Heading for Home, Wakarusa Flats, Kansas, March 4, 1994

Jon Blumb, artist

born 1956

Heading for Home, Wakarusa Flats, Kansas, March 4, 1994, 1994

Portfolio/Series title: William S. Burroughs in Prints: A Portfolio of Original Photographs 1990-1997

Where object was made: Lawrence, Kansas, United States

Material/technique: gelatin silver print

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 45.6 x 35.4 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 17 15/16 x 13 15/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 50.6 x 40.4 cm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 15/16 x 15 7/8 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 25 x 20 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Helen Foresman Spencer Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2005.0094.15

Not on display

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Label texts

William S. Burroughs, the subject of Jon Blumb’s photographic portrayal of the nomadic writer and Beat Generation icon, has several remarkable and unexpected connections to Ann Hamilton and the presepio figures that appear in her Figura prints. All three-Burroughs, Hamilton, presepio figures- share a surprising and interconnected history that seems poetically well-suited to Hamilton’s site-responsive creative process.

The lone, aging figure of Burroughs, cast by Blumb in a luminous play of light and dark contrasts, expresses both fortitude and fragility as he moves through the Kansas landscape. Framed in a similar way as Burroughs, the Spencer’s presepio figures, as reconceived in Hamilton’s hauntingly beautiful prints, too reveal and conceal the weight of time and age. Like the itinerant Burroughs, who seemingly out of context came to Lawrence, so too did these eighteenth-century Italian dolls, only to have Hamilton inscribe on them their unique history of place, time, and travel.

Not only did Burroughs and the presepio figures find an adopted home in Lawrence. Ann Hamilton did as well, albeit temporarily, studying at the University of Kansas for a BFA in textile design and graduating in 1979, just two years prior to Burroughs’ arrival in Lawrence.

Samantha Lyons, History of Art graduate student