Archive

Burton Wilson / Wally Workman Gallery

In the 1930s while a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Burton Wilson began a lifelong interest in jazz and blues music. The blues and jazz were popular among students, and "I took right to it," said Wilson. This spring, some fifty years later, Burton Wilson will have his first one-man show - a historical tribute to the Austin music scene - at Wally Workman Gallery.

Early on, Wilson began collecting 78 rpm records and amassed an extraordinary collection which, when archived at the University of Texas, measured ten feet tall and filled 38 seven-inch reels.

In the 1960s, he studied with the legendary photographer Russell Lee and turned to visually chronicling music through photography. He documented musicians and performers - some famous, some not. The results are authoritative, intimate, and honest images made by a trusted insider. "I love the soundrack they provide," says Eddie Wilson of Armadillo World Headquarters and Threadgill's Restaurant. "I gaze at them ... and hear again the conversations that were taking place. I can hear Jerry Garcia listening to Doug Sahm talk a mile a minute. I can hear Roy Buchanan and Bill Monroe and Mance Lipscomb and Freddy King ...the voices of forgotten cohorts and the music of long-gone legends.."

For those who were there, this exhibit will remind them of how it really was on the Austin music scene from the sixties through the nineties. For those who weren't, the photographs are the next best thing.

Dr. Seuss' Birthday Bash!
March 1 - 20 / Art on 5th

2004 would be Dr. Seuss' 100th Birthday, and Art on 5th is celebrating! The commemorative exhibit includes 20 works from the Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, as well as a large selection of the Illustration Art of Dr. Seuss. The wildly imaginative creations included in the Secret Art Collection show a previously unseen dimension of Theodor Seuss Geisel's art. These sophisticated and whimsical paintings - outlandish creatures in otherworldly settings - were created for his own pleasure and have the inimitable style of Geisel's alter ego Dr. Seuss.

Home, Sweet Home / studio2gallery

Reflections on "home" is the focus of studio2 gallery's photography exhibit which opens on March 6. For the twenty-two photographers represented in Home Sweet Home, the concept of "home" has varied meaning.

"Americans and cultures world-wide are reassessing the changing place they call home," says owner Tina Weitz. "Home can be a vision of comfort, beauty, freedom, memories, and holiday traditions - as well as a place of wars and life's pain and challenges. Home may be a smell, a parcel of land, a state, your country, a bonding of spirit, or even perhaps something as simple as a cup of tea on a winter day."

Austin photographer Hannah Neal collaborated with Weitz to curate this national juried show. As juror, Neal reviewed over 500 submissions to select the exhibit's thirty-three photographs with imagery ranging from the strikingly powerful to the musically poetic. In Homeless, Mitch Kern shows the face of a homeless person with NOBODY written in large text upon his visage. This thought provoking image will heighten the viewer's awareness of the society's forgotten individuals and the prejudices that surround them.

In contrast, Catherine Kirkpatrick reveals the poetry of the mundane in an elegant black and white photograph titled Unmade Bed. Here, the composition - a gracefully draped chenille bedspread in an oddly shaped attic room - utilizes the pattern of light and dark and conveys an exaggerated sense of perspective. Rebecca Rhees' innovative technique adds yet another dimension. In House Series, No. 2, she unites the antiquity of tintype photography with the contemporary to create a collage that is drenched in delicate tonalities, yet has a strikingly modern sensibility.

Texas, the Photography State / Stephen L. Clark Gallery

I recently returned from the New York Photography Show which attracts collectors of both contemporary and vintage images. The Sunday seminar, moderated by Ann Tucker from MFA Houston, was entitled Texas Photography. The panel of noted curators included Roy Flukinger, curator of Photography and Film at UT's Harry Ransom Center, , and John Rohrbach from the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth. Afterwards, I had many people tell me that they did not realize how much photography was in Texas. So, it seems, a bit of history and proselytizing is in order.

The first photograph ever made lives in Austin. The Niepce photograph is circa 1826, ten years before Texas gained Statehood! It is part of the Gernsheim Collection housed at the newly renovated Harry Ransom Center on the University of Texas campus along with the David Douglas Duncan War Archive. In addition, the University of Texas houses the best nineteenth century collection of photography in the world.

The Texas Photographic Society sprang out of the old Austin Photographic Co-Op in the 1970s and is now national in stature. When I first came to Austin in 1975, Garry Winogrand, a celebrated street photographer, was teaching in the UT Art Department. He had followed Russell Lee, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration during the Depression and as mentor to whole generation of Austin photographers. Today, there is a large cadre of commerical and journalistic photographers including Rob Kendrick of National Geographic fame. In the fine art arena there are scores of talented people, but few would disagree that Kate Breakey has made the biggest mark.

Photography in Central Texas is indeed vibrant. In recent years, the Austin Museum of Art has had major photography exhitions with Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide and Keith Carter. the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography opened at Texas State University in the 1990s. Founded by photographer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff, the collection now houses over 8,000 images. Several Austin galleries specialize in photography; others include fine art photography among their offerings. I, personally, am lobbying for a new license plate - Texas, The Photography State! Austin can claim a large share of that designation. - Steve Clark

Jack Spencer, New Work opens this month at the Stephen L. Clark Gallery on West 6th Street.