Thanks to all the lovely people who came out for the opening on Wednesday. Art fans were treated to the usual cheap wine, the slightly less usual lemon cake, & the extremely rare sight of me in a cowboy hat. Yes folks, I actually put a cowboy hat on my head for the first time in, what, 20 years? Maybe longer!

I haven't been able to articulate my exact objections to wearing a cowboy hat; it seems especially strange considering the enthusiastic free rein that I give to my cowboy boot fetish, but actually I think these two things are related. It's like I only get to choose one cowboy thing. More than that feels ridiculous for an urban chick o' color like me. Something about not wanting to give the impression that I actually buy into the cowboy myth, or keeping a check on my own susceptibility to it, perhaps? Not sure.

Anyway, I did play up the cowboy theme at the opening. Many jokesters pointed out that I was showing next to Henri Matisse; fewer noticed that ol' Henri graciously accepted a boombox in his space so we could have Cowboy Nation for ambiance. (You can afford to be gracious like that when you're super-famous & super-dead.) All of this in order to give more weight to the two Wyoming photographs, not that they really needed help to hold their own in the mix with five photos from Wisconsin/Minnesota, plus the Wisconsin-oriented Stretcher piece.