Jim Pallas

Currently in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Firefly: Portrait of the Artist with Cosmic Bubble, is often on display in the Museum's contemporary art gallery.[8]

Century of Light (1980) was located in downtown Detroit on Washington Boulevard at Grand River Avenue.[6] Commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the lightbulb by Thomas Edison, the piece consisted of an 18-foot diameter mandala of 144 one foot diameter light spheres suspended in the air and a computer console called PROGMOD. The mandala displayed computer-animated patterns generated in response to the movements of people around it using micro-wave radar and a photocell. The PROGMOD processed the inputs and generated the patterns for display on the mandala. It was the first use of a microcomputer in a large permanent outdoor public sculpture.[9][10] The Century of Light was installed in 1980 and continuously operated until it was destroyed in a bungled move by the City of Detroit in 2006.[11]

Commissioned by U.S. Senator Carl Levin The Senate Piece responds to the proceedings taking place on the floor of the U.S. Senate[12] as well as to activities in the immediate surroundings of the piece.[13] When installed, the idea of a sculpture “listening” to the conversations occurring in the senator's office created some controversy.[14]

In the 1970s, Pallas began making life-size plywood cut-outs of real people and gave them to those subjects to write something, anything, on the back and abandon them in a public place. The subjects would often write a destination telling those who stopped where the realistic looking “hitchhikers” were trying to go. In 2006, collaborating with artists Julie Newdoll and Mike Mosher, Pallas created "Hitchhikers in the Valley of Heart's Delight" as part of the art, technology and science festival sponsored by ISEA International called the “Zero One Festival.”[15] The hitchhikers were embedded with trackers and their whereabouts published on the web. Two of the six hitchhikers were of Hewlett-Packard co-founders, Bill Hewlett and David Packard. The note on the back of the plywood cut-outs asked that they be taken finally to the HP Corporate headquarters. When they arrived, however, they were turned away.[15] Sun Microsystems stepped in and purchased “Hewlett & Packard” and put them back “on the street.” [16] The trio of artists created a travelogue that allowed anyone who participated in the project, by picking up the hitchhikers on the side of the road and taking them further in the journey to document that portion of the trip and were rewarded with a share of ownership in the artwork.[17] In 2011, Pallas was commissioned by Columbia University to place tracker equipped Hitchikers of Saul Steinberg, Thelonious Monk and a woman of the Lenape tribe on locations in Manhattan as part of an Artists' Game exhibit. All were stolen within 24 hours.

In 2012 Pallas created a series of portraits of sixteen people who left an indelible stamp on the youngest generation of artists in Detroit. The four foot by four foot portraits are on large foamy surfaces hardened by layers of pigmented epoxy. An exhibition of all sixteen portraits at the N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art Artist pays homage to Detroit's most influential artists was highlighted in the July 2012 PBS Newshour show Where Detroit Industry Has Floundered, World-Class Art Scene Flourishes.[18]

A giant head of Vincent van Gogh, evoking van Gogh's Self-portrait with Straw Hat, stands seven feet tall on its pedestal. In the sculpture his right ear is missing, but his left ear has a large enough opening that money can be dropped into the head. When money is deposited into the ear, the sculpture responds with Dutch accented audio recordings of observations about life and art. Made of pigmented epoxy fiberglass over a steel frame. The piece is currently in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.[19] Pallas has completed other works inspired by van Gogh's paintings.