Jim Houser was born in 1973 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he currently resides. He is a self-taught artist and an honorary founding member of the Philly-based artist collective Space1026. Houser’s installations create a mapping system, cataloguing his thinking. His work explores the cadence of speech, science and science fiction, sickness and disease, plants and animals, time travel, ghosts, the art of children and the gravity of fatherhood, codes and code breaking, music and music making.

Houser layers acrylic on wood, fabric and found objects, blurring the lines between collage and sculpture. Once combined, it becomes clear that all of his works are associative and directly related. This deceptively dimensional quality is further highlighted when the pieces are assembled into one of the artist’s elaborate installations, adding to the complexity of each individual piece by emphasizing a greater inter-connectivity to the body of work as a whole. Houser’s collages, paintings and installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Brazil. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art.