The West Side of Hampshire Lane from Arapaho to Vernet, Richardson, Texas, October 1988

Detail: The West Side of Hampshire Lane from Arapaho to Vernet, Richardson, Texas, October 1988, 10/17/96
mixed media diorama housed in 15 glassed in panels in 3 frames, 5 1/8 x 114 x 2 inches

Around 1995, I began to wonder if there would come a time when I no longer needed the diorama. Although physical in nature, much of the depth inside was the result of plain old painting. The following year, the diorama became new again, when I started going through snapshots that had been stored away in an ice chest because there were so many of them. The collection contained pretty much everything shot while living in Richardson, Texas. My focus on the Dallas suburb had been disrupted by roads trips and moves that eventually took me home to Fillmore, Utah. Prior to then, I resided in the cities of Houston, Phoenix and El Paso. The neighborhoods of each place, seized my devotion as though I’d grown up as a local. That’s exactly why the diorama proved to be so effective. The formatting of everyday terrain gave me a way to say just how much I loved my surroundings. When the images were laid out across the floor, I saw that there was at least ten years of work that I wanted to complete in two. To cover so much ground, I would have to go small. I was living in Houston the first time I tried to make a diorama as tiny as the photographic image that it came from. I never understood just how minute the details could be until I tried to paint them. Photography is such a common way of seeing that we’ve lost touch with what distortion can really mean. We automatically fill in much of the missing scale that would have to be there in order for a print or snapshot to be seen as any kind of reality. In describing the veracity of a painting, how many times has it been said that it looks just like a photograph? It may seem like a strange thing to say, but photographic imagery has replaced reality as a point of comparison. The success of a painting is never measured against the splendor of the great outdoors. As I tried to translate petite details into the making of a diorama, I discovered I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the chops or stamina to get it done. Over time, the diorama grew ever more refined. Perhaps, it was that process that enabled me to successfully complete a few miniature renditions of the format while I was living in El Paso.

While in Richardson, I shot numerous sprawling vistas of the city. Several swept away by a desire to see the next connection, followed the panoramic swirl to unfurl 360 degrees of suburban habitation. With a conservative scale that made the vertical side of a diorama just 8 inches high, those ocular accomplishments spread out to be at least 10 feet long without ever trying. Imagine what 16 to 24 inches of verticality would do to a horizon. The latter measurement could easily mean 30 feet or more of a suburban sprawl consuming the span of a colossal wall. The length of a diorama was a measurement of time. Because of that fact, I’d completed only one of them. With the reduction in size, I was able to complete 5 or 6 of the fully surveyed portrayals of the city. Besides the profile of the cutout and the sloped horizon, the thing that really made the diorama work, was its dependence on the density of color. The much smaller scale, made the compiling of color a less time consuming thing to do. A diorama that had taken two or three months to complete, could be finished in a couple of weeks. The reduction in size, made moving through my old neighborhood into something that could be done.

The smaller scale turned scrap into something that could be used. Because reflection free glass was almost like gold, I couldn’t throw any of the fragments away. Instead, I wrapped the pieces up so they wouldn’t scratch, hoping to find a way to use them. Working with the bits of this and that, invited a kind of playfulness. The parameter for many images was determined by the size and shape of leftover glass. An insignificant piece of wood, to small or narrow to safety reshape into a frame, suddenly became valuable. Something like a ¼ inch strip of plywood with a ½ inch piece of matboard glued to the top of it, could be made into a frame. Because structural materials were often not the same, something had to be done to make the raw combinations compatible. Stained paper and wood simply wouldn’t look very good. Paint was an obvious remedy. I discovered that brushed on paint could be sanded into an exquisite finish. Although there was nothing new in that, I never understood what it took to get it done. Because walking was a constant part of my consciousness, I began to collect some of what I saw. Bits of chipped and weathered paint, autumn leaves, sifted samplings of dug up dirt, and the inside lining of bark from fallen trees became the veneer facing for many of my put together frames. Working this way, meant there was less of a need for a wood shop.

