Self-taught artist displays folk style at Casper museum
CASPER, Wyo. — Colour fills the gallery, where faces peer from portraits covering the walls almost from top to bottom. Sculptures crowd the centre of the space at the Nicolaysen Art Museum. Figures wrapped in twine suspend from the ceiling, while characters made of bowling pins perch along a ledge at the top of the gallery walls.
In the past year, Casper artist Jim Kopp created most of the hundreds of artworks — sculptures, assemblages and paintings — that fill the Ptasynski Gallery at the museum. His show, “Primordial Charms,” opened last month and is on display through Jan. 13.
From an intuitive space in his mind, Kopp constantly creates art in his unique style, which those who have seen can recognize on sight.
Kopp’s mother died in 1999, the same year he saw an exhibit at High Museum of Atlanta by Howard Finster, a well-known folk artist on the East Coast. Inspired by her death and Finster’s work, Kopp started painting on wood and canvas, often including various found objects in his art, just a few of which include small vintage toys, bear-shaped honey bottles and paint can lids.