James Parlin is a sculptor and a professor of art.  He lives and works in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, just south of Erie in the northwestern corner of the state.

Parlin was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954.  His father was a lawyer and his mother a homemaker.  He grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  He has two sisters, Ruth, a legal librarian, and Kathryn, an energy conservation consultant.

Parlin went to school at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.  As an undergraduate, he focused on philosophy and religious studies, but also took some art classes.  He developed an abiding interest in sculpture, which he pursued in graduate school, also at Penn.

Upon graduation, he established a studio in Philadelphia and has shown his work there, and in a variety of regional and national venues, ever since.  He has been affiliated with the Schmidt Dean Gallery in Philadelphia since 1989.

He taught drawing and various three-dimensional studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia for a number of years.  In 1991, he accepted a tenure-track position at Edinboro University, where he is now a full professor and a member of the graduate faculty.

Parlin is married to Dr. Elisabeth Joyce, a professor of English at Edinboro University.  They have two children, Cyrus and Ursula.