“Sunday Morning Main” by Troy Broussard, depicting Jennings, LA, & the Heywood Building; collection of Wendell Miller.
While handling some business recently in Jennings, Louisiana, primarily related to Mother’s funerary aftermath, I took time to visit a few friends as well as to view a few of my paintings. And one of the larger paintings done over the course of my art career can be found on Main Street in the lobby of the office of attorney Wendell Miller.
“Sunday Morning Main” hangs in the lobby of attorney Wendell Miller’s office, Jennings.
Sunday Morning Main is a monumental cityscape done as an integral part of my Troy Broussard Paints the Town series, a collection of local Jefferson Davis Parish landmarks and landscapes, which debuted in a feature exhibit at the WH Tupper Museum in 2008. Sunday Morning Main depicts a deserted view of Main Street from the corner of Market Street, with the central focus being the decrepit Heywood Building. The painting was acquired by Wendell and hangs on the very block it depicts.
I have always been fascinated by the Heywood Building. Not only did I grow up next door to the widow of Senator Scott Heywood, developer of Spindletop in Beaumont and the Evangeline Oil Field of Jennings, but it always reminded me of our very own small-town version of the infamous Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The Flatiron Building, 2011, New York, by JoeInQueens from Queens, USA (DSC_0035 Uploaded by maybeMaybeMaybe) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
And, as a side note, a photographer friend of mine tells me that the ruins of the building is listed on a network of spots for traveling photographers who are fascinated by urban decay.
The impetus behind the scene was the impending loss of such a building and capturing that moment in time of a quiet and desolate downtown. I yearned for the days when this was a most vibrant block and wanted to capture that despair as an artist.
As for my painting, an artist never forgets the work put into such an undertaking. It was done on masonite and I applied primer in order to mitigate difficulties inherent to a slab of processed wood.
Study of the Heywood Building by Troy Broussard, 2007, collection of Dot Myers.
Once the panel was prepared I began my drawing. Of course it was impossible to set the board up on Main Street itself so I took multiple photos and sat on the corner many days doing sketches. Learning from a study that I did of the Heywood Building prior to the endeavor and a few other painted studies, I realized that my perspective must be more dramatic than a photographic perspective, which is why I do not project images from a picture to trace when I paint—I draw from scratch. So I stretched the facing corner of the building, exaggerating perspectives like views of the Flatiron Building. I recall that beneath the paint are a network of perspective grids, graphite smudges, and erasures.
Once all of the hard part of prep and composition was complete, painting was the fun part! I was able to attack the project and enjoy the process of imbuing color and detail. If I recall, excluding the many studies, the painting took about four weeks to complete.
It was unveiled as the focal point of the Tupper Museum showing.
The Heywood Building was scheduled for demolition a year ago. The building is currently empty and has collapsed within itself. Barricades define the area to keep passersby safe from possible falling debris.
The Heywood Building, 2015, Jennings, LA.
The building has been donated to the Jeff Davis Arts Council, of which I was executive director during my brief hiatus in Louisiana a few years back, and plans are underway to actually save the building. The shell would be preserved and rebuilt from the inside. It would provide office and exhibit space as well as enhance the visibility of JDAC within the community.
Perhaps the painting was indeed prophetic; not in the sense of the building’s destruction but in a collective mindset. Presently, just across the street, the old ABM Building is being restored as the new Jennings City Hall and Zigler Art Museum. The city is revitalizing this faded hub of commerce.
I am told that the painting gets lots of attention in its home above the lobby sofa; and I am told by Wendell’s wife that they love when people drop in to enjoy it.