We were lucky to catch up with Dean and Laura Larson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Dean and Laura, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
We have both been life-long animal lovers. We’ve marveled at how many amazing creatures are in the world. But over time, our awareness grew regarding how many animal species (and plants) were going extinct.
In 2011 we went to see an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from The Court of Burgundy. This exhibit featured small alabaster sculptures from the tomb of the Duke of Burgundy on a raised platform in parade around a darkened gallery. There were 40 mourners in all, each with its own personality. At the same time, we read a poem by William Stafford called “Dearly Beloved” in which he describes a grouping of extinct or nearly extinct animals such as the polar bear, encircling a black footed ferret who clasps his hands together saying to the group, “dearly beloved.” The mental image of animals in mourning cloaks lamenting their own demise spurred us on to our purpose of creating art that heralds the event of the earth’s 6th mass extinction of species. We ask the viewer to consider a place where form is fluid. Where an animal could be a human and a human could become an animal, each learning about the life and experiences of the other thereby generating respect and understanding between the species.
Laura began making 40 animal/human creatures mimicking the body posture and robes of the Duke’s Mourners except for the human head, instead, adding animal heads. Dean noticed that The Buffalo hybrid Mourner would fit comfortably in a photograph of a cathedral archway that he had taken in Lyon, France. Our collaboration began with the realization that combining our talents made the story more impactful.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Dean & Laura Larson. Two artists. Two points of view. Individual but compatible and sometimes collaborative – like a good marriage. Dean is a photographer and Laura is a sculptor/installation artist. While we still do our individual work, for the last decade we have been collaborating on content driven art. Our message has to do with animal extinction and by default climate change. What’s exciting to us about working together is that we can use our individual skills in combination to create more powerful stories which address these issues.
For us, art is a calling, not a hobby, nor a means to make a living. However, each of us have had careers that involve commercial art. We’ve had art adjacent jobs to make a living. Dean was a photography teacher for nearly 40 years. Laura has worked as an art administrator for many years as well, mostly with non-profit arts organizations. But our focus is our calling.
In keeping with our purpose, we’ve developed stories that are drawn from Dean’s love of architecture and Laura’s fascination with figurative sculpture. Our collaboration centers on the plight of animal extinction by using the parlance of storytelling, through digital images and sculptures. Dean combines his photographic images from various locations, especially from Europe. While Laura continues to create small bronze sculptures of animal/human hybrid creatures, which magically, after hours of persuasion and digital manipulation show up in Dean’s photographs. Each year there are more characters added as Laura sculpts and then casts new bronze creatures. New photographs are jointly created using Laura’s creatures as actors in the surreal story with Dean’s photographs setting the stage.
We have been showing these images consistently over the last 10 year at the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825 and recently we had a retrospective of this work called, We Are All In This World Together at MOAH: CEDAR, in Lancaster, CA.
“We are all in this world together, dealing with changing weather,
The land, the seas, the plants, the trees
The squirrels, the bees and the nuts and seeds.”
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Being content oriented artists requires Curiosity and open mindedness. Or perhaps because we are curious and open minded, we lean into content–oriented work. All our work includes a good deal of research, whether it be finding out about the medieval 1493 Doctrine of Discovery or finding the best location for a photograph to illuminate a point of view.
Mastery of the chosen medium of expression is also important. To tell the story, we feel that the work must be of the highest quality –whether photography techniques, photoshop, sculpting or embroidery.
In a collaborative relationship, there must be Trust between the collaborators. In order to move through ideas and images, each person must be considered equal. If someone disagrees with an idea or doesn’t like an image the other person needs to trust that it’s a valid point. Then the discussion ensues.
For those who are early in their journey, stay curious about the world in which we live. Curiosity is key in any new endeavor and a key to knowledge. If you want to be an artist, experiment with as many different mediums you are drawn to and then develop the Mastery in a skill to create your vision. First learn to Trust yourself and your own instincts, then see if collaboration is a good option for you. It only took 25 years for us to work seriously together. But by then we were pretty good at it.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Our biggest challenge is to find venues to show our work. Since our work is not specifically made to sell, it’s not the best fit for some galleries. Non-Profit art galleries are good, and some require membership. We have shown with Los Angeles Art Association three times and will probably apply for an exhibition again next year. We love to show our work in beautiful settings like the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los Angeles and we have also shown there, several times. Museums are the best venues for our type of work, but they schedule years and years in advance. We are hoping to partner with the California Nature Art Museum in Solvang, California at some time in the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.larsonart.net
- Instagram: lauralinnlarson
- Facebook: Laura Larson
Image Credits
Jason Jenn Maria Foto Dean Larson Laura Larson
