Artist Tazewell Morton and the Story in Everything

When Tazewell Morton came to our offices last fall, he brought along a whole portfolio of his work. I had written down a list of questions I planned to discuss during our meeting, but instead something more offbeat, and ultimately more interesting transpired. For nearly two hours, Tazewell and I flipped through reproductions of his work and he told me the snippet story behind each piece. 

Our meeting left me fascinated, and, if I'm honest, a little bleary eyed. I couldn't help but be humbled by Tazewell's more than half century of work, but I also wasn't sure how I was going to account for it in 800 words. 

He showed me a wide range of paintings, each one capturing a different element of his life. There was a smokey scene with coastal sea animals playing poker. With a wry smile Tazewell explained that he was supposed to be the crab. Then there were the highly stylized paintings of figures on wheels, a series that helped establish him as a serious artist. He had several interpretations of musicians parading through New Orleans, his favorite city. In homage to his beloved Gulf Coast, there were also a multitude of seascapes. He brought along Louie the Buoy, a children's book about Hurricane Camille that he illustrated. And revealing a more spiritual and religious side, Tazewell also had his more recently fashioned ceramic nativities and Christmas tree ornaments. 

As a writer, the challenge became not a lack of story, but that there were so many stories embedded into such a range of work. In an ideal world, I would have loved to create an exhibit of Tazewell's work, with rich captions to accompany his broad range of eclectic art. After a tour through the well-curated corridors, the viewer would walk away with a meaningful impression of Tazewell's work and a sense of the pieces of life that most influenced him. 

But I had a deadline. So I set about writing a story that would capture his eclectic spirit and communicate in words his visually oriented life. It took a few rounds of editing, but I was happy with the final story. 

Tazewell probably summed it up best, quipping at the end of our meeting, "Everything one does is a story." 

The statement still has my wheels turning. For him, and the rest of us, there is no single story, but rather a myriad of different narrative snippets that come together to form the whole. The question becomes, what do we leave behind to tell those stories? 

Tazewell described his life like a gumbo—a mixture full of different ingredients and packed with often intense flavor. His variety of work, he reflected, likely prevented him from ever becoming a major success as either a commercial or fine artist. Tazewell did a bit of both, but was never wholly defined by either field. Yet his body of work speaks to life full of rich narratives, whether or not they paved the way for professional accolades.

Like Tazewell, we all tell many stories, and the things we produce leave a trail. I suspect that such a trail often looks more like a spiral or a starburst than a neatly hewn path (at least it would in my case). I find fresh inspiration in Tazewell's stories—splashes of color and stylized shapes that speak to a life creatively lived. It's not an easy story to tell, and an even harder one to live, but he can have no doubt that he made something—many things—of himself. There are worse things than spending 60-plus years that way.  

A conversation about art and life with photographer Lara Porzak

Lara Porzak at her studio near Venice Beach, California. Photo by Stephen DeVries, courtesy of fresh style magazine.

For the most recent issue of fresh style, I wrote the artist profile of Lara Porzak, a fine art film photographer based in Los Angeles. Her ability to capture feeling and emotion on black and white film has gained her the attention of many LA celebrities, several of whom have had her shoot their weddings. That said, she does not name drop—although after a few enjoyable phone conversations I did hear some entertaining stories. The story on Lara, though, really focused on her fine art photography and how her career has developed.

During one of our conversations she shared a succinct statement about her life as an artist that has stayed with me: “My life is my art that’s made.” 

Every time I went over my notes, I paused at the quotation. I underlined it, and even put a star next to it. But it never found a place in the story. Rather than weave it into a larger narrative, the sentence deserved more careful attention, so I turn to it here. 

“My life is my art that’s made.”

— Lara Porzak

What does it mean to have your creativity and the everyday routines of your life be so interconnected that you cannot separate the two? How do you produce something and then stand back from it and say, yes, that’s me? How do you find the confidence to take yourself that seriously as an artist? Or as a musician, writer, or baker—whatever your particular expressive mode might be?

Lara shared a story about how she came to see herself as an artist. Nearly 20 years ago, she attended a workshop given by Mary Ellen Mark, a photographer well known for her ability to capture deep elements of humanism. (Her most famous images include photographs of circus performers in Mexico and India, captured in her book Man and Beast.) Lara recalled that all of the other attendees showed up with expensive Leicas—the signature camera of a professional documentarian. Lara, however, brought her plastic Holga, known for its vignettes, plastic lens, and square images. That willingness to be herself apparently impressed Mark, and she asked Lara to assist her on a shoot at a nearby Mexican circus. 

So Lara went to the circus, Holga in hand. While there, she snapped a shot of a young boy wearing a plastic animal mask as he stood in front of a tent. It has since become one of Lara’s signature images, and led to entire photo series on people wearing animal masks. The photo also had a deep personal meaning for Lara. She told me that it proved to her that she could be a fine art photographer—that she had what it took. While she has since had that conviction confirmed by a significant number of outside voices, believing it for herself was such an essential part of seeing herself as an artist. How would she be capable of understanding her life and her artwork as in sync, if she didn’t operate with the conviction that she is an artist, regardless of outside recognition? 

There’s a bravery to pouring yourself into a creative endeavor and then putting it out there for others to see. I think of a shy and cautious musician whose love for his work forces him onto the stage—his art transforming him into a performer and entertainer. That process can be so intimidating that some people never even give their creative dreams a chance. But what a reward to be able to stand back and say that your life and your art are one and the same. 

Hearing Lara’s story encouraged me to take myself all that more seriously as a writer—to see myself as a writer, and to produce work that I truly believe in. For me, that process hasn’t come without the encouragement of those around me. (Stephen’s matter-of-fact statements to friends and colleagues that “my wife is a writer,” has meant more to my professional development than he probably knows.) I share Lara’s story here in hopes that it prods others to consider their own passions more earnestly, so that they truly become a part of who they are.

Read her statement a few more times, and let it really resonate.