Wanderlust will be my fourth solo photography exhibition since November of 2019, and my first outside of Texas. WANDERLUST will be displayed from August 25 through October 13 in the Gibson-Barham Gallery at the Imperial Calcasieu Museum (ICM) in beautiful Lake Charles, Louisiana. I am greatly indebted to Stefan Borssen and Ashley Royer from ICM for seeing something in my photography that led to this exhibition. Artists by nature, at least this artist, are seldom are never satisfied with their work. Therefore, for this idea to become a reality imbued me with great thankfulness and gratitude to the museum and her staff.
This will be my first exhibition outside of Texas. My three prior exhibitions have all taken place in Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas. It feels good to stretch my creative limbs and reach a wider audience. Lake Charles has long been a favorite destination of mine. Given its close proximity to Houston and Beaumont, it has a familiar feel to it. It is part of that Gulf Coast corridor that has a long history of party goers, pirates, rum runners, kudzu, Spanish moss, magnolia and oak trees, blues music, good food and like wanderlust itself, transient shadows that are coming and going. It is the perfect place for an exhibition like mine.
I was asked to write an artists statement on the show, and honestly, while others perceive me to be good writer, I don't spend too much time thinking about what pen is going to put to paper. In this sense I imagine I just let the "Spirit" lead me. The following is some of what I came up with:
"What is it that pulls at the heart... that calls for a journey... begs for something other than the sedentary? The moveable life... action... motion...
My favorite poet, Wallace Stevens offered that, 'The most beautiful in the world is, of course, the world itself.' Once tasted there is no hope of return for I have found the world is my home."
The exhibition will be an intimate examination of some of the incredible people and places I have the good fortune to have visited and photographed. Some of the photographs have come from half a world away, and some have come from right outside my front door in Beaumont, Texas. No matter how near or far, each photograph is like a child to me, an extension of myself, a continuation of something undefinable, but eternal, that resides in me... in each of us.
If you are not busy on Friday, August 25, 2023, and find yourself within ear-shot of Lake Charles, Louisiana, I would be honored if you stopped by. The opening is from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM. It would my joy to wander with you a bit.
Follow this link for all of the information needed regarding the Imperial Calcasieu Museum and my exhibition:
Entrando en la Refriega (Walking Into the Fray)
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Central America
April 2022
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