In Patrick House’s new series, titled Cowboy Mosaic, the photographer and artist stitches together pieces of the man his parents raised him to be and the man he is today. Single, framed photos, some with scenes of nature and others with Warhol-like prints of a cowboy, will hang on the brick walls of Starbucks in Ketchum until the end of August.
“It’s a blending of my life and theirs,” House said.
House mixes landscape images that give off a serene and contemplative mood with bright and loud cowboy silk screen prints. The cowboys in his piece are symbolic of his Idaho childhood. His father, Rupert House, was a cowboy and Patrick was raised to be one as well.
Born in Triumph in 1958, Patrick was one of five children raised by Bonnie and Rupert House. Patrick said his family lived a utilitarian and frugal lifestyle because his parents had grown up in the Great Depression. He learned both the labors and joys of the farm life and even possessed a few cows when he left for business school at the University of Idaho.
However, House was not destined to be a cattle rancher, and he eventually sold his cows. And, as the story goes, he sold his last cow to purchase a Minolta SRT 201–his first camera.
Though House now lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles, far from the farming lifestyle he grew up in, he talks about how he wants to get out of the city and speaks fondly of the more simplistic Idaho lifestyle he once knew.
The cowboy images in his mosaic are drawn from that lifestyle, glorified first by his memories and now by his bright inks. In his artist statement, he said his parents added a lot of color to his life, so he enjoyed bringing out the colors in the cowboy images.
“The cowboy section is taking how I grew up–on a ranch–and combining it with how I want to grow as an artist,” House said.
The nature scenes then reflect the time House has spent escaping the city life, whether by traveling to the Californian coast, inward to Nevada or back to Idaho.
House said he wanted to capture the environments he spends his time in and the quietness they seem to create. Many include bodies of water, such as the ocean or the Salton Sea, which House has always been drawn to.
“A big body of water to me used to be Redfish, so the ocean here kind of fascinates me,” House said.
He said he searches out the serenity that he cannot often find in Los Angeles and tries to capture it with the right lighting and colors to preserve it.
The collection in Ketchum is a tribute to House’s parents and a reflection of his life. Even the title of the work and the patchwork theme comes from House’s history.
He said he knew he wanted the piece to be a tribute and was still developing the idea when a curator referred to the collection as a mosaic.
Bonnie, House’s mother, used to quilt, and so the term “mosaic” reminded him of the quilted patterns she used to sew. House decided then to make the term part of the title and focus on creating a series of images that represented pieces of his life in a quilt-like style.
“My mom always quilted,” House said. “Quilting is the making of something from other things–some old, some new. It is creating a patchwork of widely varied things.”
House’s mosaic does just this. Initially to a viewer, the work might seem to lack cohesion. The stark contrast between the pop art cowboys and the tranquil landscapes has no apparent connection. The photographs are not scenes of the cowboy’s iconic West. They instead focus on modern-looking architecture and large bodies of water.
But House’s life and story are the threads that tie together the varying images of things both old and new. The mosaic is a patchwork piece chronicling House’s inspirations in both art and life.
House said viewers will not see his parents directly in the tribute piece, but rather will see the influence they had on him.
The exhibit will close Tuesday, August 31, 2010, but is available on display during Starbucks’
regular hours.
For those who want to see the individual images, stop by and scan the building’s walls. For those who want to understand the piece as a whole, take the time to read the artist’s statement to learn the story of the man that brings all the pieces together.
