Dallas ? James Surls drew inspiration for his wooden sculptures from the dense forests that stood sentry outside his rural cabin. But while the piney woods sheltered and infused his world, they also confined expectations of what his art could be.

So Surls changed his environment, moving with his family five years ago from Splendora, Texas, to Colorado’s Aspen Valley.

“In the country in Texas where I lived, it was very much of jungle,” he says. “You had to look through the leaves, trees and limbs to see the sky. Now, I live where I can see for miles into the blue sky. My head has expanded, and so has my art.”

His pieces, once roughhewn timbers generally no larger than a Volkswagen bug, have given way to monumental wood and black steel sculptures that loom as large as the trees he so loved.

More than 50 of Surls’ latest works are on display through April 20 at The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, where Surls once taught. Many are large-scale sculptures, some soaring to 28 feet and created specifically for the Dallas museum space. Drawings, poems and models of larger pieces complete the exhibition.

Past, present and future

The works, most created in Colorado, incorporate Surls’ interest in opposing forces — male and female, vertical and horizontal, open and closed, rough and smooth.

“His work comes out of the soil, out of the ground, out of nature; and from it creates human drama,” says Edmund Pillsbury, an art dealer and historian. “The recent pieces are more refined, more synthetic. There’s a happy balance between the natural quality of the material — the wood — and what he’s trying to say with the symbols.”

Surls uses images of flowers, needles and jarlike vessels to represent traditional female roles, and knives to symbolize masculinity. Petroglyph-style eyes indicate the soul; diamonds represent science and intellect; while houses and bridges allude to change and new beginnings.

“The Bridge and Needle,” created last year, incorporates a curved crossing from which a mammoth steel needle emerges, topped by wooden flower petals and diamond-shaped prisms. The visual impact comes from the crispness of the shadow on the bare wall, mirroring the piece yet sharpening its edges.

Contemporary sculptor James Surls poses with his sculpture made of basswood, mahogany, pine, oak, gum, magnolia, bois de arc and painted steel entitled From

Surls says the bridge, like another installation called “Forever Gone,” symbolizes his family’s move to Colorado.

“If you looked at it as past and present and future, then you can’t really go back to the past,” he says. “Maybe you build another bridge. Maybe you keep the option of the bridge open. Maybe that’s what the future is.”

The ‘Willie Nelson of art’

Another installation, “Seven and Seven Flower,” uses blackened pine that Surls scavenged from a clear cutting near Splendora, about 30 miles east of Houston. Surls laments the slow loss of the forest, which “has been taken, been eaten,” by loggers and paper mills.

The seven flowers, with seven petals each, are connected by undulating black steel, which forms wagon wheellike spokes topped by trailer-hitch balls that Surls found in a feed store.

That rustic sensibility is a reflection of the artist, whom one museum-goer called the “Willie Nelson of art.” Surls looks the part with his gray beard and long hair tied back from his weathered face.

But while Surls looks the everyman, he decries art that is dumbed down so as not to challenge any man.

“Art will inevitably tell you the truth,” he says. “A pretty painting that hangs on the wall says, ‘I hang on the wall and really look good.’ That’s not enough. That’s just decoration.”

Surls, 59, was born in Terrell, Texas, the son of a carpenter who taught him about native pine, sweet gum and oak. He taught sculpture at SMU from 1970 to 1975, before moving to the Houston area and establishing a studio in Splendora.

The Meadows show is his largest since the Dallas Museum of Art held a retrospective in 1984. Three steel giants in the outdoor plaza and a wood and steel installation hanging from the building’s grand staircase were created just for the SMU show.

Admission to the exhibition is $5 for adults, and $3 for senior citizens and children.