I forced myself out tonight for a productive meeting after recreational plans fell through and ran into someone I'd not seen in decades. Whole chunks of grey matter quivered and asked for fresh plasma to shake off sleep so they could compare notes.Hours later, I'm remembering things related and others I've meant to attend, but re-forgotten lately. These images are some from my student archives of '75; a summer of living in my studio, a former dorm in an ancient on loan to the Art Department and overrun by art students. Much like a dorm, but worse.
As I was prone to do, I floated on the fringe of groups including this cluster of aspiring painters who more successfully enjoyed Bob Wills and Coors which, at the time, had be imported from Dallas and I managed to facilitate on return from visits to a young woman of no uncertain interest, whom I'm sure would insist on remaining nameless (initials JL)—there was some partying. The "Sundown West" and 3.2 beer were still a new thing in Ruston. I still had three quarters to go until I'd have to formulate a realistic plan for survival supported by my still evolving photographic skills. I had no idea what I was in for, poor kid/lucky fool.
I abandoned Ruston a year later, failing to come up with sufficient interest in going for a Master's and hoping the world of Fine Photography would soon discover my talents and demand that I allow publishers to produce expensive books of my photographs while I traveled from museum to museum in the company of successions of admiring young women. Oddly, all these many years later, I've begun to doubt that it might ever happen or if I would even find it that satisfying anymore. I still feel a certain obligation to at least indulge it for a while should the opportunity present itself.
I abandoned Ruston a year later, failing to come up with sufficient interest in going for a Master's and hoping the world of Fine Photography would soon discover my talents and demand that I allow publishers to produce expensive books of my photographs while I traveled from museum to museum in the company of successions of admiring young women. Oddly, all these many years later, I've begun to doubt that it might ever happen or if I would even find it that satisfying anymore. I still feel a certain obligation to at least indulge it for a while should the opportunity present itself.
My co-scholars, depicted here, have also moved on to careers unknown. I'm guessing most might have taught or somehow found some use of their degrees, if they even got them, but I can also imagine that they might have eventually relented to family requests to join a family business or divert their effort toward something totally unrelated to their studies.
I'm sure that most likely, their social skills remained as finely tuned as they were during this summer when there was one night in particular when I drove in from Dallas again with a couple of cases of canned Coors to ice down. And we drank as we stomped our feet on the dusty wooden floor of an old house and sang along while Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys played "San Antonio Rose" far into the night and the next morning.
I'm sure that most likely, their social skills remained as finely tuned as they were during this summer when there was one night in particular when I drove in from Dallas again with a couple of cases of canned Coors to ice down. And we drank as we stomped our feet on the dusty wooden floor of an old house and sang along while Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys played "San Antonio Rose" far into the night and the next morning.
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| Artist Dub Brock with the upright piano painted with a scene of Aretha Franklin floating down the Nile in a '60-something Chrysler Imperial |
