Teri Havens
Bullocks, Helena, Arkansas
2014

About the Item

Last Light There is solace in the night. I find it comforting when the sun finally slips away, taking with it the expectations and disappointments of the day. Darkness shrouds the superfluous, concealing the flaws of the world - or at least muting them temporarily. Things that have only a supporting role in daylight take center stage under the stark beam of a streetlight or the silken glow of a full moon. I’m attracted to old structures that stand detached and self-sufficient: a church, rigidly upright on an abandoned plain refusing to kneel to the earth’s inevitable reclamation; a liquor store beckoning like a cinderblock Shangri –La; an aging trailer home, once a symbol of life untethered, now settled into permanent stasis, enduring as a monument to the fortitude of the life within. And then there are the bars. I’ve always had a thing for bars. The more marginal the better. I’m mostly drawn to outliers - raw, dilapidated joints that evoke an earlier, grittier era. Humble, solitary structures cloaked in loneliness and isolation, yet miraculously - as if blessed by some divine patron- still open. An authentic down-to-its-rotting-bones refuge where a hard-edged world is numbed and softened by alcohol and dim lighting. Defiant vestiges of the past, the bar always seems the last to go. After the grocery store, the lumberyard and the barbershop surrendered to the future and shut their doors for the final time, the bar stayed on. Slumped alone on the edge of a discarded town, its neon spills out onto the asphalt and burns through the night. Inside, the beer is cold, and the jukebox is stocked with George Jones and dirges from an irretrievable past. – Teri Havens

Creator:
Teri Havens (1967, American)
Creation Year:
2014
Dimensions:
Height: 14 in (35.56 cm)Width: 17 in (43.18 cm)
Medium:
Platinum
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
21st Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Sante Fe, NM
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU1342589352
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