallpaper on monotype
22 3/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches


Blair Saxon-Hill
What We Look At, 2015
gravure book page, unique digital print, paper wrapped wire, verso of crumpled hand dyed wallpaper, wood, clip, tack, gesso on monotype.
23 x 15 x 5/8 inches


James Castle
Untitled (Cyrillic inspired letterforms and dollar signs), n.d.
soot and spit on found paper
4 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches

Austin Eddy
Pulled Thin, 2014
linen, paper, acrylic and bleach on canvas
32 x 26 inches

Austin Eddy
Learning to keep my mouth shut, 2014
linen, paper, acrylic, bleach and pencil eraser on canvas
34 x 28 inches

James Castle
Untitled, (Buffalo book), n.d.
soot and spit on found paper, twine
2 3/4 x 5 inches


James Castle
Untitled (friend construction), n.d.
soot and spit on found paper
4 1/2 x 2 1/4 x 3/8 inches
JCas 599


John O’Reilly
The Kiss, 2010
color coupler and paper montage
10 ¼ x 14 1/16 inches