Over Thanksgiving, I found myself standing beside a worn pickup truck with the cutest pup, Daisy, sitting in the driver’s seat and parked in front of the 133-year-old architectural gem in Old East Hill on the corner of 6th and Jackson.
Lance Vargas and his pup, Daisy.I have reported about this house before, as it was one slated for demolition until a timely conversation between Nannette Chandler of Chandler Construction and architect Scott Sallis of Dalrymple Sallis Architecture stepped up and saved it through purchasing it because of their shared passion for historic preservation.
The front porch still holds the secrets of afternoon teas and conversations from the past; the inside, recently stripped back to its bones, sits piled with lath that Nannette and her team carefully removed and generously offered to anyone willing to repurpose it.
When I shared with Tommi, my husband, that Nannette was offering the lath to whoever could use it, he immediately thought of one person and reached out to him: Lance Vargas.
Artist Lance VargasLance was home for this past Thanksgiving holiday, visiting family, and followed up and asked if he could salvage some of this century-old lath and carry a piece of Pensacola back to New Orleans for his artwork.
Hours later, I was photographing him as he loaded the old boards into the bed of his truck like they were old friends and with respect. And while he worked, we talked.
Or rather, I asked questions.
And Pensacola’s own wandering creative native answered in the kind of thoughtful, meandering stories that feel like sitting down with someone who has lived a few different lifetimes and remembers each one in vivid color.
A Pensacola Start, a New Orleans Story
Lance grew up here. Escambia High School, class of 1991.
Pensacola neighborhoods, Pensacola traffic, Pensacola humidity and good humans.
Like many talented young people in the late ’80s, he knew that if he didn’t travel though, he might never nudge his life toward what he wanted it to become.
New Orleans called to him — louder, freer, and a bit more understanding of the unconventional.
“It was a place where art felt permitted,” he told me. “Encouraged, even. Pensacola felt more regimented then, with the Navy being prominent. New Orleans was full of people who didn’t fit where they started.”
He arrived for a second chance after regretting a decision he had made that nudged him to make a change.
Tommi Lyter assists Lance Vargas in loading the lath into his truck for transport back to New Orleans.He built a life in the city’s eclectic, electric art scene — first as a commercial artist selling work in Jackson Square, later becaming a gallery owner, and always as an independent voice shaping his own lane.
I first met him years ago, early in my marriage, on a trip to New Orleans when my husband brought me to his gallery.
That day, we were able to admire artwork made from salvaged wood that was from many years past.
In fact, one of our favorite pieces of art that hangs in our home upstairs was created by Lance after salvaging the lath from our 1897 home restoration.
Part of the history of our home hangs as a piece of our past, shaped by his hands, told through his eyes in the shape of the American flag, and offered as a wedding gift.
A Novel 25 Years in the Making
Among his many creative pursuits, Lance has quietly been writing a novel or, as he jokes, “writing around it.”
The book is called Intendencia, a fictional narrative set in Pensacola’s 1990s punk rock and bar scene.
“It’s magical realism,” he said, gripping a board of weathered lath like a prop as he talked. “Not fantasy… but not hyper-real either.
Think Mexican writers. Think something grounded that might still have a fairy or a witch slip in.”
He began the project more than two decades ago, but life, art, bills, work, storms, and the daily grind, kept interrupting.
Then he was invited to stay at a friend’s writers’ retreat and poured out 6,000 words in one stretch.
Today, the book stands at 32,000 words and growing. “It’s the most ‘me’ thing I’ve ever tried to make,” he said.
The Art of Broken Things
Most Gulf Coast folks who know Lance know him as an artist.
His signature technique, the “stacked lath” style, layers broken, shaped, and stained pieces of salvaged wood into dimensional folk art. Sometimes he mounts found objects on top. Every piece is tactile, personal, and unmistakably his.
Much of his artwork features a heart: a stitched heart.
“The stitched heart is the story,” he said. “It’s what we survive. Trauma, hardship, being cast aside. The value isn’t in the shiny new thing. It’s in the thing that’s been broken and put back together.
Scar tissue is strong. Welds are strong. Stitches show where we worked to stay alive.”
In his hands, discarded wood becomes a symbol of resilience. He doesn’t just make art from broken things. He makes meaning of the brokenness.
Deurty Boys, New Chapters, and the Business of Art
Lance has made thousands of pieces since he started experimenting with reclaimed wood in 2007. For years, he sold his art at Jackson Square, which he calls “the hardest job I ever had,” competing with weather, tourists, and the grind of having to create just to pay rent.
He eventually opened Deurty Boys Gallery in the French Quarter in 2016, selling his own work and others’. With his partner preparing to leave the business, Lance is planning a rebrand.
“I want something more avant-garde,” he said. “More room to experiment. To grow. Something with movement.”
Ninety percent of his work is created for the “muse of industry,” he says — the work that keeps the lights on.
The remaining slice is guided by the “muse of inspiration,” the pure heart of why he got into art in the first place.
“When someone connects with that one… that’s how you know it mattered.”
Influences: A Creative Childhood
Lance credits much of his path to the environment he grew up in:
- A father obsessed with cars, design, and shaping things.
- A mother who loved art and filled his world with visuals.
- The Pats Program for gifted students – “life-changing,” he said, where he found teachers like Judy Gross who saw creativity as something serious and worth nurturing.
- And the explosion of media: cable television, VCRs, early storytelling visuals that imprinted themselves on him.
“It was like the world came through the screen right when my brain was ready to grab it.”
Thinking About Coming Home
As we stood in front of the old home on Strong Street, Lance told me he sometimes thinks about moving back.
“New Orleans is full of people like me,” he said, wiping sawdust from his hands. “Pensacola… maybe it could use a few more.”
I personally think so.
Or maybe we just remember that the ones who left sometimes circle back with gifts like stories, skills, perspectives, and, in this case, old lath salvaged from a century-old house that will soon find new life in the artwork he’ll create in his New Orleans studio.
Where to Find His Work
- Deurty Boys Gallery, French Quarter (soon to be renamed)
- Online at leveeland.com
- In restaurants, homes, and collections all over the Gulf Coast
Lance’s pieces travel far. His heart? It is stitched and much stronger, and circles back home every so often.