Of all the miniaturized dioramas, The West Side of Hampshire Lane from Arapaho to Vernet, Richardson, Texas, October 1988 was likely the most decisive one for things to come. Inspired by the David Hockney travel paintings that try to illuminate movement, the prospect of taking a short journey filled me with ecstasy. Early on an October Sunday morning, I got up to walk Hampshire Lane. With camera in hand, I chronicled all the buildings on the west side of street with enough overlap to show that the photographs had the same roadway in common. The distance from one image to the next involved walking. The collection of snapshots documented travel. For the first time in my life, a string of photographs didn’t try to seize upon the sweep of a fixed horizon, and yet there seemed to be some kind of connection. Perhaps, that’s because navigation is a function of sight. A vista is just suspended travel in a continuous stream of visual sub consciousness. Because we’re designed to see, we don’t perceive the entirety of the data crush that makes getting around so easy. The primary reason I enjoy travel by foot or car, is that it takes me to a place where continuously shifting vistas obliterate the compositional conceit of thinking that beauty is so rare that it needs to be dug out to be found.

 

The West Side of Hampshire Lane… united 15 separate scenes in a frame that was divided into three sections. Those divisions were made for the sake of handling. Between each scene there was a space that opened up to the wall. The serial configuration of buildings along the street was repetitive enough to form a kind of horizontal laddering that was reminiscent of a filmstrip. Although not part of the thought process, the fact that the combined images recorded a short journey, meant that the framing turned out to be a perfect fit for the depiction of travel. A roll of chronological stills is how movement is recorded. Without knowing it, the sequencing of individual images would eventually become the primary way of portraying panoramic scenery. The depiction of a vista as a singular event never really existed. The span of any horizon always required movement from the camera. Even while eyes scan the breadth of a horizon, seeing renders the fragmentation of sight as a complete picture. The camera can’t do that. The viewfinder can only know frozen moments. It can’t comprehend time as continuum. Although the diorama closely resembled what we think we see, that link was missing. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. That would come later on, when I tried to align some overlapping photographs that refused to go together. When I pulled them apart, the separation revealed an interlude that I hadn’t noticed before. The walk along Hampshire Lane foreshadowed that knowledge in format and framing. The division or intervening pause meant that paint could showcase more than a frozen moment. Although the illustration of time was still made of stills, the collection of more than a single moment represented a measurement in time. Partitioning breaks within the framing, recorded the passage of time like the demarcation of tree rings. We can see the representation of place as a cross section in time, however fleeting a scene may be.

54 Sky Panels from Holden to Sevier Lake, Utah, US Highway 50

54 Sky Panels from Holden to Sevier Lake, Utah, US Highway 50, 2014-2017
acrylic on 54 panels, artist-made frames, 51 3/8 x 77 7/8 x 1 3/8 inches
Courtesy of Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden

Left side view of 54 Sky Panels from Holden to Sevier Lake,Utah,
US Highway 50, Courtesy of Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden

A favorite painting of mine, is divided up into a grid of 450 squares. It certainly did not begin that way. When first painted, I was living in Richardson, a suburb north of Dallas, Texas. In the tiny apartment, there was no space to paint anything of scale. A small kitchen table, that couldn’t possibly fit in the minuscule kitchen, doubled as a studio. On the other side of the elevated railroad tracks, which ran behind the block of nondescript brick apartment buildings, there was an empty field. That is where I’d go to work on large projects. Sometimes while working outside, I’d draw a small audience of kids, usually arriving on bicycles. Although, I always tried to answer their questions directly, it was never that easy trying to explain abstraction while painting.

When the weather was pleasant, I’d search for a section of beaten down weeds, as far away from the street as I could find, and lay some raw canvas on the ground. The resistant stubble of wild plants, felt nothing like the smooth studio walls that backed the stapled expanses of canvas that I painted on in college. On the ground, the fabric was never flat. The pressure of the brush against the debris underneath, left impressions in the paint similar to rubbings made with crayon on paper. Brushstrokes lack a sense of calligraphic weight when trying to glide over a rumple of woven ridges. Abstraction in the field, quickly moved from Franz Kline like gestures, to gravity centric acts, which were more in line with the layered constellations of Jackson Pollock. While flinging paint from the end of the brush, I also dumped large quantities of white onto the fabric. Stepping into the puddles, I began kicking the paint around, leaving the imprint of my shoes as part of the overall imagery. Into those impressions, I poured a watery mix of pigment and let it run all over the canvas. I liked the result, but it always felt like there was something missing.

