Texas Artist of the Year Nomination.

   Honored and humbled to be considered for Texas Artist of the Year.  I'd hang my hat on these selections out of two series.  Both were begun when my beloved wife Katie Wintters was diagnosed with cancer in 2014.  We both moved closer and closer to home as that cycle progressed.  I thought it was a good idea to quit traveling and stay home and work on still life photos.

  I'm a very native regionalist.  I work out of my home and yard on Lindsey Lane in Tyler, Texas.  I trust the everything I need is within arms reach  here in the upper Blackford Creek Watershed.

  My work flow is as follows:  An idea arrives in my imagination.  I think of ways to get it on a piece of film.  I keep failing until it arrives.

Lucy waiting on photography to end and lunch to begin.

  Tornadoes arrived and blew through my studio.

Ten Texas Tornadoes.

Moonado

Puzzle Twister.

Modern life.  Who doesn't have one of these spinning inside?

Dicenado

I'm enamored with the idea of luck and chance.

Candle Twister.

Magic & Logic

Mashing up items from the neighborhood.  AC Gentry's granddaughter and neighbors Magnolias.

Triple Magnolias.

Illuminated Manuscript.

My neighbors have learned to tolerate me over the years.  Here's Byron posing.

Tulip Tree Hat

Ike Crutcher, native Tylerite, 1899-1985.  His fedora and Sallie Gentry's, 1914-2006), Tulip Tree Blossoms.

Wisteria Scissors.

A pair of scissors that stayed in my prop pile for a few decades matched up with Wisteria blooms from a brief Spring season.

Fallen Stacked Dogwood Leaves.

Dogwood trees are beautiful all year.   The leaves stack best if you catch them in the air as they fall.

All images made on film with darkroom.  I don't use photoshop except when folks insist of getting one of these really large.

At Tyer Museum of Art.

This work is included in every regional collection in Texas.  Gernsheim, MFAH, TMA.  Southeast Texas, the Comer Collection, Amon Carter, et.  I have about 20 various bodies of work commissioned or self-determined.  I'm a Guggenheim Fellow for 2022.  Ably represented by Foto Relevance in Houston, Texas.

Just a note:  My dear Friend AC Gentry was Texas Artist of the Year in 1972 for his watercolors.

Thanks for your consideration.  God Bless Texas and all of its people.

Out of the Clint Wilhour estate.

 Two cyanotypes added to the 22 pieces in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston collection.  These are the first ones from this century, my most productive by far.  Just like Clint to get them in.  I'm grateful.

Two images made out of the the neighborhood, the yard, and within arms reach.

11 Photographs...plus.

  Wide brush survey of works from various portfolios.  Still life and Landscape are polar opposites...so I'm not two people.  Just switch up the way I work.  Controls all set at the opposite.  In Landscape, god does all the subject matter, lighting, arranging props.  In the studio for still life...you're god...so have good ideas.

Moonset, Shiprock, NM, 1999

Triple Magnolias, 2019

Fledgling American Crow, 1993

                                                                 From Blackfork Bestiary.
                                    Still available as card from Borealis Press, Blue Hill Maine.

Puzzlenado, 2017

    From Ten Texas Tornadoes.  Classic Kinetic still life.  8X10 film.  No photoshop.  Cyanotype.

Flowered Fingers

                                                        The Hand of Sabazuis portfolio. 

Dogwood Pages, 2019

Magic & Logic portfolio.

Fallen Stacked Dogwood leaves, 2018

                                                                      Magic & Logic.

The Dot, Shiprock, NM

Puzzlenado.

as a silver print.

Snail Hand, 1994

From Blackfork Bestiary.

South Dike, 2010

Shiprock.

57 Moonado.

                                                                   Ten Texas Tornadoes.

Bullfrog in Beaker.

Blackfork Bestiary.

Illustrated Manuscript.

Hand of Sabazuis.

Light in the desert.

Penumbra.

I've quit photographing subject and started watching light play.

Owl Feather Twister

Ten Texas Tornadoes.

Feather Box.

Magic & Logic.

Morning Shadow, Shiprock, NM.

Fotorelevance

The fabulous Bryn Larson and Geoffrey Koslov represent me at Fotorelevance in Houston.   There's a flat file full of photographs that will heal the lame, let the blind see and make the poor rich.  Everybody should have a few.  

  I'm in most of the good museum collections in the region, and some of the bad ones.  I was at the height to my powers...then this happened.  Now people will probably bring babies to me to be named.

  Scroll down far enough and there are cyanotypes, Guatemalan Sunflowers, Penumbra, Shiprock, et.

https://fotorelevance.com

Guggenheim dark side...

  I fully acknowledge that I am intended to use my newly bestowed powers for GOOD and not EVIL...

  But last night, out dancing, with the Blue Gypsy, I remembered  a jam-out-darkroom-film-processing-session and realizing that a song I liked...was a PERFECT double-step.  

  Perfect.  I'm not guessing.

  The place we were in isn't a hard honky tonk.  It's about 1/2 Tonk on the English Honky-Tonk scale.  Maybe 3/5ths Tonk on the Metric.  Nice joint.

  So I stick a post-it with request on a dollar bill and stroll over to the DJ booth.  I just happen to know that the DJ has an art degree.  

  I hit him with the request.  His eyes go a bit wide as he reads and the first words he blurts out are "I don't think I can play that."

  This is a song by an American artist.  I'm in America.  It's Friday night in Texas, by god.  I want Nelly.  "Ride Wit Me."  I give him a poker face like I can see the Matrix inside him.

