Naked at the Garden Party Painting

I am proud to be from a place where so much talent has sprouted from oil and rice fields and drainage ditches—Beaumont, Texas—a shady, stinky corner of the state that shares a tendency to mildew with its close neighbor, Louisiana. Naturally, I have made idols out of the likes of big time artists John Alexander, Paul Manes, the late Robert Rauschenberg (Port Arthur), photographer Keith Carter, writer Mary Karr (Groves), dead singer Janis Joplin (Port Arthur), and a terrific wealth of other-worldly-gifted, interesting characters not famous, but just as unbalanced.