Thanks for the Good Times

I would like to thanks everyone who made it out to the closing reception for Nicholas Miramontes' exhibition last night. Nick's friends and family came to see him and witness a bit of his talent on the walls. There were so many family members that I kinda wished we would have had a potluck reception, it was much like a reunion.

I think that best part of the night was the appearance of one Steven Foster. Nick and I studied with Foster at UW-Milwaukee. I think it has been at least 5 years since the three of us were in the same room together, much less celebrating photography together. After viewing Nick's photographs, the Professor came into the studio and I let him see some of the new things I have been working on.

Foster's response to my work was quick but good. Being that there was a reception going on around us, we couldn't have a full on critique like the old days. Despite its quickness, the viewing left me with a good feeling about where my work was headed as well as a feeling of connectedness to my teacher. Nick said it best, Steve's visit was worth the whole shooting match.

Again, I would like to thank Nick's family and friends, my usual reception crowd, Steven Foster, and Pabst for supplying the refreshments. I couldn't do any of this without the great crowds of people around me.

Have a safe trip home Nick.

-jwl

Miramontes Reception This Friday 5-9P

This Friday we will be having a little get together to celebrate the closing of Nicholas Miramontes’ portrait exhibition. Nick will be in town from LA to celebrate and Pabst will sponsor the event with the fine beer that they are known for. All we need now is you! Please come by between 5 and 9 Friday evening and we will have our usual good time celebrating The William Brigade.

For the last year or more, Nicholas Miramontes has been building a private army of images that he refers to as The William Brigade. Working as a commercial photographer in Los Angeles, Miramontes is a Milwaukee native and received his BFA from UW-Milwaukee. For September, we will be giving the gallery over to a battalion of Nick’s photographs which display his superb technical skill and brilliant sense of humor.

Gravel Road, Scott County, Virginia 2007 © jw lawson

I travel to East Tennessee once or twice a year. I go there to visit with family and friends. I go there to recharge and relax. I go there to look at the landscape and absorb the things that I have left behind. With all of this in mind, I create my photographs.

My last trip was full of enough outside influemce that I didn't get a great deal of photographic work done. I was fine with this, seeing that I am currently in the middle of organizing the last 5 years of photographs for a website and other things and adding more images seems unnecessary for now. I also wanted to get away from the gallery work and other things that have bogged me down. I suppose what I was really after was a full on vacation.

I did get a few things done photographically while I was home. This image is one of them. Oddly, this particular photograph wasn't the reason that I was in this particular place. I went into this valley to make images of a swinging bridge and decided to take some context shots for myself. After I returned home I was looking at the collected images and this picture really struck me.

This is a photograph that really drives me to go home again and again. This is the type of tranquil and rural scene that reminds me of where I am from and why I miss it. In the end, I know that I will never be able to go home again to the home that I left. Yet, I do believe that I am creating a new home to return to with my photographs. I feel strongly that my new appreciation for the region of my birth is further fueled by my personal growth as an artist and my physical and emotional explorations. If nothing else, it's a pretty scene.

B O W L, Highway 11W, Tennessee 2007 © jw lawson

Every time I head home to collect images it gets more and more personal. Rather than scanning the nation for and idealistic view of the highway vernacular, I have been spending more and more time looking at my personal history and the region where I was raised. Same eyes, different emotional content.

This bowling alley was someplace where I spent a great deal of my childhood (my mother was an avid bowler). It was where I bowled my first strike, received trophies for tournament play and had really great French fries. As you can see, the bowling alley means something completely different to me now.

I now can rechannel those memories and look at the place today. These days the structure represents both growth and a reducing economy. Taken out of context it looks like a sad shell of a building in an assumed shell of a town, yet there is a brand new Target, Lowes and other big box architecture less than a mile from here. The economy is strong, the history is just being rewritten.

This is the case everywhere I roam. Where I find the majority of my art, there is an active change. I travel in circuits and repeat images from time to time and eventually the artifact is gone, built over or paved. In many ways, the beauty I see in my work is the capture of a time and place. To gather a sense of the place that once was while absorbing the kinetics of what is happening next.