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NOVEMBER | PAGE 89 | 2015 undertakers' parlor, where we showed artwork in the front, and a back room of carnival banners, fraternal lodge pieces, vintage folk art and other odd items. In 1994, we purchased and moved to our current building, where everything came together. STANDOUT SHOW. BLW/JW: We once curated a show here in the gallery of the late blind sculptor Hawkins Borden of Memphis, Tennessee, where we draped the gallery with black plastic to create total darkness, filled the space with Bolden's haunting masks composed of hole-pierced pan sculptures and allowed people to feel the sculptures before seeing them. ON THE IMMORTAL BEAT WRITER WILLIAM BURROUGHS. BLW/JW: Yes, we first did an exhibit of William Burroughs' artwork in 1994 as our inaugural exhibition in our current building … William's paintings and Bill Daniel's photos of train-car graffiti. We met William and asked him what he thought of having a show in Waxahachie, Texas. He said, "It's as good a place as any." ABOUT THE JUG MAN FROM WAXAHACHIE. BLW/JW: We were the first folks to show and sell Carl Block's face jugs back in 1990. We have been lucky to discover many artists over the years. Some were discoveries in which we were the first folks to show their work to the public, and some were just personal discoveries. Plus, for us, discoveries of great food, places, people and artwork all rate the same. THE LURE OF LODGES. JW: We both always like the symbols and the stuff used in fraternal lodges and first began collecting it in the late 1980s. I joined the Eastern Star lodge here in Waxahachie about that time, too, but didn't care for the older ladies bossing me around. I joined IOOF #44 in Oak Cliff about a year ago. BLW: I was led to Freemasonry by old books. An old book I bought at the Canton flea market in the early 1980s put the words Freemasonry and Rosicrucian in front of me. In 1987, I saw a Masonic symbolic lithograph framed and hanging in the jewelry store of one of my granddad's friends who was a Mason. Which lead to a conversation about Masonry. I asked to be initiated and was the youngest (age 21) Mason in Texas at the time. I have been a Mason and Odd Fellow since. FIRST PIECE OF ART. JW: I collected hand-knitted sweaters from thrift stores when I was a teenager. The more jacked up, the better. We've collected many things together, but our earliest art collecting together was for pieces by Rev. J.L. Hunter of Dallas. He changed how we looked at things. BLW: My grandmother gave me a dramatic Indian wood-carved sculpture of an elephant being attacked by a den of panthers. THE MOST CURIOUS ITEM YOU COLLECT. JW: Mine are surely the resin kit clocks from the 1960s-1970s, which I lovingly refer to as "vomit clocks." BLW: I collect and study 19th and early 20th-century spiritualist and occult books, e.g. Paschal Beverly Randolph, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Prentice Mulford and Freeman B. Dowd, and lurid secret society novels by George Lippard. Mayan/Masonic texts by Augustus Le Plongeon. Books by Peter D. Ouspensky, George I. Gurdjieff, and Alfred Korzybski. FAVORITE PAINTING/PAINTER IN THE WORLD. JW: The Cheat With the Ace of Clubs by Georges de La Tour [Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth], for the lady looks like me. Plus, anything by Milton Avery or Johnnie Swearingen. BLW: Works by George Paul Kornegay, an African- American folk artist from Alabama. ON YOUR BAR CART. JW: Mezcal, mezcal, mezcal. BLW: About six different mezcals. GO-TO SOURCES FOR ANTIQUES/FINDS. JW/BLW: We always find great stuff in Dolly Python (Dallas) and Uncommon Objects (Austin). LAST FABULOUS ANTIQUE FIND. JW/BLW: We bought a stuffed bear cub a few summers ago in upstate New York, which we outfitted in a lodge suit. He's seems really happy here, and Dexter, our pup, likes him too. YOUR VERY FAVORITE AMERICAN ROAD TRIP. JW/BLW: What you see along the way. The most recent one to Upstate New York was filled with flea markets, great food, visiting Olana, interesting people, staying in a yurt on 80 acres once owned by the Loomis gangster clan and even seeing crazy redneck road rage in Connecticut. PARTING THOUGHTS. JW/BLW: Think that about covers it. We are lucky to have each other, our gallery full of stuff we enjoy and getting to share it with others. For more images chez Webb, navigate papercitymag.com. Top left: Sculptor Charley Brown's carving of Dr. King and Coretta King resting on a vintage Ellis County cabinet from the state asylum. Middle left: A spare bedroom serves as a (creepy) portal to the late Victorian era. Middle right: Would you sleep here? Lodge collection room with guest bed surrounded by wall of secret society paintings and lithographs. Proprietors Julie and Bruce Lee Webb Bedroom as white cube. There's little demarcation between the Webbs' personal and professional lives. In fact, the residence can be seen as one big gallery/curio shop. "WE MET WILLIAM [BURROUGHS] AND ASKED HIM WHAT HE THOUGHT OF HAVING A SHOW IN WAXAHACHIE, TEXAS. HE SAID, 'IT'S AS GOOD A PLACE AS ANY.'" — Julie and Bruce Lee Webb