A Letter From America
Posted by Rob | Filed under To There & Back Again
Page 1 from the catalogue for To There & Back Again - Catching The Spaces In Between. To order your copy click here.
Austin, Texas, 2008
Dear England,
How are you?
Over the past two years we have spent a total of six months in Middle America. We initially came to do an exhibition in Houston, which led to illustrating a book. Then we were asked to exhibit in Dallas and again in Houston, and along the way we created a book of drawings called “The Texan Compendium”. During this period we’ve taken time to record and get to know a little of the country. We wanted to experience some of its vastness for ourselves and at the end collate a series of images that reflected our thoughts and feelings on the land that’s home to the American Dream.
Texas, the Lone Star State, is around six times the size of England, and we’ve travelled around a fair amount of it. As if reflecting the vast expanse of land, the food portions are huge and the people hugely varied: we’ve eaten mule deer steaks with self-professed rednecks under pecan trees and macrobiotic meals with college professors at shared tables in liberal Austin.
And then there are America’s eccentricities. We’ve met the alcoholic goat mayor of Lajitas, a border town on the Rio Grande; been to the largest church in America (25,000 people attended that Sunday); shot a .357 magnum; watched the sun set on the compound outside Waco where David Koresh and 73 others battled the FBI; and cringed listening to the karaoke at a gay cowboy bar in Houston. We’ve even spotted George Bush Senior a couple of times.
It has been a privilege to spend time here, and the people have always been incredibly hospitable, but like with all countries, certain issues niggled. As you might notice, themes of food and the environment run through the American pieces.
The images here have all been experienced first-hand over the past couple of years on the journey ‘To There & Back Again’; they represent some of the many spaces that have been caught in between.
We hope you enjoy them, and as they say here in Texas…Happy Trails.
Rob Pepper & Aimie Littler
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