I was recently with Patrick Sansone of Wilco — (we crossed paths at local Berkshires music legend Johnny Irion’s album release party at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, MA.) As I’m sure many of you know, in addition to being a wildly talented instumentalist, Pat is also a photographer. We were chatting about life, music, photography, when suddenly I had a life-meets-art almost déjà vu-like moment.
He was telling me that he had been finding some great spots to make pictures in North Adams, MA — specifically, he had stumbled upon an abandoned beauty salon, long since closed, but with the lettering still on the window.
He was describing it in detail, and I interrupted him. I said, wait — this doesn’t happen to be a place called Madeline’s Beauty Salon?
“Yes. Do you know it?”
I laughed.
Madeline’s Beauty Salon was a construction for a picture I made in 2021. The letters on the windows were designed by Perry Grebin, painted by Mark Bachman, our scenic painter, with interior walls, ceiling, etc desiged by Jesika Farkas, built and propped out by her art department team headed up by Mike Bedard and Paige Carter. The former “beauty salon” is in fact a total fabrication. The only thing we left behind were the letters on the window. So in a way, it IS an abandoned beauty salon as Patrick Sansone said, but a fictional one — and now, it’s part of Pat’s work, too. I loved that.
I’m once again location scouting for my next body of work, driving around the Berkshires as I do. I see other reminders of previous pictures in the landscape as I pass by. They’ve now just become part of “real life.” A bench that was part of our “bus stop” creation in Royal Cleaners now often has people sitting on it. A prop-turned-functional-utilitarian object. The “Redemption Center” lettering on one side of the building remains, at the request of the liquor store owner who liked it, but last time I drove by, our lettering was accompanied by graffiti as well. Other locations bear almost no resemblance to the picture we made there — buildings renovated, torn down, or grown over. It’s a reminder that photography captures a single moment — and then time moves on.
Posts on the Crewdson Trail Log are written and assembled by Juliane Hiam based on conversations with the artist. Live footage and editing in the above video is by Christian Badach, and the picture description texts are written by Juliane Hiam.
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