Interview with artist Chuck Davis
Chuck Davis is an artist, photojournalist, curator and historian living in Rogers, Arkansas. He studied poetry at the German Academy in Rome, the history of photography in New Mexico, photojournalism at the University of Missouri, and earned an MFA from The Art Institute of Boston. Now a resident of the Ozarks, Chuck’s work explores the history of the Ozarks, its stereotypes and conflicts, and the lands once described as Indian Territory. More of Chucks extraordinary photographs can be found at Fenix Arts in Fayetteville and at his website arkansasmomentos.com. (Profile photo by Detlef Körtge)
AAS: Chuck, I know you are not originally from Arkansas and that you have lived all over the US and in Europe. Where did you grow up and what brought you to Arkansas?
CD: Mom sang opera and dad was a gifted aerospace engineer. They brought me home to a 900 sq ft stick-built home, erected hastily post WWII. Love Me Do was the first record I spun, and as hair was growing into my eyes, I bought pointy black boots. Beatlemania shocked this (then) tiny Texas town called Arlington. Mom stopped singing long enough to put me into art classes.
Trouble on the border between East and West Germany landed us as expats in Europe while Dad built helicopters to patrol the Berlin wall. After the Summer of Love, I moved to Rome to study. I returned to the US with my family on the QE2 just as Nixon’s cronies were bugging the Watergate building in June 1972. Back stateside, I spent time in newsrooms and darkrooms, bouncing between Texas, Missouri, and New Mexico. I graduated from Mizzou, listening to Cliff Edom at the prestigious J-School. As a freshly minted photojournalist, the Fort Worth Star Telegram gave me a job, and I gave myself a Leica, a Nikon, and a police scanner. It was all Weegee and Arbus, with my first exhibit in 1976 at the Allen Street Gallery in Dallas. After a decade eating Tri-X, I moved to New Mexico to study the history of photography.
In these early years, I photographed Ken Kesey on assignment, and he told me to turn on, tune in, and drop out – but I was ready for a family by the mid-1980’s. So, I married, traversed New Mexico to Texas to Arizona, and then lived for 25 years on the North Shore of Chicago, the same area where nanny-photographer Vivian Meyers had done her greatest work. It was from there I moved to Arkansas, looking for a new opportunity after the housing and stock market crash of 2008.
So, I may be from ‘off,’ but as an Arkansan and an Ozarker, I'm instantly at home here. Temporarily leaving the state in 2018, I begin a series of residencies leading to an MFA from The Art Institute of Boston – in its new home at Lesley University. The program was soon rebranded as Lesley Art+Design. As you know, classical art education is struggling to survive.
AAS: What did you study in Rome?
CD: At first I was in the Cinecittà Studios neighborhood, and studied with Manlio Guberti – a painter who had recently returned from a US sabbatical. While abroad, Kathryn Hepburn and Spencer Tracy met and sponsored him to a wide circle of moviemakers. He sold a lot of paintings in elevated circles, two of which I recently bought from the estate of a CBS music director. Manlio started teaching me to use oils and egg tempera, but to a gritty canvas coated with sand. I sculpted clay and acid etched copper plates for intaglio printing. Staying in his home, I crushed grapes between my toes and of course fell in love with Italy.
The second year in Rome I composed music with Fulbright scholar James Dashow, an early adopter of the Moog Synthesizer. I also trained (rather poorly) on classical guitar. Some of my best moments were at Villa Massimo, where I read poetry with Karl Alfred Wolken. His wife Elisabeth was the director of the German Academy in Rome, where they were both in residency.
But I was distracted from studying. After the making of the movie Cleopatra, Rome was an extremely wild place to live. My careening friends were many, including Johnny Pepper, who had played Caesarian on the movie set of Cleopatra. Today, John enjoys broader acclaim as a photographer than his internationally famous mother, Beverly Pepper, the sculptor. And smokey afternoons were spent with artist John Paul Getty III, who was abducted for ransom. His ear was severed as a proof of life, but a mail strike kept it circulating for weeks before reaching his mega-wealthy grandfather. All the money in the world didn’t change the tragic events that foretold his incapacitation. He died just after I arrived in Arkansas in 2010.
“My early photojournalism years were like swimming with a flood of mainstream assignments and commissions – but the margins called me most.”
AAS: Tell me about your early years working as a photojournalist. Do you think those experiences helped to shape the kinds of photographs you are taking now?
CD: My early photojournalism years were like swimming with a flood of mainstream assignments and commissions – but the margins called me most. Under the stage at the Faces Club in Dallas, I steadied Tom Waits so he could be photographed. Oh yes, and I went up in smoke with Cheech and Chong in the dressing room at the McFarlin Auditorium. Another weird editorial was to photograph Rosco VanZandt, a disbarred gynecologist who became a psychic healer. He put a spell on me that day and I almost wrecked my car leaving his clinic. I wish I could make this up, but somehow it’s all oddly true.
