November 4 - December 30
Opening Reception: November 11 from 6 to 8 pm.
Bruce Lee Webb is an avid collector of antiques, old books, fair ground oddities and banners, fraternal lodge regalia, and artwork made by outsider or self-taught artists. He paints upon materials containing a history that inspire his mark making: old postal bags and flour sacks, scrap metal and found objects, rags and slips of paper. With a firm belief in the energy contained within objects and used materials, Bruce embraces an intuitive image-making. “My stain on the canvas or printed and glued layers of paper inspire me to bring forth forms that need liberating. I believe my art is a kind of library where information is stored waiting for the viewer to interpret on their own terms.”
Thoughts Are Things is an exhibition of paintings and prints by Bruce Lee Webb, featuring works on paper and found objects, as well as the Texas Road Hog intaglio prints co-published with Flatbed earlier this year. Texas Road Hog depicts a phrenological map of the state of Texas, printed upon a photo etching background of pages from a 1912 pharmacy ledger.
Bruce Lee Webb’s grandparents were missionaries in remote hill stations in the mountains of Kerala, South India during the 1930’s and 40’s, where his mother was born. The esoteric books and folk art from the Sub-Continent he grew up with have had a pervasive influence on Webb’s artwork. Bruce Lee was absorbed by skateboarding and punk rock culture in Dallas in the early 1980’s and met his wife Julie, who collaborated on a cut and paste fanzine called Bad Karma wherein Bruce included drawings and layout design. Bruce Lee inherited his grandparents’ antiquarian book collection and has added to the collection of printed matter with folk art, railroad hobo lore, train car graffiti, the study of the occult, and fraternal history. The Webb’s moved to Waxahachie in 1987 and began to buy and sell antiques and folk art from their shop “Beyond Time Antiques.” By 1991 Webb Gallery was open, providing the Webbs an unbounded opportunity to explore and share art and unusual antiques. Throughout their travels the Webbs began to visit Southern folk and visionary artists Johnnie Swearingen, Royal Robertson, James Son Thomas, and others. The artists Bruce Lee has encountered along the way have had a profound influence on his own oeuvre. Along with co-author Lynne Adele, Bruce recently completed a book published by University of Texas Press, As Above So Below - Art of the Fraternal Lodge, 2015.
Image: Texas Road Hog (Patches), Aquatint with polymer gravure and relief, 31 x 23 inches, 2017.
Read more about the Texas Road Hog project, and see the four color variations, here.
See work from the exhibition "Thoughts Are Things" here.