While attending the University of Nevada in Reno, I saw a canvas covered with a grid of graphite lines. Agnes Martin had carefully painted the spaces in between with white. The simplicity was striking. It reminded me of the shimmer of reflected sky on the side of glass buildings. While attending the university, my parents moved to Dallas. Visiting them on a Christmas break, we circled the city as the sun began to set. Within a cold yellow sky, glass high-rises burned like hot coals on a circular horizon. I remember distinctly feeling that I’d never seen anything quite like that before.

When I moved seven years later to El Paso, Texas, I had another go at it. This time, I overlaid the embedded footprints and splatters of paint with a graphite grid of squares. While it broke some of the dead areas up, it still didn’t get me there.

A couple years after that, I move to Fillmore, Utah. One day while looking at the painting, I decided that the grid needed to be more physically defined. I had an old painting from college that I never entirely liked. Composed primarily of pinks and blues, I thought it was a little too pretty. I decided to cut it up into squares. Back then, I frequently painted into wet gesso and raw canvas and watched the pigments bleed into the cream colored fabric. Subtle patterns happened on the back side of the canvas where it had been stuck and stapled to the wall. With all the pieces piled in the middle of the floor, I randomly began to glue them into the grid of the field painting. Some pieces remained face up, while others were turned upside down. As I did this, I intentionally left many of the spaces blank so as not to conceal all of the embedded footprints. The grid became a combination of three paintings because both sides of the cut up canvas were applied to the original artwork. What I was looking for was a kind of randomness. To reinforce that, I traced the grid with linear beads of glue. Into those wet ridges, I pressed a couple different colors of sand. When the mortar like lines dried, I had a restrained mosaic of graphic atmospheric squares.

I always enjoyed the randomness that inhabits nature. Because nature was a better designer than I could ever be, composition was never an obsession. I just went with what I saw, knowing that I could never improve reality. When I began thinking about the sky panels, I wanted to take the randomness I saw on walks and apply it to the sky. Of course, sky already has an ambiguity that I could never match, it’s just that the blue skies of beyond, are never equated with the splendor of lowly weeds or erosion. Yes, I said it. Weeds are absolutely beautiful!

One day, on the way to the mailbox, the light in the sky was exceptional. Studying the mosaic of canvas squares, I determined that to get a similar shimmer with paintings of clouded atmosphere, that I would need at least 54 panels. With that knowledge, I headed for Sevier Lake on US Highway 50 stopping along the way to shoot fragments of the sky. It took around an hour to arrive at the dry lakebed. When I got there, I photographed the ground and highway as well. I had plans for several paintings.

When I viewed the 54 thumbnails of sky on the computer screen, I had my doubts. It was a monotone mosaic of blue. Although light, the abstract painting I was modeling it after, was full of all kinds of color. I decided to go ahead with project. There is no real way to tell if an idea will work if it is never executed. With a utility knife and handsaw, I cut all the materials I would need to make the panels. In my spare time, I glued things together. Because I’ve done a lot of framing, I know nothing is ever an exact match. To compensate for that fact, the ragboard panels were cut a little larger than the frames or platforms that they were to be mounted to. Sandpaper brought all the uneven edges together. The practice of sanding was never anything I desired to pursue, but because I make everything myself, sandpaper has become a constant companion. Instead of dreading it, I just accept it as a key part of making art.

At any size, 54 paintings are going to require a lot of time. Because of that fact, I decided to change the way I usually paint, otherwise it would take a couple of years to complete. The work would have to be a little more loose or painterly. With my experience as an abstract painter, I learned to be open to what a situation desires. The scale of the project was the equivalent of an unexpected drip. Listening to its direction changes what needs to be done.

