An award-winning photographer’s work that features decaying and ruined Route 66 businesses will go on display in mid-August at the Clear Lake Arts Center in Clear Lake, Iowa.
Alexandra Buxbaum‘s “Wabi-Sabi: Beauty of Impermanence” show will be on display from Aug. 17 to Sept. 11. She said in an email the exhibit contains 12 images, all taken at various locations along Route 66.
She wrote this in a news release:
This exhibit explores the Japanese tradition aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, or the concept of recognizing and accepting the beauty of impermanence and imperfection.
In the exhibition, Alexandra Buxbaum, who is an internationally recognized street and documentary photographer, unveils the history of a lost American landscape and its iconic heritage through the passage of time. Her alluring, and yet sometimes haunting images, transport the viewer back in time and echo a past American era. A past era that reflects a way of living and doing things that’s since been replaced by modern times and practices – a history of the forgotten, hidden relics and treasurers that sometimes become roadside attractions of the present and visions of the past in their own right.
“What is now discarded and forgotten tells a special story of the past and how nature finds a way to grow, thrive, and reclaim itself upon a man-made environment that once intruded upon it,” says Alexandra. “There is beauty and recognition of our own impermanence in this simultaneous decay and growth, and a link to our collective past, ourselves and even our future through its transitory nature,” continued Alexandra.
The Clear Lake Arts Center is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The arts center is at 17 S. Fourth St. in Clear Lake (map here).
Rock ‘n’ roll fans will know Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom was the last concert for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper before their plane crashed, killing them, later that night in 1959. The one good thing that came out of that tragedy is the Surf Ballroom remains preserved as a concert venue and museum all these years later. It sits less than a five-minute drive from the arts center.
(Alexandra Buxbaum image of an abandoned gas station along Route 66 in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, courtesy of the photographer)
Seems interesting – perhaps worth a road trip from Milwaukee to view the exhibit – until the mention of (only) twelve images. Anyone who has driven even a short section of the Route has seen many forsaken and abandoned locations.
I’m sure the twelve images are worthy and presented well. Yet my reaction is that this exhibit sorely lacks ambition and scale.
The other good thing that came out of that tragedy: American Pie
I’m with you, Jerry. I thought about driving from New Mexico. I have several hundred images of Route 66 just from the section through New Mexico.
I stayed overnight in Clear Lake on Friday night, August 13. On Saturday morning, I thought about waiting for the Art Center to open at 10 AM to check out this show. Yet knowing there were only twelve images to see and wanting time to check out other sights on the way back to Milwaukee made me decide to head east earlier in the morning.