When
there's flowers
in the house — a few held back from a gift or after a party,
I treasure the opportunity to obsess over their long, slow
(or short, fast if they're tulips) demise. It's what flowers
do. This one smelled amazing while it was fresh. Still has
a lingering aroma (December 14), but it's arms are down now,
and the ghost has been given up. Only a
few more days to go, which will be documented here. We can
watch it go.
All but one of these images were made
on my messy desk, sometimes
with daylight coming in the windows, often with fluorescents
and most recently with the big tungsten bulbs Tom sold me
— with whatever's in the background. Only the Elephant
Tulip was
photographed in my studio. The smooth white, gray, blue or
yellow is a mat board, and the lumpy white is a paper towel,
although lately I'm preferring more random backgrounds.
The latest images are on top
vitae
I publish DallasArtsRevue, which
I've been making in this medium all this century and before
that on paper since December 1979.
I've been a photographer
since 1963, had photographs
published in Life,
Jet, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, Dallas Observer and a bunch of
other rags and have been in more than 90
exhibitions, a couple museums and even had a photograph
of Mel Farner in a floppy black hat and polka-dotted
shirt sandwiched between two other photos collaged
on the
cover of Grand Funk, Grand Funk Railroad's best-looking
LP cover.
In the 1970s, I published
underground newspapers, including Dallas NOTES from the Underground and HOOKA (I
was Editor and Publisher of both of those as I am
of this now), Instant Karma Komix and later worked at
Fort Worth's Trinity
River Messenger, The Austin Rag, The
Austin Sun and
San Antonio's River
City News.
In 1974 I published a newsprint magazine
called armadilla about
nine-banded armadillos (which publication begat,
five years later, DallasArtsRevue). I also photographed for, designed,
then co-published Texas
Jazz.
My work
generally has to do with creating and maintaining a sense
of community.
Since graduating from
the University of Dallas, I've spent most of my life
in Dallas, Texas, USA. I know where things are, and I can
usually find my way there — and
back.
D-Magazine, who claimed (correctly)
that I've been been publishing stories about art
longer than anybody else in Dallas, called
me "Dallas'
best local arts promoter."
To support my media
habits I've done a variety of jobs:
- Night Watchman at a Massage Parlor,
- Yellow Cab Driver
- Worker Bee at Mary B's Barbeque
- Secret Film Courier in Viet Nam
- Instructor of Desktop Publishing
- Macintosh Computer Tutor
- Webmaker
for artists and galleries
- Photographer of work that is art and
- Photographer of other artists'
work.
Sample photographs are
all over this and my
personal site, JRCompton.com
I have also been on several boards of directors, which
is why I do not have one of those and do not wish to have
one, and this website will stop when I do.
I have been:
- Editor/Producer for the Artists Coalition
of Texas. I'd already self-published some issues,
but they contracted with me to publish more. Later,
they insisted I change the name
to Texas Arts Revue. Then they broke our contract
by ordering me not to publish stories about other
art forms, so I took it back. After Mary Washoviak
Ward proposed they become a center for art in Dallas,
ACT became D-ART, D'art, Dallas Visual Art
Center, The Dallas Center for Contemporary Art and
The Contemporary.
- The P R Guy and Founding
Board Member of Dallas Artists Research & Exhibition
(DARE, which became The MAC, kinda, a little, maybe,
but usually not much, although they think it did. They're wrong.)
- I was
also on the board of the trailing edge of Allen Street
Gallery, which disappeared off the face of the earth
shortly after they fired me. Nyaaah-nyaah!
I was
their Program Committee Chairperson, and they did
not find anyone else to do that job, so their benefactor
took
"their" building away when they stopped planning
exhibitions. Those idiots fired me because
I warned them about nepotism, a lot of which was
going on at the time. It got worse.
- Before that, I was a board-member of Electronic
Graphic Artists of Dallas (EGAD!), a Macintosh Users
Group, for which I had previously been the Disk
of the Month (DOM) Guy — a
much more interesting, important and fun job — distributing fonts,
utilities and other programs on floppy disks I either
gave away or sold for one dollar.
Now I know better than to get involved with any boards of directors.
DallasArtsRevue is not a nonprofit organization primarily
so I won't have to kowtow to a bunch of idiots telling me
what to do. As it is and shall be, I do what I want when
I want. Mostly, although I often ask for advice.
JRCompton.com has
many more photographs — and ideas, including some you
might not expect from whom you may think I am. There's
my words about
philosophy, psychiatry and romance — as if I knew anything
about any of those. My
resume, list
of exhibitions and exhibitions
produced and lots else, too.
That's also where you'll
find my Amateur
Birder's Journal usually about White Rock
Lake — I been
writing about and photographing birds in that blog since
June 2006.
See also How
to Photograph Art, Cameras
& Lenses Useful for Photographing Art, my s90
Journal, ThEdBlog, How
to Start Showing Your Art and How
to Design
& Produce An Invitational Postcard on this and my personal websites..
