Owls Head

Rating:
Summary: A surreal trip to a small piece of Maine
Review: Rosamond Purcell's photography class was on a field trip when she and her students first came upon William Buckminster's land. The eccentric antiques / junk dealer of Owls Head, Maine, had eleven acres of stuff piled high, in mounds and mounds, in and around several buildings. At first the artist in Purcell was intrigued; she was moved to photograph individual objects or random groupings of items. Then at various times over 20 years, she continued to stop to buy things and to talk to Buckminster himself. She took the items back to her own studio in Boston, where she arranged and rearranged them into her own special kind of artwork. And we're not talking about "whole" objects here -- rather, they include broken toys, books in varying stages of disintegration, pieces of furniture, old lobster traps, window frames, rusted parts of machinery.

Gradually Buckminster took on a near-mentor role for Purcell, and it's obvious the two vastly different people came to care about each other. She took him to museums and doctor?s appointments, he took her to pool halls. And as they climbed around the junk piles and investigated nooks and crannies in the buildings, Purcell learned more about Buckminster's personal history. The result is a kind of dual biography pressed against the backdrop of both the antique business and the art world, sometimes questioning which is which.

Some of Purcell's b&w photos accompany the text. But only the photo printed on the cover flyleaves gives us a grander perspective, as a wide shot of the property shows a pile of indecipherable objects stretching from one building to the next, one story high. Reading this book could be a nightmare for neat freaks. It can be heartening to those of us who are ordinary pack rats by comparison; for even after just a few pages, we can say to ourselves, "Well, at least I'm not THAT bad."

This is an unusual book, and it's difficult to nail down what audience it might appeal to. Fellow photographers may be interested in Purcell's process and artist's eye. Fans of Maine life might enjoy the depiction of the eccentricity of a real Down Easter. Still others might enjoy a respite from typical genres. You will certainly look at junk yards differently after reading this one.