When I completed the first three paintings, I saw that all the blue was going to be okay. Because many of the images were similar, when a painting was finished, the corresponding photograph was immediately deleted to avoid any confusion about what had or had not been completed. Being a framer, I couldn’t help but frame a piece as soon as it was done. When originally imagining the project, I saw all the framing in white. I had a handful of small paint cans sitting around and decided to use the pale colors. Following that path, the framing for the final piece would be an array of slight variations on taupe or beige. The delicacy of the color scheme pleased me.

Having so many panels to paint gave me a chance to play around a little. That was even in keeping with what I was trying to do. The painting was intended to be about the beauty of randomness. Not having it front of me now, I don’t remember all the different things I did. But beyond a generalized looseness, there were some references to Pointillism that I really enjoyed making. One of the more surprising pieces for me, was a painting of clouds that primarily relied on the kind of lines I used when doodling in junior high school. Even while using them, I could still be fairly discreet.

I started the piece in 2014. Working on it between other projects, had gotten me as far 13 panels by the spring of 2017. Then I decided it was now or never, and set everything else aside. Being able to delete a digital image as each painting was finished was a good way to keep track of progress. But, every time I counted how many images there were left to paint, I felt overwhelmed. I looked forward to thresholds like I’m almost halfway there, or there are only 19 panels left to go. The countdown helps. Over my career, most of the things I’ve made were time consuming. Immediate gratification is something I seldom experience. I get up each morning and go to work, and somewhere down the line, much to my surprise, I’ll find that I’m almost finished.

By the time I decided that it was now or never for the project, most of the small paint cans that I mentioned before had dried out. I planned to go to the hardware store and pick out some new colors, keeping with the theme of subtle variation. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to mix in a little acrylic with the colors that remained viable, that way there would be a little more variation. In mixing the paint for one the frames, I overshot a color and initially thought it was a little too intense. But rather than repainting it, I decided to make a shift to the color scheme. The painting was to be about the acumen of chance, and having a mix of colors could strengthen that sense of randomness.

Part of the inspiration for this painting, came from an abstract piece that I began 34 years ago. In it, all the squares are fixed, but because there are 450 of them, a certain amount of randomness is inevitable. The sky panels were painted individually so they could be moved around. Initially, the configuration of the grid was the only restriction I had on their placement. I liked the idea of not having a particular order in which to hang them. Going for a form of randomness, none of them would have been numbered. But as I thought about it, it was not hard for me to imagine some poor perfectionist struggling to get them hung. How could anyone ever really know if they found the perfect combination? I decided to take the stress away. I quickly laid everything out on floor without much thought about where anything should go. For anyone interested in creativity or design, that is part of the secret. Don’t over think things. Being casual or relaxed gets you at least halfway there. Standing on a chair, I began to move things around. When I saw a configuration that I really liked, I stopped to number them. It is impossible to ever know if my combination is the perfect one, but as far as I can tell, it works absolutely well enough.

As I work, change often happens along the way. I thought I was seeking randomness, but what I was really looking for, was the power of chance to help me find or design something beautiful. In this painting, I became like the nature that I rely on. You don’t have to figure out where the sky panels are supposed to go. I’ve done it for you. That’s what nature has always done for me. I never have to figure out where things need to be. I simply look out at the land in front of me. Because of that fact, I’ve never fully understood the concept of chaos. Everything appears to be related; even when things seem to happen for no reason, randomness is a form of order. A germinating seed becomes the weed that leads to a full blown forest.

US Highway 50, Granada, Colorado and the Amache Internment Camp

Amtrak a Passing Shadow, Granada, Colorado, US Highway 50
acrylic
8 1/4 x 23 1/4 x 3 3/4 inches

In 2005, I began photographing US Highway 50.  My focus was a section of highway known as the Loneliest Road in America that traverses Nevada.  Raised in Utah and Nevada, I grew up crossing the Great Basin.  An area of interior drainage, the rivers never make it to the sea.  Instead, they vanish in shallows of stagnation.  The Great Salt Lake is a good example of this.  My parents lived at opposite ends of the 500 mile divide of mountains and valleys.  Highway 50 was the connection between Fillmore, Utah and Reno, Nevada.  In 2012 I extended the highway theme to include Colorado.  This past fall, I covered the rest of the highway on a road trip that took me all the way to Maryland.  This is not a project to be completed in a single season.  It will likely involve the rest of my life, but I really like the idea of covering the breadth of the nation from the vantage point of a single highway.

