Jim Cohoe - Represented Artist

Meet Jim Cohoe 

Artist's Bio:  Jim Cohoe is a Michigan retiree. He has wintered in Vero Beach for more than 25 years and lived here the year around for the past eight years.  Art has always been part of his life in that his father was a water-color artist, and other family members were painters and/or docents at art museums.  While Jim’s fine art photography was accepted in juried mixed media art exhibits at the Flint (Michigan) Institute of Arts in the 1960's, he began to seriously pursue his interests in fine-art photography after studying locally under Louis Ciszek  and Aric Attis. His photographs gained national recognition with his work being exhibited in several national exhibits, including the iconic Soho Photo Gallery in New York City.  Later, Jim turned to working with clay as another way to express himself artistically. He spent several years studying and in the studios at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. He is a founding member of Indian River Clay.  Jim has exhibited his ceramics in juried shows at several sites locally and has been awarded twice in the 3d/sculpture categories in both the Art by the Sea show at the Vero Beach Museum of Art and the Best of the Best exhibits at the Backus Museum and Gallery in Ft. Pierce.  Jim and Mallory Wixson-OMalley have collaborated on several sculptural pieces and have been awarded at the Backus as well as Indian River Clay’s Form and Fire contemporary ceramics juried exhibit at the Raw Space Gallery in Vero. Their collaboration, Metallica, was accepted in the Vero Beach Museum of Art. 

In Jim's Own Words:  "I'm a car guy.  Car guys can be artists too. It's okay. I was a car kid: Customized my Montgomery Wards bike. I kept telling my dad what to do to make the family sedans look cool.  All this shows in my clay art. Sometimes it's subtle and sometimes it smacks you in the face. My tall floor or garden vases are reminders of the sensual lines we see on European sports cars like the Jaguar XKE. The lines of some of my vases are also similar to the sweeping curves on the Art Deco vehicles recently shown at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. The smacks-you-in-the-face part shows up big time in my mechanical clay works. I show designer nuts and bolts.  Fantasy steam punk machines erupt into conversation starters or, of all things, a vase.  A big old clay nut with a beautiful floral arrangement in it makes a whole new statement for the dining room table.I use coil and slab construction to build my pieces. The garden vases are made using clay coils and the nuts, bolts, and other mechanical works are mostly slab constructed."