James C. Pomeroy was an American artist whose practice spanned a variety of media including performance art

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

, sound art

Sound art

Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....

, photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

, installation art

Installation art

Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

, sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, and video art

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

.

Career

Pomeroy moved from Texas to the San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

 in 1968 and received his MA (1971) and MFA (1972) from the University of California at Berkeley.http://www.jim-pomeroy.org/p-resume.html In the 1970s and 1980s he was a prominent figure in the performance art activity associated with Bay Area conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

.
He co-founded the artist-run space

Artist-run space

An artist-run space is a gallery space run by artists, thus circumventing the structures of public and private galleries.Artist-run spaces have become realised as an important factor in urban regeneration...

 80 Langton Street (later New Langton Arts

New Langton Arts

-About:New Langton Arts was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces in the US, New Langton Arts was a leader in exhibiting new media forms in art, and involving artists in the...

). In 1999 on the occasion of New Langton Arts' 25th anniversary, they organized a posthumous Jim Pomeroy retrospective, catalogue, and website.

The Jim Pomeroy Archive is located at the Center for Creative Photography at The University of Arizona.

Selected writings

• Pomeroy, Jim. Rushmore - Another Look: Surveying the American icon: Celebrating America's bicentennial. San Francisco Art Institute: San Francisco, 1976.
• Pomeroy, Jim. Miscellaneous notes on music, stereography, and performance, Jim Pomeroy: San Francisco, 1980.
• Pomeroy, Jim. Light at the Opera/Composition in Deep, High Performance #17-18, Spring-Summer 1982
• Pomeroy, Jim. APOLLO JEST: An American mythology (in depth), Blind Snake Blues Press: San Francisco, 1983.
• Pomeroy, Jim. Like a Razor Blade to a Razor Blade Company: Technology, Profit, and the Friendly User at the Cutting Edge, Afterimage, April 1984.http://www.jim-pomeroy.org/nimslo.htm
• Pomeroy, Jim. Stereo Views, Light Work: Syracuse, 1988. ISBN 9999059198 http://www.lightwork.org/store/otherpubs01.html
• Pomeroy, Jim. Black Box S-Thetix: Labor, Research and Survival in the He[art] of the Beast, Technoculture: edited by Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, University of Minnesota Press, Spring 1991.

Selected bibliography

• Alpert, Richard. South of the Slot, October - November 1974, Richard Alpert: San Francisco, 1974. ASIN: B002SDIA3G
• Roth, Moira. Toward A History of California Performance, ARTS magazine, 1978.
• Rickey, Carrie. Jim Pomeroy at Artists Space, Artforum, 1979.
• Foley, Suzanne. Space Time Sound, Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: The 1970s. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1981. ISBN 0-295-95879-0
• Krane, Susan, ed.Jim Pomeroy, 3-D photos: January 9-January 31, 1981, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1981. ISBN 0914782371
• Jan, Alfred. Jim Pomeroy: Winner of Our Dis-content, High Performance #35, 1986.
• Tamblyn, Christine. Machine Dreams, Afterimage, 1988.
• Montano, Linda. Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0520210226
• Druckery, Timothy and Nadine Lemmon, ed. For a Burning World Is Come to Dance Inane: Essays by and about Jim Pomeroy. Critical Press Inc., 1993
• Miller, Susan and Paul DeMarinis
  Paul DeMarinis
  Paul DeMarinis is an American electronic music composer, sound, performance, and computer-based artist.-Education:In 1971, Demarinis received a B.A. in Music and Filmmaking Interdisciplinary from Antioch College...
  
  , ed. Jim Pomeroy: A Retrospective, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, 1999. ISBN 0-9627010-2-5
• Di Rosa, Rene, ed. Local Color: The di Rosa Collection of Contemporary California Art, Chronicle Books: San Francisco, 1999. ISBN 0811823768
• Schimmel, Paul and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds. Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981, Prestel USA, 2011. ISBN-10: 3791351397

External links

• Jim Pomeroy memorial website
• #22 (1988) Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
  Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine
  Launched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan, in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting-edge downtown music, documenting the New York scene and advancing experimental composers of the time...
  
  , UbuWeb
• Essay on Jim Pomeroy by Paul DeMarinis
  Paul DeMarinis
  Paul DeMarinis is an American electronic music composer, sound, performance, and computer-based artist.-Education:In 1971, Demarinis received a B.A. in Music and Filmmaking Interdisciplinary from Antioch College...
  
  
• The Avenger in Afterimage, September 1999
• Selected photographs in Light Work Collection
• Selected Works in Berkeley Art Museum collection
• Jim Pomeroy's works in the collection of University of Niagara, Niagara Falls, New York
• Jim Pomeroy/MATRIX 13 1978 Berkeley Art Museum exhibition brochure
• Jim Pomeroy MATRIX 1978, Wadsworth Atheneum exhibition brochure
• Berkeley Art Museum on Bay Area Conceptual Art
• Continuo's web log
• This Public Address blog post
• SFMOMA Open Space blog post
• Listen to the Rhythm of the Reign at LA MOCA