Assignments during this period ranged from D(allas) Magazine, Texas Monthly, Christian Science Monitor, and American Way, the now folded in-flight magazine for American Airlines. While at a News Bureau in Denton with legendary Texas newsman, Keith Shelton, I was published in a bunch of national newspapers and magazines. And not to be forgotten, one scary motorcycle ride ending up with a few pages in Easyrider. On two wheels for nearly forty years, I also had a few spreads in the magazine Cycle World, thanks to editor David Edwards.
A tipping point as a photojournalist came when Little People of America granted me permission to document its national convention in Dallas. Walking the hotel hallways, their passing jokes were about tall, dumb people – and I was the tallest in the room that week in 1978. Such clever, kind people made me feel like an insider and I’m forever grateful. More defining photos were made when Pageantry Kings Richard Guy and Rex Holt or “GuyRex” gave me unprecedented access to the Miss Texas Pageant for about four years in a row. People living their best and worst lives fuel my photography.
Religion is like a ‘consuming fire’ (Isaiah 30:27) and visual language for me. It's largely because of my grandfather, Roy Cogdill, an evangelist who pulled pennies to the pulpit with his baritone voice. We crossed the country on revival one summer, and wished I held a camera back then. Later I traveled to photograph the revivals of Billy Graham, and the demonized phenom James Robison. And for the opposing team, I made editorial images of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an equally fiery orator and atheist. Was she the most hated woman in America? I don’t know – but if alive today, I wouldn’t have dinner with her.
Roland Barthes talks about punctum in photographs. It's the uncontrollable connection an image can have on its viewer. Viewing past vignettes within current work here in Arkansas, its shape is recognizable in images I made in 2015 at Souls Harbor on the east side of Rogers, Arkansas and in much of the work I was doing in 2017 and 2018 within the Nexus of Northwest Arkansas. Especially so in the image of minister Kathleen (‘Katarina’) Bailey. “God is sending a warning, and you had better listen…,” she told me. In May of last year, Katarina rose to her promised land just days before a tornado struck her house. I’m still pondering the prophecy and punctum left behind in this image of her.
Katarina Bailey, 2017
AAS: You’ve taken some wonderful portraits; I assume for publicity purposes. One of my favorites is of Loy Biddy. Who is Loy Biddy and who decided on that pose!
Loy Biddy - Interior Designer, 1976, gelatin silver print
CD: Loy Biddy wore the stoic charm of Buster Keaton and the face of Vincent Price, plying his peacocky pomp from Paducah, Texas to New York City. Taking residence in the Waldorf Astoria, he befriended many important clients and lovers. Upon his return to Texas to care for a family member, one day the Star Telegram Feature Editor assigned me to illustrate an interior design he created. From our first introduction, I was mesmerized by his pencil thin moustache and Hollywood wardrobe. Each time I brought proofs for review, he posed for more portraits, and so on until I had made hundreds of images of him. Loy was in my first exhibit almost fifty years ago, and he was again on the walls last month at Fenix Arts in Love Wins, curated by Laurie Foster. How he survived intolerance, and lived so genuinely out, I’ll never comprehend. In our current climate, his courage may nourish many. I’m looking for new storytelling opportunities where his lifestyle may inspire, mend, and heal.
AAS: It must have been fascinating to study with Beaumont Newhall. How did that association come about?
CD: Mentorship is both tutelage and tonic for an artist – at any stage of maturity. During the last two years I’ve spent many days with Ansel’s assistant, Alan Ross, in his darkroom and on the road. We are travelling again together later this Summer. Jim Dow and Patti Carrol are both collected by MOMA, and each gave months of feedback to work I’ve created in Arkansas, as has one of the most famous photojournalists of our time, Susan Meislas. While in New Mexico I was in Beaumont Newhall’s office and classroom every week for two years, and with him I spoke to Ansel on his 80th birthday, met Charis Wilson, and made a studio visit with master printer Eliot Porter. There were so many great historians and photographers at the University of New Mexico including close friend Amy Conger, who recently died. Joel Peter Witkin was a classmate, and made the Kiss while I was there. What an uproar!
AAS: When did you start, and why, your Arkansas Momentos series?
