Art Review | Soulful, Savory Pairings

Site-Sensitive Photographers Brett Leigh Dicks and Patricia Houghton Clarke Join Forces and Visions of Taquerias and Aussie Lunch Bars in ‘Fare Trade’ Exhibition

Patricia Houghton Clarke and Brett Leigh Dicks | Photo: Courtesy

On the face of it, the current exhibition at the Architectural Foundation Gallery, dubbed Fare Trade, is a savory pairing of two accomplished and sensitive photographers riffing on humble, specific foodie subcultures. Some amount of appetite-whetting is involved in the art appreciation here, between the symbiotically linked series of imagery of Patricia Houghton Clarke’s Southern Californian taquerias and Brett Leigh Dicks’s Western Australian “lunch bars.”

But there’s much more to the pictorial story. For one, Dicks and Clarke have been longtime friends and allies in the cause of fine art photography, and the show literally creates an intimate dialogue between their sympathetic visual reports. From another angle, their series celebrates anti-elite epicurean outlets for the everyperson, engendering a relatively classless sense of community and access. Many strains of visual and cultural interest naturally combine in this intriguing, left-of-typical show.

Australian-raised Dicks lived in Santa Barbara for some 20 years, working as a photographer and journalist, before relocating to Western Australia with his wife, musician-poet Natalie D-Napoleon, and son, Samuel, several years ago. Dicks, whose photography has graced The New York Times, CNN, and many exhibitions across Australia and America, has shown a keen and discerning eye, whether essaying on the subject of bleak atomic age sites or kitsch-loving roadside culture.

His sharp, witty images of diners, motels, and other byways of Americana (and Australiana) are reminiscent of another Santa Barbaran art photographer made good in the art world, the now New York–based Jeff Brouws.

Clarke is a multilingual world traveler and ambitious, widely shown photographer — and gallerist, in her Carpinteria studio/gallery space — whose work often engages social commentaries and causes. Here, though, she stays very close to home, having spent three decades living on Santa Barbara’s Eastside, developing a homegrown love for and fascination with the culture of taquerias. In this show, she focuses mostly on establishments in Santa Barbara County and elsewhere in the Mexican food bonanza that is the Golden State.

Left, La Super-Rica Taqueria by Patricia Houghton Clarke; right, Mira Lunch Bar by Brett Leigh Dicks

And where better to begin than with the legendary prize among local taquerias, the queenly La Super-Rica? Placed strategically by the gallery’s front door, Clarke’s depiction of the venerable spot assumes a vantage from across Milpas Street, taking in not only the signature turquoise-and-white structure with its zigzag roof, but the looming tree that seems to protect the taco sanctuary. Beneath this image, Dicks shows the Mira Lunch Bar in Wangara, Australia, a burst of yellow next to a palm tree and under a radiant blue sky.

Left, Efrens Mexican Food by Patricia Houghton Clarke; right, MacBeths Lunch Bar by Brett Leigh Dicks

Throughout the exhibition’s design, elements of commonality — of composition, color coding, signage and more — provide natural links between images, set in side-by-side or vertically aligned pairings. A duality emerges, for instance, in the mix of Clarke’s image of Oceano’s La Tapatia and Dicks’s Kelvin Road Lunch Bar, in terms of compositional blocking and an abundance of asphalt in the visual mix.

Orange-ish hues connect Efren’s taqueria, also in Oceano, and MacBeth’s Deli & Lunch Bar in Spearwood, Australia (some of the Australian township names are tasty in themselves). A light-blue palette prevails in the matchup of Clarke’s shot of Ojai’s La Flores Michoacan and Dicks’s Le’s Café & Lunch Bar, in Bayswater.

Left, La Flor de Michoacan by Patricia Houghton Clarke; right, Le’s Cafe & Lunch Bar by Brett Leigh Dicks

Clarke was in Gonzales, California, and captured El Sandillon, a natural gallery mate for Dicks’s image of Marge’s Lunch Bar, linked by their wide, slope-roofed buildings. Marge appears, in all her kitschy glory, as a buxom, pie-toting lunch bar goddess in cartoony form on the roof.

And formal echoes inform the pairing of Goleta’s Del Valle Grill and the unabashedly gaudy Checkers Lunch Bar, which takes its design cues from billboard art and louder-is-better aesthetics, rather than the subtle approach to restaurant design. Clarke’s image includes a footnote appearance by a massage parlor next door, while Dicks’s two-structure composition finds a space for rent next to Checkers, a hollow next-door resonance contrasting the in-your-face lunch bar facade.

Left, El Charrito by Patricia Houghton Clarke; right, Sheffield Lunch Bar by Brett Leigh Dicks

Fare Trade is equipped with a fitting and multi-meaningful title, touching on the equitable and sustainable food culture it celebrates, as well as conveying the organic aligning of these two eyes-wide-open photographers. Clarke and Dicks are picturing the world, and minutiae within it, with thoughtful project-minded overviews, wit and subsurface wisdom intact.

Fare Trade is on view at the Architectural Foundation Gallery (229 E. Victoria St.) in Santa Barbara through May 17. The gallery is open Saturdays from 1-5 p.m. and by appointment. See afsb.org.