Galveston (2017)

Lewis’s latest film, Galveston, 2017, newly commissioned by The Contemporary Austin and on view at the Jones Center, takes the city of Galveston, Texas, as both its setting and title. This island off the Gulf Coast has had many lives—as historic immigration port, center for shipping and the petrochemical industry, site of natural disasters, and tourist destination—and this complex, layered history becomes the backdrop and undercurrent for the film. In Galveston, Lewis’s ever-present subject is the iconic white skyscraper of One Moody Tower, visible throughout the southeast Texas city since it was completed in 1972.