The Unbearable Likeness of Jason Starr

Salt Creek Surfer To Exhibit His Babies
By Brendon Thomas
Managing Editor

Anyone who has spent much time at Salt Creek over the past 10 years would know Jason Starr, a hard-charging goofyfoot whose flamboyant style in the water is matched only by his act on land. But Starr’s been absent from the lineup at Creek for some time now. The reason for this is simple: He’s been busy making babies.

A little over a year ago, Jason Starr appeared at my front door with a case of beer in one hand and a brass urn full of canvass babies in the other. The babies were fashioned in his likeness—complete with suntans, surf-shot eyes, and beards. He called his babies art, and now, he’s showing his art at the Circus Gallery from April 11 through May 16.

“It’s exhausting spending 16 hours a day making babies,” said Starr a week before the show’s opening night, “but it will be worth it, when they take care of me down the road.”

If you think the “Starr babies” are weird, then you should read the press release…

--Press Release: --

Circus Gallery is pleased to present the new work by Los Angeles-based artist Jason Starr. For this exhibition, Starr confronts the vulnerability of his intentions with the responsibility of their effect, showing baby-like canvases painted in oil. Starr produced the babies in what came to be an expression of his own exuberance and desire to make. Simultaneously, his sense of participating, as an artist and a person in a community, makes clear that the work is dependent on a context. The process of making becomes inseparable from the anticipation of presenting his brood, doubling the force of his commitment and his anxiety, in an attempt to be accountable for the language his actions produce.

“ ‘Doc, I’ve got butterflies.’

My immediate response is, “Great!”

I say that because I don’t think butterflies, or nervous tension, that sense in your stomach that you’re in uncharted waters, are to be feared. I think they’re to be welcomed. You don’t get butterflies on the Saturday night if you’re in 62nd place and the only thing at stake on Sunday is the few thousand extra dollars they’d pay you if you shot 66 and moved up to 43rd. You get butterflies when you put yourself in position to realize a dream.

Butterflies, when you think about it, are among Nature’s most beautiful creations. When they approach a flower, the flower opens itself up to them. They’re integral to the process of pollination.

Like the flower, golfers welcome the butterflies. They recognize that butterflies are a sign that their hard work is paying off, that they’re in the position they’ve wanted to be in. They recognize that they had to be playing well just to get there.”

—Dr. Bob Rotella, The Golfer’s Mind

Jason Starr's exhibit will run from April 11 through May 16 at the Circus Gallery in Los Angeles.