webbed.

based on an emphatic recommendation by russell, we made our way out of austin today and straight to a specially arranged gallery visit to the webb gallery in waxahachie, texas. even at off-hours, we were lucky enough to get to meet both owners, bruce and julie webb. the place is beyond amazing, and so are the webbs. passionate about what they do, kind, generous with their time and knowledge and, as it relates to the gallery, each of them has a killer eye for the obscure and the heartfelt.

housed in a spacious old building in the centre of waxahachie, the gallery is such a feast for the eyes and senses, that it is hard to even begin to capture a visit in pictures.

the main exhibition at the moment is a grand-scale collection of sculptural works by camp bosworth entitled 'plata o plomo'. in exploration of the mexican drug trade, it features relief portraits of drug lords, massive hand-carved wooden guns that fold out into bars and the biggest piece of bling i have ever seen (bling not being a word i use often or lightly). it is a brilliant show, dazzling and scary, that is installed perfectly into the spacious gallery.

in their smaller loft space upstairs is another show by another texas artists, esther pearl watson. i have been aware of miss watson for a long while now from the zine scene. in fact, some of her zines must be some of the earliest added to my collection. but i have never had the privilege of seeing her paintings in person. i found this collection - an autobiographical series based her childhood home and family happenings from her formative years - incredibly touching. for me, it fell somewhere between fine art, self-revelation, sequential art and snapshot. you know those moments when you feel incredibly broke because artwork is so reasonably priced yet you are so outpriced? yup. i felt really compelled by these works.

and all of this not even to mention the webb's extensive collection of circus ephemera, secret society regalia and general wonderfulness. suffice it to say, if you are in the area, you should seriously make a visit. especially you, faythe.

more pictures here.

leaving austin.

it has come time, we need to move on from this lovely city. above are a few last snaps (mostly of lettering and signage) from our last day here. in the mix, you may spy parts & labour, austin's preeminent, all-texas-all-the-time indie boutique. they have recently opened an adjoining poster shop, too - shark attack. i definitely recommend a visit.

under the bridge.

and to cap our incredible day off, i finally got to see the famous austin bats stream out from under the congress street bridge. my attempts to take pictures of the bats we crazy, but i did get this picture of bat gawkers. thank you, austin!

junk rock.

as if our austin adventure day was not filled enough already, we ended our daylight hours with a trip to the cathedral of junk. thank you for the tip, scott! akin to structures like the watts towers, the cathedral's construction is amazing - totally teetering and solid all at once. and massive. so massive. i am always completely in awe of this sort of self-figured engineering.

dust in the wind.

i have been hearing tales of the museum of natural and artificial ephemerata since the last time we passed through austin. on that tour, i abandoned aitor in bat city for a week while i flew up to edmonton to shoot a movie. he got to explore everything while i jumped from oil town to oil town. his excitement over the museum was palpable - he even wanted to turn our apartment into a rotating display as a result. although we never fully acheived this dream (well, not yet, anyway), i have felt a great desire to visit this inspiration point ever since.

the museum, run out of the front room of co-curators scott and jen's home, is usually open only on saturdays but we were lucky enough to schedule a special appointment today. partly inherited from a mysterious great uncle of scott's, the 'impermanent collection' is a deceivingly small assortment of sub-categorized (aura, trace, natural, artificial, abject) cultural relics - elvis' hair, marilyn munro's cigarette butts, a yeti toy, glass from new york's doomed crystal palace, a bottle of sleep, incubator air, a flamingo head, snow globes, hair wreaths. although this collection is quite dense and dazzling enough, scott and jen also program a themed show or two a year with pieces from their own collection and relics on loan from kindred locals. they just wrapped up what looked to be a great show about the underground and caves. it was extra funny to see the cave room complete with fabric stalactites making its transition into their growing son's room.

the packed collection made my head spin with thoughts of other projects and general notions about objects, story, value and collecting. many of these themes have been ongoing in my life and i very much enjoyed being immersed in an environment dedicated entirely to the exploration of collecting. i was reminded of works by collectors and arrangers like barton lidice bennes, william davies king and even some friends like faythe and leah. as a side note, one of my most haunting regrets of last year's tour was becoming too run down and harried in california to collect on mr. king's invitation to visit his nothing collection. hopefully, i will find my way to rectifying that situation this year. but, i digress...

even with such a relatively small collection, i can't wait to revisit the museum should we ever find ourselves back through austin. even looking at these pictures i see objects whose stories i did not hear. we did go home with a bit of ephemera of our own - a couple of publications from the museum's past shows and impermanent collection. these books are as slim and dense as the museum itself and i hope they serve to fill me with thoughts and stories that will tide me over until we find ourselves deep in texas once again.

plains and simple.

after making things and trying desperately to catch up on ethereal concerns, today's outings began with a visit to a much-recommended shop, spartan. housed on the ground floor of what looks to be a new condominium development, spartan shares its space (and one dividing wall) with bows and arrows, a harmonizing sister shop that tends more towards apparel. both stores sell housewares although spartan leans more towards gifts and paper. they occupy a space of cool southwestern design that snowy tourists like myself are easily taken by. there is really not much to say. both shops are so thoughtfully stocked and arranged that i may as well just let my pictures speak for themselves (click on any image to find out which shop it came from).

batting average.

we tried to see bats tonight and failed. i think we were too late. a free night dip in barton springs provided more than cold comfort, though. it has been under a week and we have already busted out the bathing suits twice. tour thus far = success.