Looking across the Way
1995

Oak, redwood, pine, steel          120 x 80 x 70 in          304.8 x 203.2 x 177.8 cm          Collection of the artist

"As far as Texas is concerned, he is one of the great artists to come out of the state. He ranks with Robert Rauschenberg and Myron Stout. As for art history, Surls’s work represents one of the first big challenges to minimalism. That is his legacy as far as I am concerned. When critics and scholars think of the next step after minimalism in sculpture, they will have to consider Surls’s early work. He is a person who took his early step as far as he could take it. It expressed a kind of passion, almost a brutality, in the way he worked with the wood. Then he changed. He became much more poetic. That happens to all great artists."

-Jim Harithas, noted curator and pioneering museum professional, from interview with Terrie Sultan, 2004.