February 2025_Snow Moon
Hello Friends,
As you read this Marci and I are in Iceland. She has always wanted to see the Aurora Borelalis and so prompted the trip. I am still anxiously awaiting the appraisal of my archive to be completed, but until it is I am still working and printing as normal. I have always wanted to do limited edition portfolios of my work, and so I spoke with Jace Graf at Cloverleaf Studio, who is the master of this endeavor. We are starting two projects. One is the Lucille Series.
In the portfolio will be 12 - 14 inch wide prints on a 17 x 21 inch piece of paper. Image sizes vary a little bit in height. They are printed on Hahnemuele Photo Rag each signed and editioned. This size is unique to the portfolio edition. I will have all of the information in my next full moon email.
The story of how this series began is this:
When my landlady, Lucille French Clark passed away on April 4th 1991, I became the keeper and eventually purchaser of her house and property. I documented each room in her house as it was when she died, but it was purely documentary. Then one day I picked up a tarantula and photographed it on her tableclothed dining room table. I loved that, and so I found a critter for each room in her house and made an image. The result was the first time I used a camera and images to express the loss of a friend. Lucille helped me tremendously in my life in Big Bend. She owned and operated the French Company Grocery from about 1919 to 1972. Her father, William French started the business in 1900. When he passed away Lucille took over and ran the business. My gallery building is the original French Company Store. Marci revived the name in 2006 when she purchased the Trip Saver Grocery from Judy and Andy Curry.
I have two masterpieces in my archive. Dancing Feet and Bull Snake on Sofa, the latter from the Lucille series. I have never sold the whole set, or even shown the whole set, so here it is.
**Reminiscings**
I went to see the movie "A Complete Unknown" the portrayal of Dylan in his early years. I loved every minute of it. It made me reflect on my own life. I was 20 years old when I quit my job and decided I was going to be a photographer. I had no money, no real equipment, just the passion and desire to learn everything I could about the vocation. I read photo books, and there was a photo gallery in Philadelphia that I went to meet photographers and see their work. I met George Tice, Harry Calahan, and Duane Michals, and perused their framed prints for inspiration. I was also inspired by my mentor, an artist named Joe Vancho. He was a Vietnam vet, a welder and painted and sculpted. Joe was just what I needed at the time. I would not not have quit my job and taken the leap if not for him. When you're young and have your whole life in front of you, it is so exciting. The painful struggles I had trying to earn a living, while learning and improving the craft of photography.
I never did anything else. I worked in photo labs and for a couple of photographers, and one year at the Gage Hotel, but in my adult life, I have worked less than 5 years for other people.
Finding Big Bend was it for me. I knew it the first time I visited, and the third time I moved to Marathon.
Now, I feel like I am more at the end of my photographic career, though I still shoot. I had so much fun camping, hiking and making photographs of the people and landscape of the area. But the bulk of my work is done, and now I am ready to explore other types of image making and art.
I watch a lot of documentaries. The Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Woodstock are examples, and while I was alive during their heydays, the documentaries provide me with the back story and gave me the perspective I didn't have at the time it was happening. I guess every generation and lifetime has its own amazing moments. For me, to be witness to, or maybe be alive to witness, the Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and John Lennon assassinations all were painful realities that good people get killed. At the same time to witness man land on the moon, grow up with the segregated south and see a black man become president, was so astonishing to me. To see rock and roll music in its infancy to what it has become today. To have an operater assisted phone call to an encyclopedia of knowledge in your hand, a computer. Isn't it amazing. I don't want to sound resigned or like life is over, because I am still active and making artistic work. I think it is more that I realize my heyday has peaked, and I am enjoying the fruits of my labor, and how fortunate I was to be born in a country that allowed, encouraged, and at times supported me through my endeavors.