IMAGE AND WORDS BY LEAH GRAEFF for THE CURRENT Magazine

 

Downtown Lafayette was under a flash flood warning, the morning of my shoot with Francis Pavy. We kept our plans to meet at 7 a.m., when the morning light would be the best. I was met with a moody sky and the rhythm of rain hitting the tin roofs in Freetown.

Freetown is a neighborhood where many Lafayette based creatives live and work. It’s home to renowned recording studios (La Louisiane Studios, Staffland), music venues (Blue Moon Saloon and the Freetown Boom Boom Room), and for the subject of this portrait, Pavy Studio.

His is an open studio. Its large windows face Gordon Street and put his creative process on display.

His process, drawn from printmaking, layers bits of information from each piece on top of the one before it. A yellow guitar stenciled on the floor, partially covered by circles of black paint and curving coral colored lines, give little nods to the local vocabulary that distinguishes Pavy’s work.

He sat with his lap steel and played along to the rain.