Alkek Library News

Revealing Character: Texas Tintypes by Robb Kendrick

OVER 120 IMAGES ON VIEW FEBRUARY 25 – JULY 31, 2011
RECEPTION & PROGRAM WITH THE ARTIST, SATURDAY, APRIL 9 at 7:00 PM

The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos present Revealing Character: Texas Tintypes by Robb Kendrick on view from February 25 through July 31, 2011. Kendrick, a frequent contributor to National Geographic, is a sixth-generation Texan who has been making tintypes for the past decade. He will be the guest speaker at the 7:00 p.m. exhibition reception and program on Saturday, April 9. A book signing with Kendrick will follow the program; a limited number of his books will be for sale by the University Bookstore.

Attendees to the April 9 reception and program are asked to RSVP to thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu.

Admission to both the exhibition and program is free and open to the public. The Wittliff Collections are located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library at Texas State in San Marcos. Hours and directions are at: http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/about/visit.html.

In 2004, Frost Bank commissioned Kendrick to travel across thousands of miles of Texas, visiting more than 30 ranches to photograph cowboys and cowgirls as Tom Frost said, “to document the character of the land as seen in the faces of its truest men and women, those we call cowboys.” Frost Bank featured the images in a marketing campaign then turned the project into an exhibition that traveled across Texas for more than three years. At the end of the tour, Frost donated all 32 tintypes and 12 archival lightjet prints from the exhibition to the Wittliff Collections, completing the Wittliff’s archive of the photographs Kendrick published in his Revealing Character monograph by Bright Sky Press in 2005.

Kendrick’s commitment to this project stems from his belief in the historical and cultural importance of working ranch hands in their many manifestations—vaqueros, buckaroos, cowpunchers, cowgirls and cowboys—and that “they will proudly and determinedly endure.” He’s published two books of these tintypes, Revealing Character and Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century (UT Press, 2008).

Over 120 of Kendrick’s images from the Wittliff Collections’ permanent holdings will be on display in the exhibition, including some of his more recent works. Photographs on loan from the artist’s personal collection are also on view: the first tintype Kendrick made 10 years ago (enclosed in a union case he made from scratch); images from Still: Cowboys at the Start of the 21st Century, and pictures from his Changelings mummy series (Cloverleaf Press) photographed in Guanajuato, Mexico. Additionally for this exhibition, Kendrick has lent his boxed set of tintypes of the Tarahumara people mounted with magnets on letterpress boards, titled Rarámuri: Thirteen Ferrotypes.

Invented in the mid 1800s, tintypes are made directly on a thin iron plate that has been coated with chemicals, exposed in a camera while still wet, and developed on the spot. Kendrick is one of only a few photographers in the U.S. making tintypes, using this historic wet-plate method. Each tintype he produces is one of a kind, handmade from start to finish.

Small Deaths Redux

Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection / The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos

Small Deaths features over thirty extraordinary, hand-colored, oversized images of the birds, flowers, lizards, and insects that photographer Kate Breakey has memorialized through her work. The brilliance of her palette draws viewers to a close-up and unexpected confrontation with mortality.

Read more about the exhibit that begins May 23, 2008 and will run through July 20, 2008. Visit the exhibit on the 7th floor of Alkek Library at the Southwestern and Mexican Photography Collection, Wittliff Gallery.

Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection / The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos

Texas Music at the Library: Reading & Live Music (Tuesday, April 22)

TUESDAY, APRIL 22  The History of Texas Music by Gary Hartman 3:30 – 5:00 pm

The Southwestern Writers Collection presents Texas State professor Gary Hartman discussing The History of Texas Music, with a book signing to follow. The event also celebrates The John and Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, which is co-sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History and Texas A&M University Press.

Don’t miss live music by the popular band Ponty Bone and the Squeezetones! Admission is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Books will be for sale courtesy of the University Bookstore.

Southwestern Writers Collection
The Wittliff Collections
Alkek Library, Seventh Floor
Texas State University-San Marcos
http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/
(512) 245-2313

About The History of Texas Music

Texans aren’t the only ones passionate about the music of their home state. In fact, Texas music is popular throughout the world. Despite this, many fans don’t fully understand the history behind Texas music, or why the Lone Star State has such a rich and colorful musical heritage.

Looking to change that, Gary Hartman, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State, has just released a new book, The History of Texas Music, which explores in detail the many social, cultural, and historical factors that have helped define the music of the American Southwest. A musician himself, Hartman draws on both academic and non-academic sources to give a more complete understanding of the state's remarkable musical heritage. He looks at influential musical figures who have come from the region, and the list is long and impressive: Scott Joplin, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly, Sippie Wallace, Lightnin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Dale Evans, Tex Ritter, Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Barbara Mandrell, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, George Strait, the Dixie Chicks, Van Cliburn, Charlie Christian, Ornette Coleman, Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jiménez, Selena Quintanilla, Emilio Navaira, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Janis Joplin, ZZ Top, Stephen Stills, and Don Henley.

The History of Texas Music incorporates a selection of well-chosen photographs of many of these prominent and lesser-known artists, and describes not only the ethnic origins of much of Texas music but also the cross-pollination among various genres that have mixed and mingled throughout the state, creating vibrant new hybrids that have reshaped the American musical landscape. Today, the music of Texas—which includes Native American music, gospel, blues, ragtime, swing, jazz, rhythm and blues, conjunto, Tejano, cajun, zydeco, western swing, honky tonk, polkas, schottisches, rock & roll, rap, hip hop, and more—reflects the unique cultural dynamics of the Southwest.

More from TAMU Press:
http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2008/hartman.htm

Labels: live music, southwestern writers

Library Collections Unite Under New Name: the Wittliff Collections

The Southwestern Writers Collection and Wittliff Gallery are now The Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library.

When the Southwestern Writers Collection was founded at the university library in 1986, its collecting activities focused on the literature, film, and music of the region.  It was only several years later that the collection of photographs of the Southwest and Mexico began to form, and in 1996 the Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern & Mexican Photography was formally christened.

Each collection, although operating as one organization within Texas State, continued to function separately for the most part in terms of archival activities, exhibitions, and public programming. However, it became increasingly complicated to explain how each repository was separate, but not separate.

In an effort to convey the composite nature of the collections, unite them under a common name, and acknowledge the great and generous contributions of the founding donors, the two counterparts will now be known officially as:

The Wittliff Collections

Where necessary, the terms “Southwestern Writers Collection” and “Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection” will be used to refer to the components of The Wittliff Collections.

Bookmark the new website address: www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu  which can be accessed for exhibits and events info, author and artist inventories, and much more.

We are in the process of changing all pertinent materials and documents.
At this time, all location codes in the library catalog will remain as they are.

THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS offer a dynamic archival, exhibition, programming, and research environment designed to further the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts, and foster “the spirit of place” in the wider world.

The Southwestern Writers Collection preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove.

The Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection includes the major holdings of such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States.

Connie Todd, Curator
The Wittliff Collections, Alkek Library, 7th floor