News Release

March 21, 2007



Book Find May Rewrite Idaho Art History, Boise State Professor Says

 

(Click to enlarge image)

A small, dusty-blue book found in files in the museum at the Idaho State School for the Deaf and Blind has shed new light on the life of Idaho’s most famous native artist, reportedly deaf and perhaps autistic James Castle, according to Tom Trusky, Boise State professor and director of the Idaho Center for the Book.

Castle was born in Garden Valley in 1899 and was thought to be deaf, mute, illiterate and mentally challenged. He produced thousands of drawings and illustrations during his life, using tools that he fashioned himself, before dying in Boise in 1977. Castle attended the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind.

Trusky recently interviewed Jerry Wilding, retired ISDB teacher and current curator of the school’s museum who uncovered the ledger book. A few years ago Wilding discovered the slim volume that chronicles mail deliveries from 1910 to 1916 at the then newly-built facility in Gooding, Idaho. Only this year, however, as Wilding reviewed the volume, did the curator realize it contained information that would revise the understanding of the self-taught artist and his family.

Wilding, who now calls the record book one of the museum’s “most cherished” items, noticed entries detailing deliveries to the young artist from 1912 to 1915. Previously, the Castle family, acquaintances, curators and Castle biographer Trusky had believed Castle, with his hearing-impaired older sister Nellie Castle, had matriculated at the school at 1910, only to be expelled after a few months as “uneducable.” Nellie Castle was thought to have graduated before her marriage in 1914. Wilding’s book sets the record straight.

“We now know,” explained Trusky, who has studied the Gooding school volume, “that Nellie — an excellent student — apparently attended the Gooding school for only one year. However, the mail log book chronicles deliveries to her brother James at the school until 1915.”

The book reveals that the artist may not have been as self-taught as previously thought, Trusky suggested. Still, he notes, it does not invalidate family and local lore that Castle was sent home to Garden Valley from school.

“It may be that it was in 1915 — not 1910 — that educators felt they could not assist the teenager,” Trusky said.

Why Castle did not stay at ISDB and graduate is still a mystery. Trusky will incorporate the new finding into a second, revised edition of his definitive biography, “James Castle: His Life and Art.”


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Contact: Tom Trusky, English, (208) 426-1999, ttrusky@boisestate.edu
Media Contact: Julie Hahn, University Communications, (208) 426-5540, juliehahn@boisestate.edu

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Last reviewed on Tuesday, April 10, 2007