Al Capp - Li'l Abner Daily Comic Strip, Sadie Hawkins Day, original art, dated 11-1-57
CD: The stigma of Ozarkers as a slow, social stereotype perplexes me, because it's all made up by colonialists, cartoonists, and entertainers looking for a quick buck on the back of our soul. While in MFA residency, I was staying in Al Capp’s home. On a return trip I hatched a plan to return the stigma of the Ozarks to him. At Capp’s failed amusement park in Marble Falls, the owners of Dogpatch USA allowed me to photograph the decaying grounds. Satirical images called Arkansas Momentos – mail art on 16x20 DiBond – were then sent to his home. Heck, I was surprised these jumbo postcards actually made it through the US Postal system, but all ten survived to be exhibited at the Lunder Art Center in Cambridge MA and at Photo Spiva in Joplin with honorable mention. My 2019 master’s thesis is on reversing Ozark othering, and I spoke at the Ozarks Symposium on this topic in 2022. Just to be clear, Al Capp’s L’il Abner cartoon did more to propagate Ozarks stigma than any other single act, but if you're looking for more recent examples – just stream Netflix’s series Ozarks.
AAS: Some of your most recent work is on the history of the Ozarks and Native American tribes that lived in the area. One of your photographs is of Woodrow Proctor. Who is Woodrow Proctor?
Woodrow Proctor - Keetoowah Elder, 2021, platinum print
CD: In 2022, the Fort Smith Regional Art Museum (RAM) awarded me a solo exhibition, and in an adjacent gallery was the work of Eva Rubinstein, daughter of pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Together we were interviewed by Kyle Kellams on Ozarks at Large. My exhibit was sponsored not just by the museum, but also by the Arkansas Humanities Council, and some museum donors. The Oklahoma Historical Society and the US Marshals Museum participated with me in a series of lectures. The portrait of Woodrow Proctor may be the strongest image from this exhibit. He was on tribal council with Wilma Mankiller when the decision to expand casinos was made. Lives of Cherokees forever changed, for the better.
AAS: How was your photogravure, Choctaw Capital, made? Is it a composite image?
Choctaw Capital, 2021, photogravure
CD: Philip, the Japanese concepts of kintsugi and wabi-sabi are alive in this photogravure, Choctaw Capital. The authenticity of making mistakes and repairing failed attempts appeals to me, as I’m constantly trying new films, new developers, new cameras – and you guessed it – this image comes from an in camera double exposure. Overlapping imagery helps speak to the soil that Choctaw have fought over and struggle to maintain. The image is one of forty photographs within the RAM’s solo show in 2022. There were tintypes, large format film images, and some digital work in the exhibit which ran from February to June in the newly renovated Marta Jones Gallery on the second level of the museum.
AAS: Your Ozark Giraffe series is a terrific celebration of the uniqueness and maybe quirkiness of the Ozarks. Tell me about that series and 421 W Persimmon Street.
421 W Persimmon Street, Rogers, AR, 2023, pigment print
CD: I thought it was a goofy idea: help reverse the stigma of Ozarkers by celebrating its vernacular structures. But I got great feedback at the Ozark Symposium, and so I started travelling, photographing, and talking to current Giraffe House owners. A Preserve Arkansas board member and another architectural historian helped guide interpretation, and I tracked down the originators of the term Ozark Giraffe. In 2023 I received an Art+Everywhere grant and was invited to MASS MOCA to exhibit and speak on this ongoing project. Thankfully also, Mount Sequoyah’s Creative Spaces has just awarded me an exhibition for later this year, where I’ll be showing some giraffe structures around East Mountain and elsewhere.
421 W Persimmon Street, Rogers AR is a classical wide, white painted mortar style giraffe – that was once a church-owned rectory. This pinhole image is double exposed, giving it a cubist construction. The photograph has been exhibited in Missouri and Massachusetts, and was given honorable mention by Disparate Projects, curators for Float Magazine. Disparate Projects is also helping me produce a giraffe zine this month.
AAS: Tell me about your work as a curator.
CD: My education as a curator and art historian was underutilized upon arriving in Arkansas, just as I was also surprised that the photography vibe here seemed somewhat under-recognized – at least by comparison to my previous experience in Chicago. The Art Center of the Ozarks (now The Medium) gave me two months to curate and exhibit during the summer of 2018. Nearly eighty images by eighteen photographers were displayed, with local and national views on our Natural State. I also introduced Patti Carroll’s Anonymous Women series to Hendrix College in the following year, and in 2022, Adam Finkelstein and I mounted The Hand at Fenix Art, an exhibit of printmaking and hand-made photographs. Artists from five countries and fifteen states were in the show.
AAS: Chuck, looking back over your career, what are some of the highlights that are most meaningful to you?
CD: So many mentors and friends have encouraged me creatively. Dorothy Estes at the University of Texas gave me my first creative job, and a lot might have been different without her. In the early days, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hart was always watching out for me – closed doors started to open whenever I needed help. Meaningful gratitude surrounds my longtime friends who’ve overlooked my failures, yet still show up with praise and the gift of their time. It's difficult being an artist of any kind. Thank you so much, Philip. I don't know what else to say.
