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KEITH WILSON



  



For a few years now, I've been a big fan of the online zine IMAGE FILE PRESS created by Chicago-based artist Ivan Lozano. So I was happy when Ivan asked me to create a Issue #10 in November 2014 and used it as an opportunity to delve into my fascination with the 36th First Lady of the United States, Lady Bird Johnson.

See a pdf of the Image File Press issue HERE.




From the Issue Introduction

The Lady Bird image is from the front of a postcard I bought six years ago at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. The description on the back reads, “Lady Bird Johnson enjoys a field of wildflowers in the Texas Hill Country in the spring of 1990.”

I visited the Center with my parents and maternal grandmother, Meemaw, who were visiting from Georgia. We were all suckers for a good garden and Meemaw in particular loved nature things that were colorful or unusual or garish. At what seemed like every plant, she would stop to smell, touch, take pictures and exclaim in her thick southern accent, “ohhh how purrty!” She died a few years ago, but throughout my life she was one of the few people who taught me – allowed me – to stop and smell and look at the roses. That could be her enjoying that field of wildflowers.

But I’m also drawn to this image for less sentimental reasons.

Lady Bird Johnson was the gentle and dutiful other half to her less lovable presidential husband, Lyndon B. Johnson. She’s a legend in Central Texas and is revered across the state for her push to promote and protect Texas wildflowers. Her image and her name are a trusted brand. She is pure, wise, white, eco-friendly and apolitical. Who doesn’t support wildflowers? Assholes, that’s who.

I’m interested in the ways in which iconic personalities and ideas around the pastoral are expressed in consumer, residential and built spaces. In some of the images that follow, you could say I’ve created Lady Bird Inc. and prepared a PowerPoint presentation for investors eager to capitalize on a name that tests well with focus groups. In others, I’ve displayed flat-footed images of nature growing beyond the margins of advertising agency briefs. The following responses attempt to convey the mix of cynicism, hope, nostalgia, humor and gratitude that I experience when gazing out on that field of Texas wildflowers, a perfectly placed and grandmotherly Lady Bird Johnson smiling her happy-sad smile back at me.