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Through
the lens
Local artist Walter W. Nelson never does the same thing twice. He does a series of art forms and moves on. A photographer, sculptor and painter, Nelson’s newest collection of photographs titled “Pilgrimage Into Art” captures a solitary trip he made to France and Italy during the winter of 2001. This new collection of Nelson’s photographic images opened at the Fain Fine Arts Center at MSU last week and will run through April 18. “The show is 180 photographs. I’ve never done anything like this,” Nelson said. “I’ve had big shows combining painting, sculpture and photography but not anything of this magnitude.” Nelson’s exhibit documents what he personally experienced during his journey or pilgrimage into the art rich cities of Italy and France. “The journey is what it is: a journey into art,” Nelson said. “It is that inspiration that I received from the creation of form by all those wonderful artists, sculptors and painters back in the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s. That’s the intertwining thread of the show.” The origins of his trip began some time back when Nelson met a woman and through her became fascinated with the teachings of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk living in Europe. He began his journey with a two-week stay on a monastic retreat. From there, he explored great cities via train and foot. “It became a pilgrimage into art,” he said. In the beginning, he was not going to take a camera with him, but his friends convinced him otherwise. “I walked a lot, and every photograph I took was part of that walking. It wasn’t preconceived. It wasn’t sought out. It was just spontaneous,” he said. “I was photographing because I was moved, I was inspired, I was enveloped with compassion looking at artistic images.” He cannot remember how many rolls of film he shot, but after returning, Nelson went through the proof sheets, picked out images and made a 1,000 5 inch by 7 inch work prints. He pinned them to the wall and edited down the images. The body of work didn’t come together until he was able to sit down with the collection of prints. “When I sat with it, the series compositions were formed, and it became more of an intellectual approach to my expressions. That’s why I used the titles that I chose and why I placed them in triptychs,” he said. “I would like for people to take a memory of each photograph they’ve seen in that exhibit. It’s basically what 35 mm photography is all about--the moment--capturing the moment. And in capturing the moment, one should not be judgmental about the comparison of what art to art is, but should be just aware of vision, of sight, of the vision of seeing. To see that and to capture that in one click,” he said. Nelson sees the show as a documentary, a reportage type of photography. “What I would enjoy more than anything else is for people to enjoy the photographs as they are, one by one by one, as they can imagine standing in that spot seeing what I was seeing,” Nelson said. This is the Nelson’s first show of 35 mm images, and the first time he worked extensively with a 35 mm camera in the last 15 years. “Pilgrimage Into Art” took two years to complete after he returned from Europe. Nelson is presently living in a studio in downtown WF. He is working on a project for MSU photographing the Walter Dalquest research site, a canyon in West Texas. There is the possibility this project may result in a book and also an exhibition at the Wichita Falls Museum and Arts Center.
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