I wanted to capture all the towns along the way.  As I traveled, I realized that kind of exactness would never actually happen.  Maps never entirely capture the idea of habitation.  What constitutes a town or community is not always straightforward.  With all the clusters that happen along the way, the abstraction of a map was necessary.  I missed some towns because I didn't know I missed them.  Sometimes I turned around to fix the mistake, and sometimes I didn't.  Then there was the problem of cities and the surrounding suburbs.  I confined cities to skylines and downtown intersections.  I didn't hit museums or spend much time dining out.  This wasn't about tourism, although it often touched forgotten places, the kind of places only known to those coming home to houses shadowed by freight trains on tracks that preceded miles of automotive travel.

Heading west out of Kansas, the sun had just come up.  In Granada, Colorado, grain elevators bathed in morning sunlight.  I pulled over just in time to catch a passing Amtrak.  I didn't realize or imagine that Granada had been the site of an internment camp.  That knowledge came to me later at a rest area.  However, I recently caught it on my way home from Maryland.  There wasn't much. There never is.  The only standing structure was not from the past, but rather the reconstruction of a guard tower.  Signs at the entrance provided a brief history.  The Granada Relocation Center also known as Amache held 10,000 people of Japanese ancestry from August 1942 to October 1945.  This was one of ten camps that held 110,000 prisoners.  Two thirds of the prisoners were American citizens.  The interesting part about the figure is that another internment camp has the number at 120,000.  I noticed the discrepancy because there happens to be a camp not far from where I live.  Out in the desert of west Millard County, Utah are the remains of the Central Utah Relocation Center also known as the Topaz Internment Camp.  Whatever the number, wartime seemed to inflame racism, a racism that many are never willing to acknowledge. 

The reconstruction of a guard tower at the Granada Relocation Center,
 also known as the Amanche Internment Camp.

The Central Utah Relocation Center, also known as the Topaz Interment Camp.

US Highway 50: Great Basin National Park, Bob Scott Summit and other Stops along The Loneliest Road in America, and a Painting of Playa



Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park, Nevada

 

In 2005, my brother Steve and I hit US Highway 50 to pursue a book devoted to The Loneliest Road in America.  The idea came from a conversation that happened while camping in Great Basin National Park.  Painting the highway had been on my mind for many years, and Steve being a writer suggested turning it into a book.  Having parents in Fillmore, Utah and Reno, Nevada, we grew up with a 500 mile commute between families.  I mentioned that in a statement written for an exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas.  There was sometimes an assumption that the title was a reflection on a lonely childhood when it was actually a description of place.  That is the official name of the highway.  Childhood was how I knew of the Great Basin.  I was never lonely in a car.  There was too much to see for me to be anything but engage.  The sky sailed high above pinion and sage as travel profiled range after range on a blue horizon.  Life got in the way.  The book never happened.  Individual passages written for specific paintings is as close as we got to that compilation. When I wrote the following, my audience initially seems to be Steve.

 

Playa

 

Playa
oil on canvas
17 3/8 x 7 15/16 inches
2009

 

It has been more than four years since we stopped in the little valley cradled between the outskirts of Fernley and the bend in the road known as Hazen, Nevada.  I don’t know where you were or what you were doing while I shot photographs of the hills and playa that framed the northern view of a land that lead to Lovelock and beyond, but it was so far away that it was out of view even in the clean crisp air of an unusually cool June morning.  Perhaps you were taking notes that could describe in concrete detail the memory of a land I just tried to communicate to you.

 

I was on the road a couple of months ago and passed this way.  The previous day took me as far as Bob Scott Summit.  Having no desire to travel the night, I crawled off into a sleeping bag in the back of the Sonata.  A starry sky filled the windows of my modest accommodation.  What a luxury that was.  The city intensifies darkness, burning out nearly all the shades between black and white, leaving night as subtle as compressed charcoal.  However out here in the pinion, the stars shine bright, and night is lighter than I ever imagined it to be, even in the absence of moonlight.

