James Lee Byars born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 10, 1932.
Byars has suggested that he was born in Skylight, a small town in the Tennessee Appalachian Mountains, where some of his family lived for many years.
1930s-1940s
At the age of four, Byars is given a full tuxedo by his parents. He wears it for special occasions and dances in the middle of the dining-room table for guests.
Attends grade school at Edgar Allen Poe School in a poor, rough section of Detroit known locally as Paradise Valley; his first grade homeroom teacher is a Mr. Dracula from Armenia.
In first or second grade he trades toy guns and knives for silk socks with his classmate; Jules, whom he asks to act as his bodyguard on the way to school, presumably in response to the labor riots of the time, themselves a result of the class and race struggles current in Detroit.
1948-1956
Attends the Merrill Palmer School for Human Development in Detroit, where he studies under Clark Moustakus. He begins independent creative activities at this time.
Attends Wayne State University; studies art and philosophy.
1955: For a college thesis exhibition, Byars shows large spherical stones in his family home after removing all windows, doors, and furniture; the exhibition lasts one day.
In the mid- to late fifties, Byars makes highly abstract sculptures at midnight under a full moon when the fields are covered with snow. Invited guests are seated in sleds and pulled by either Byars or his childhood friend, John Murphy, in broad circles to view the sculptures.*
* Excerpt from “Notes Toward a Biography” by James Elliot in The Perfect Thought, University Art Museum, UC Berkeley, 1991.
Tyler Rowland was born in 1978 in Reno, Nevada and raised in Phoenix, Arizona.
Rowland is an information-gatherer, a material-collector, and an object/tool-maker. He believes that art has social value. He uses his life, his work, his herd, and his home/studio as departure points and he often sacrifices or copies objects of personal value. Rowland is an autodidact bricoleur cave-monk who loves stories, patterns, tools, animals, reuse, art history, the hand-made, America, color, and paint.
Rowland has shown at venues including Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (Mexico City), Murray Guy Gallery (NYC), Kunstverein NY / Silvershed (NYC), GASP (Boston), ESL Projects (LA), Shoshana Wayne Gallery (LA), More Fools in Town (Turin, Italy), and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LA). He has taught at Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art, Harvard University, and Edward Everett Elementary (Boston), and currently teaches sculpture at Vassar College. He has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.