LINE UP: Pattern Type Taxonomy presents portrait photography by seven artists working in the United States. The exhibit was co‐curated by Peter S Briggs, Helen DeVitt Jones Curator of Art, Museum of Texas Tech, and Joe Arredondo, Director of Landmark Arts.
From the moment I was invited to participate in this exhibit I was excited to have another show in Texas. I’m very happy to be showing with such a talented group of artists whose work I admire. Other than myself, the artists represented are Keily Anderson‐Staley (Houston, TX), Evan Baden (Chicago, IL), Daniel W. Coburn (Manhattan, KS), Warren Harold (Houston, TX), Dona Schwartz (Minneapolis, MN), and Sarah Wilson (Austin, TX).
LINE UP provides a stew of contemporary photographic images that point to the artists’ typological or taxonomic practices while promoting opportunity for viewers to develop their own personal responses. This exhibition has been organized in concert with the 46th Annual Comparative Literature Symposium, Representing Reality in Text and Image: Clichés, Stereotypes, and Caricatures.
The experience of compiling this collection has been somewhat different for me in that the subject matter and the elements within the imagery that the curators were looking for were very specific. Ultimately their needs would dictate the work that I would show. Exhibitions are the one place where you can unapologetically get your “control freak” on but it was nice to surrender that impulse and exercise trust in a team of very visually literate professionals. The result is a collection of 18 portraits from my archives that I would have never combined as a single narrative but one that speaks perfectly to the purposes of this installation.
As is evidenced by these images, the edit was narrowed down considerably by one of the criteria being that each of my portraits needed to include a guitar. Due to the title and nature of the show, I hid the same cryptic message somewhere in each photo (as is sometimes my habit). I seriously doubt that it will be noticed by even the most astute observer and only those who know me well will understand its’ relevance.