 

Morning view of Austin, Nevada

 

I left in early morning starlight and headed for Austin Summit to capture the rise of dawn.  I got out of the car.  I was glad to be wearing gloves.  October had frozen the shoulder of the road I walked along taking pictures of the pass.  Aspen slopes glowed green, yellow and gold, and the sage was weather-beaten.  In Austin, the first service station hadn’t open yet.  The next station was the only other station in town.  Its signage read pay before you pump, so I stayed on the highway.  Just outside of town, I reconsidered that decision.  Fallon was 111 miles away and there was no warning sign.  When you leave Green River, Utah, a sign emphatically states that the next services are 109 miles away.  I guess Nevada figures if you’ve made it this far, you already know there won’t be anything out there.

 

It was early afternoon by the time I passed by the playa; I had taken many pictures along the way making my travel time even longer.  It was not the same.  Two or three drilling rigs now inhabit the small valley.  The reason I am not sure of the number is I had no desire to document what I saw.  I realized that this end of the highway was filling in.  Americans are always looking for a home on the range.  However, because they want space to be convenient, the city grows out to where the wind blew not so long ago, unrestrained, kicking and chasing tumble weeds just to disturb the dust, never ever caring that the dust just wanted to settle down somewhere out on the playa.

Handmade book for Playa
4 1/2 x 3 x 3/8 inches

The Loneliest Road in America: US Highway 50, Nevada and the Great Basin; Peavine Peak, a Painting from an Exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas

The next several posts come an exhibition at Valley House Gallery, Dallas, Texas that I did in 2010.  The paintings where a survey of U.S Highway 50 crossing Nevada.  The following is written information from the invitation and the handmade book that went with the painting of Peavine Peak.

 

A Railroad Crossing Outside of Hazen, Nevada
oil on canvas
16 1/16 x 36 1/8 inches
2008

The Loneliest Road in America

 

Although it may not be America’s loneliest road, a portion of US Highway 50 has that designation for a reason.  On its way from Maryland to California, it crosses Nevada, the driest state in the union.

 

For personal reasons, I extend the theme to include some of Utah.  As a child, I traveled back and forth between parents on this highway.  The 500-mile drive from Fillmore, Utah to Reno, Nevada was devoid of farming for 410 miles.  The rivers that rise on either side of the Great Basin never find their way to the sea and wind up wasting away in large evaporation ponds like the Great Salt Lake.

 

The region informs the way I think about light, and although I was not aware of it, the long vistas taught me to see instability.  It is a feature of any horizon and key to a sense of depth in painting.  It is nice to return to mending miles of silence strung along by power lines and waves of sage known as The Loneliest Road in America.

 

 

 

Peavine Peak
oil on canvas
5 7/8 x 17 1/2 inches
2009

 

Peavine Peak

 

As remote as it looks, Reno is on the other side of the mountain.  This in fact, is not far from Horizon Hills, a subdivision just down the hillside.  We lived on Pawnee Court, a dead end street, in a maze of streets claiming tribal ancestry.  In a way, that may have been fitting.  The development looked like a reservation.  The houses had an air of being manufactured and the lots were mostly barren.

  

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture.  As neighborhoods go, this was nicer than most.  However, architecture in the state, if there is any, looks haphazard.  If you want more than gaming and houses of prostitution, stick with the sage.  Wind-rustling brush shapes the face of the horizon, and from our place, it was either high or low.

 

By suppertime, the wind was roaring and tin canned processions of tumbleweeds and milk cartons assaulted backyard gardens.  Although there were dogs in the neighborhood, there was no need for them. The wind had a canine sense of design.  Had there been any trees, thrashing branches would have whipped leaves into the sound of many waters.  No one had air conditioning, and the afternoon heat was chased away through open windows that later closed to keep out the night.  Then, in the chill of morning light, the wind was silent.

 

 



Handmade book for Peavine Peak
4 1/4 x 3 x 3/8 inches