Wednesday's postcard, and how to find the austere beauty of the scablands, on Main Avenue, starting Friday

November 29, 2023

“Beyond Cellular Service,” blooming balsamroot in the easternmost braid of the Channeled Scablands in remote Whitman County. Part of the Beautiful Wounds portfolio

Thanks to my friend Ira Amstadter you can find me Friday evening at his venue, Express Employment Professionals, 331 W. Main Ave. It’s kitty-corner to Auntie’s Bookstore and across Main from the Davenport Grand Hotel.

I’ll be there for a “First Friday” event and I did notice, in my media feed yesterday, how many other fine artists are setting up across town. But, rest assured, there’s time to go see them, and stop by to visit me and my big photographs as well. I’ll be hanging out with Ira and the images from 5 to 8 p.m. Look for the electronic reader board on the south side of Main Ave., just east of Auntie’s bookstore.

The photography is from the Beautiful Wounds photo collection that led into my 2022 book of the same name. Beautiful Wounds the book is a personal homage to the gnarly open spaces of Washington’s channeled scablands—a sprawling web of dramatic geology, a rich scientific history, and, at least in my shoes, a great place to get lost when you’re heartbroken. That’s where the story in the book begins. Honestly, I used to experience a wistful loneliness there, when I started, but by the time I got around to writing, I felt at home in ways that are hard to describe in a few words. But the book is a good whack at that transformation, both in prose and pictures. You can visit it at Auntie’s and down the way, also on Main Ave., at Kizuri.

New Year’s Day, a lone poplar on a hillside where the Palouse meets the Scablands near Rock Lake

The photos are priced to sell and, as with New Year’s Day (above), would (I suggest) make fine Christmas gifts. The larger photos fill the main wall at Ira’s place, but there are smaller images on two of the smaller walls on the west side of the main floor.

I hope you can make it. It would be good to see old friends and make new ones Friday evening. The exhibit/sale will be up for the rest of year. It’s actually in place, today, as I installed it yesterday over the course of four hours.

Funny, I was really tired when I was finishing up mounting the large prints (you can see why once you walk in) and—in positioning my next to last photo on the wall of the break room—I accidentally and literally flipped over the resident bumper pool table. It resulted in a big crash, balls all over the floor. Luckily, except for a bruise to the side of the pool table, nothing and no one else was hurt, including me. I don’t mean to be trouble wherever I go. But sometimes it just works out that way, and it’s been that way since kindergarten. It takes a measure of courage to invite me, so hats off to Ira for that.

Hope to see you Friday, or down the road otherwise…

—tjc

“Remind Me,” Rock Creek in the wilds of northwest Whitman County

“The Ice Fan”

“Footbridge to an Afterlife,” from lower Grand Coulee near the ‘Great Blade.’