Towards is pleased to present The Hound an exhibition by Ian Willms. A text by the artist appears below.
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The Big Three automakers sold us the romance of the endless open road, so the rich bought cars and poor people took the bus. For over a century, the Greyhound has been the cheapest legal way to travel in America. What began as a shuttle service for Minnesota iron miners has grown into the circulatory system of working class America. A trope of freedom, a legacy of racial segregation, union busting, and a picket line killing all made the Hound into a flawed icon of underclass struggle, exuding a strangled, sad magic. Riding to find work, escape the past, reconnect, or find love, strangers’ stories crisscrossed a continental web of concrete and dirt. Most seemed to be seeking a dream that didn’t want them. The man to my left told me he was going to be a famous horror film director. A young woman leaning against the wall was headed to New Orleans to work as a stripper. A sobbing man on a bench behind me said he was going to Phoenix because no one there would know him. In Houston, a woman said she had been evicted from her house so she was moving to another city; her suitcase was full of old newspapers. Under the glow of an Atlanta streetlight, a teenager received a handshake in thanks for his military service.
Soaked, sullen roads led to the border, where I was interrogated for being an immigration risk. An empty jacket laid across a Buffalo bench, the owner nearby, shoeless and asking for change. A woman headed to Detroit to see her favourite band for the 72nd time. Someone crashed down from euphoria in Cleveland and huddled in the corner of the station. One man threatened to kill another for continuously blowing a rape whistle as we all skidded through a blizzard on a midnight mountain pass in Colorado. A blur of tired faces, a string of flickering neon, stretching from Atlantic to Pacific and back again.
Armed federal agents stopped our bus in the middle of the desert and checked everyone’s citizenship.
A Spanish-speaking mother clutched her baby. Authorities dropped off a migrant refugee at the station in Tucson. A man told me about the parasites the government puts in our brains to control us. A woman said she lost her boyfriend to an overdose. Someone snorted something off of a toilet seat in the next bathroom stall. Tumbleweeds somersaulted down the highway as a worn-out trucker ate a breakwich in a diner window. The man across the aisle said he was headed home after a 15-year prison sentence. I didn’t believe it until I saw him jump for joy when he got to Des Moines; no one likes Des Moines that much. Anyone can be anyone when they only meet you for a minute. Stories become tall tales, stretched out over sun-baked interstates, bleached dry.
44 hours to New Orleans. 70 hours to Vancouver. Dreams bleed into reality as reality melts into dreams.
A security guard with a toothache said to me, “I want to make these people feel the pain I’m in.” A man was left behind in the middle of nowhere; the driver didn’t care. A woman in Los Angeles showed me pictures of her father and brother, who were members of rival gangs until they were each murdered. Someone had a grenade in their luggage, so the bomb squad shut down the bus station in Atlanta. Lights go off. Lights go on. No smoking or drinking in the coach. Secret sips and a transfer at 4AM. Eat when you can. Stations in smaller towns were shuttered and stripped of anything of value; I wondered how people would get to where they needed to go as the heavy breath of the diesel engine lulled us all to sleep.
In Oakland I dropped my toothbrush in a spit-filled sink, went looking for a place to eat and got robbed at gunpoint. Phone, passport, a month’s worth of Hound photos and the camera that my dead father gave to me, all gone. The cops laughed at me and said I was stupid. I had nightmares and flashbacks. I got up and bought a $7 camera at a thrift store in the Mission plus all the cheap film I could find. I got back on the Hound and continued to photograph. The yellow line went from solid to broken. Yellow line, solid to broken. Solid to broken, solid to broken, in its unrelenting pattern.
-Ian Willms | Toronto, Canada, 2026