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The PSA:

With a career that has spanned more than six decades and includes a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental photography, Scott Hyde has worked as both an art and commercial photographer. Photography when Hyde started his career was not widely collected as fine art. The Witkin Gallery in New York City was among the earliest commercial galleries to show and promote art photography. Hyde was one of the six photographers in the gallery’s first exhibition. His work, which combines off-set printing with photography, has been published by Aperture a leading photographic journal. John Szarkowski, when he was curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, included Hyde’s work in the Museum’s collection and publications. His photographs have also adorned the covers of Miles Davis and Lionel Hampton albums. Hyde has lived in Amarillo for more than twenty years, where he continues to pursue his artistic passion.

Sponsored by
Friends from the Blue Front Café Friday Morning Breakfast Group
Mr. and Mrs. John Boyce with a gift to the 40 years Celebrate the Past, Ignite the Future Exhibitions Fund

Opening: Thursday, August 2, 2012 7:00-8:30 PM
Members Preview at 7:00 PM

Date: August 3 - September 30, 2012
Hours: Tues-Fri from 10-5 and Sat-Sun from 1-5.
Location: The Amarillo Museum of Art is located at 2200 South Van Buren on the Washington Street campus of Amarillo College

1) A month ago at work, the boss called me in for a brief meeting with two other programmers. He warned of an upcoming provisioning product that will have to be written fast - pending the signed contract of a new client. He knew I had looked at web-client(ish) technologies in the fall, and he wanted me to try one out. I would write the client GUI that would link to an API exposed through Web Services, which one of the other guys was to do.

This was just a heads-up. But I had a little time, so I went ahead and wrote a prototype in GWT (I included server calls, though I didn't implement WS, I just hooked up to existing methods via JNDI.) It took about a week. I hosted the app on my mini, and sent the URL to the boss. He was amazed & very pleased. He quietly came to my office and said 'What's next?'. I said I thought I could do the same thing with our main product (it currently has a Java Swing thick client).

So off I set - solo. Wheee! Within two weeks, I had a large enough section to show again. And again, he was very happy and said to proceed. Yesterday I finished another chunk. I will clean it up & test this morning, then probably send him another URL after lunch.

This is the 5th time in my programming career that I've been given the lead in developing a product with a new technology. It's very exciting & intense. Most days my mind moves faster than my fingers can type.

2) Saturday, I picked up Scott and we drove out to a goat farm that had a small native plant nursery. They had a nice selection. I bought some things. Last night I put 1/3 of them in the ground and cleaned up part of the garden. The conversation with Scott was wonderful as always. At one point he shocked me by claiming that I was his dearest friend now. This was humbling. In his early NYC years when he was a photographer for Condé Nast, he lived with Allen Forte six or so years who he had known in H.S. in Portland OR; he also was very close to Bob Dorough, the jazz pianist and composer of the Schoolhouse Rock songs; and countless photographers - big & small. I guess we are growing closer. It's curious having a close friend who is 30 years my senior (now 85). Curious because there is really nothing different. Fortunately his amazing mind & his body are in splendid shape.

Sunday afternoon I called Scott, asking if he wanted to have coffee. He called back two hours later and said yes. So I went over to pick him up.

Conversation started with the things on his table.

We went through two stacks of old photos/postcards of images from Gothic cathedrals. Mostly sculptural relief and other carving on capitals, baptismal fonts, etc. Most of the buildings were in the UK, a few were in France, although the French pictures were more Romanesque from places like Vezelay, and even a couple from Santiago De Compostela.

He then showed me copies of two photographs he made of Dick Rutledge and Allen Forte. He had used an experimental technique in them, similar to Man Ray's solarization technique. They were almost abstract. He had mentioned Allen Forte - a life long friend of his from high school - many times before. But I don't recall he ever mentioned Dick before. Scott met Dick in photography school in the 40s in Los Angeles. They had moved to New York within a few years of each other, any they kept somewhat in touch. They were sometime buddies in spite of Dick's being gay. I offered to buy the copies which he sold to me for $15 each.

We talked about his second wife Phyllis. I asked them how they met. This led to quite a lot of remembering on his part. But it also led to more vivid stories of his first wife. He told me how she had died in his arms - I don't recall his ever mentioning that before.

We went briefly into his studio looking for an envelope for the copies. I hadn't been in there in several years. There was very much of interest - small objects, minerals he used in photographs, and box after labeled box of photographs from the 40s on. We didn't get into any of these.

We got some coffee to go at the Georgia Starbucks and went to my house, where we continued conversation. Scott was drinking two fisted - coffee in one hand and wine in the other.

Topics at my house: more about his first wife (some of which I had heard before); his many gay friends in his early life; Israel's personality.

We went through Chicago Photographs together on the kitchen table. I always love going through a book like this with him - his comments are so illuminating. We also went briefly through a book of photographs by Clifford Coffin.

I drove him back home, on the way home he talked about another gay friend of his, who Joseph Cornell had hired as an assistant. The friend had made a small career out of repairing Cornell boxes for museums. But Scott explained how the artist's family distrusted him and thought him a thief. He also briefly mentioned other indirect contacts he had with Cornell, whom he never managed to meet himself.