Looking For Texas: Essays from the Coffee Ring Journal
by Rick Vanderpool
Category: Poetry

Photographer Rick Vanderpool traveled over 20,500 miles and spent 54 days on the road shooting the word [Texas] in an infinite variety of sizes, shapes, angles, colors, and materials. He found the word on belt buckles and theater signs, sewer lids and tumble-down buildings, dinner plates and every other surface you can imagine and many you would never dream of. He completed visits to all 254 Texas counties in July 1999. He called the project [Looking for Texas] and selected a few hundred of these photos to be included in this journal, which he kept to record his thoughts, experiences, and encounters along the roads. Vanderpool's writing is lyrical, humorous, sensitive, and entertaining: the work of a true poet and artist. Rick Vanderpool and his artist wife live in Commerce, Texas, where they share an art studio called Prairie Rose Studio.