  "Do you know what a Guggenheim Fellowship is?"  He does.  "Well, grasshopper, I'm a Guggenheim Fellow.  Just announced.  And I want this song R...F...N.  I've requested and I've tipped.  And do I need to mention the Guggenheim Fellowship again?"

  Poor guy just crumbled.  Face fell apart.  Like watching a vampire burn away in daylight.  San Angelo State.

  Three songs later, in the middle of a country string, he plays the classic rap song.  The Blue Gypsy and I cut the rug UP.  It IS the perfect double-two.

  I know I should be ashamed.  I know this was wrong.  But God help the first curator I want something from.....

It must be the mon-ey.

  

Guggenheim....Fellows.

 Ok.  They DIDN'T sober up.  I was on my local college campus helping out in the Art Club Art Auction. The phone rang and it was Anne Tucker, congratulating me.  I'm standing in the hall with nobody to hug.

  I'd gotten the email a month or so ago, informing me, but then it started dragging.  Like Christmas in the first grade....and your parents keep moving it.  We'll do it Thursday.  No, Saturday better.  Monday for sure. Did we say Monday?  Some things came up.  How about Wednesday?  Oopps.  Conflict.  Middle of next week suit everyone?  

  Still.  I know about what suffering is and isn't.  What to ignore and what to monitor.  Quit worrying.  You live to serve this ship.  Enjoy this perfect life and row well.

  Meanwhile...chopping wood and hauling water.  Light show across the street subsides as the Sun works North.  White trees come and go.  Dogwoods spring open.  Lots of dancing and film flow by.

  Fighting Knives with Flowers.  Leaning out over Blackford Creek with a pair of scissors counting

Dogwood bracts.  3:30AM Pyrocatting some HP5/8X10 while having a darkroom country dance jam.  Loving working in the silence of the night while the planets creak overhead and Lucy snoozes under the bed.                                                                                                                                                         .

 Many fingerprints on this.  So many folks reminding me, encouraging me.  ( Or telling me NO.)  Plus me.  I tend to gnaw away at things decade after decade.  I will name them later, but they know who they are. Gotta love those human beings. Charles Sowders who taught as he learned.  John Beck at Sam Houston and his unbending discipline to the process.   The Good Doctor Sneed.  Len Kowitz.  Geoffrey and Bryn at Fotorelevance.  The sharp-eyed Cindy Willis sitting beside me at Fotofest, watching reviewers..judging them.  Mark Baldwin at Borealis Press.  My Soulmates Rita Lombardi and Katie Leanne Wintters.  Anne Tucker.  Ron Gleason.  Roy Flukinger.  Chris Johnson.  Ted Orland.  Ansel.  Patrick Kelly.  Caleb Bell.  Chris Leahy.  Ken and Kim Tomio.  Mom.  Mac Miller.  Judy Tedford Deaton.  Arif Khan.  Phyliss Kennedy.  Students by the row and calamities who arrived with gifts in their claws.  Every dance partner who went around the line of dance with me while I worked things out.  Iris Davis.  It's a great privilege and responsibility.  Hope I remember to stand up straight and act right.

  Many thanks to the Guggenheim folks who have made this possible generation after generation.  We're the excited new kids on the back of the line, jostling and fidgeting around..but far to the front, we can see Ansel and Weston.

What a life.

Catching a shadow in a Jar and Paperwhite boxes.

8X10 work in my tiny studio.  Ideas, ideas, ideas...

 

River House, San Juan River at Comb Ridge.

  River House ruin is a heavily trafficked ruin, near Bluff, Utah.  Traditionally it was accessible only by boat.  There were photo workshops that worked this part of the river.  When I went, you could drive in an audacious 2-wheel vehicle or a 4WD.  I caught a ride with an old college friend, Steve Mulligan, from Moab.

  This ruin claimed by the Hopi.  Access by car now reduced.  You might park and walk in...or come by boat on the way to Mexican Hat.

  

  Got to ruin and immediately headed for the quietest light.  

   I'd really come for the door at the bottom, and was glad to see it in person.

5X7 and HP5/Pyrocat.

 

Camera at Zero

  Buzzing around last night with a little bit of time..to do something and several somethings that could be done.  

  Decided to build a flower arrangement that has suddenly appeared.

  Several steps in finding tools, materials,  fabricating the thing.  In still life, everything in the image is something the photographer brings.  Like being god.  Since this was a new idea in a new studio, a little bit of hunting and gathering was required.  Into my supplies, tool drawer, garage can outside, neighbors yard for the flowers.  Then learning how to put it together.  

Just so.

  Also remembered the wise Rita Lombardi, (MFA), telling me that her instructor, way back in basic, had admonished them to put their camera controls all at "zero" to begin the process.  I do that, but I hadn't heard it put so plainly. 

  Good advice.

  Shot a sheet.  Changed a few things.  Shot another.  Today I tore it all down and started again.  Same photo, mostly...with changes.

  I really don't know anything about flowers.  They just keep jumping in front of the camera.

 

Light Ballet every morning.

My friend AC Gentry is gone but I get to watch the light work out on his garage/studio wall every morning.  It's nice. Shooting a little film.  Half a roll a day or so...

Through the camera with a Y@ filter.

 

Flattened, spotted, signed...

Afternoon flea-combing prints.  Just the usual.  Quite a process for an image to make it to film, to proof, to print to exhibit.  Really, almost nothing makes it through process.  I have whole bodies of unseen work with no place to go.  Doesn't matter I guess.  Make more.  More people have seen things online than anywhere else.

River House, Utah

Copperhead in Martini Glass.

Fallen bough, Wild Pear

Feather ladder.

Dogwood Pages, Feather Ladder, Cicada hand.

Feathered fingers and Copperhead Martini.