Busacca Gallery

Artwork can be commissioned based on the material and availability. "Blue JFK" is a commissioned work in progress currently being created by the artist Robert Larson. The completion and shipment of this piece are scheduled for January 2010. "Blue JFK" is an original collage on canvas crafted from authentic John F. Kennedy matchbooks. It's important to note that the images of "Blue JFK" showcased here are for general visualization purposes only and may not precisely represent the final appearance of the completed artwork. Larson meticulously cuts it into a geometric, uniform shape and artfully pastes each one onto a paper surface, creating an original montage and a unique composition. The materials are discovered along railroad tracks and gutters. It takes him years to accumulate enough material to craft one incredibly unique piece of art. Projects are artistic endeavors that take inspiration from and build upon the ideas of urban scavenging. They are often created to address thematic concerns of specific exhibitions or to capture the idiosyncrasies of particular environments. Robert Larson (b. 1968, Santa Cruz, CA) attended Cabrillo College in Aptos, CA and California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. He has participated in group and solo exhibitions at venues including The Carl Cherry Center for the Arts in Carmel, CA; Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, CA; Eyebuzz Fine Art in Tarrytown, NY; Elouise Pickard Smith Gallery at UC Santa Cruz; Coachella Valley Art Center in Indio, CA; SFMOMA Artists Gallery; and the Kala Arts Institute. Larson is the recipient of both the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship and the Tom Allen Painting Scholarship. His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Arts Observer, Droste Effect, Beautiful Decay, Design Milk, and Wall Street International. Larson is represented by some of the top contemporary galleries in the country and he currently lives and works in Santa Cruz, CA.

Born in 1968, Robert Larson grew up in Santa Cruz, CA, a beach town nestled between redwood covered mountains and the waters of the Monterey Bay. There he ran amuck with neighborhood kids, spending long summer days visiting the numerous spring fed ponds that percolated up throughout the neighborhood, and playing in the forbidden quarries with his best friend, John Vallier. In the summer of 1972 Robert's family, including cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, traveled to France and lived on a small farm in Bussang. The smell of the cows, which lived directly beneath the living quarters, and the pungent cheese room which one passed through to enter the house, were the backdrop for many vivid memories shared by the entire family. In 1973-1974, Robert's father, Kenneth Larson, taking a year sabbatical, loaded the family onto the S.S. France for its last Trans-Atlantic crossing and moved to Kidlington, England—a village 5 miles North of Oxford. Robert's mother Janet set up household in a modest home across the street from the local pub, and while Kenneth studied British Primary Schools, Robert and his sister Joan attended English State Schools. While the family was living in England Janet's grandmother, Aurora Trethewey, died at the age of 99. Robert's great grandmother, though barely known by Robert while she was alive, became a tremendously influential figure in Robert's life. On returning to the States, Robert discovered his great grandmother's passion for collecting shells, rocks and insects. After her death the collection was kept in his grandparents' house where Robert often visited. The tall cases filled with specimens towered overhead and chests of drawers with row after row of carefully arranged and labeled shells and rocks, elicited a hushed reverence and awe. Robert's great-grandmother, a self-taught naturalist, became an enigmatic figure and inspiration for Robert as he studied her collections and began collecting natural specimens and artifacts himself. Her collection visibly represented countless patient hours of collecting, organizing and preserving—a tangible record of focus, perseverance, and a long, active life. Robert grew up with art. His parents were avid art collectors, collecting the paintings and pastels of English artist John Faulkner . John Faulkner became a mentor, teacher and friend to the aspiring young artist. Robert's early exposure to John Faulkner's abstract, and figurative art, and found object assemblages were paramount in shaping his identity as an artist. With the encouragement of an inspired high school art instructor, Kattie Harper, Robert began to consider attending Art school. After graduating from Santa Cruz High School in 1986 Robert attended Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Known throughout California as a community college with an unsurpassed art curriculum and esteemed faculty, Robert's art education began in earnest. He spent the next two years taking art history courses, figure drawing, two and three dimensional design and eventually settled into studying painting with artist and Instructor Ron Milhoan. Milhoan's own intensely personal work, intuitive and physical, greatly influenced Larson's work. After winning a painting scholarship Larson attended the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California 1988-1989. There he studied painting with Raymond Saunders. Saunder's urban, mixed media paintings introduced Larson to the appropriation of image and object in the pop tradition of Rauschenberg's combine paintings and collages. For Saunders music, Jazz and the street were his muse. Signs, Lettering, urban detritus and ephemera with its innate graphic nature were sampled, cut up and re-contextualized in Saunder's work. While attending C.C.A.C. Larson lived in an Industrial part of East Oakland within a community of older artists who had converted abandoned warehouses, factories and foundries into live/work artist studios. Larson shared a studio with conceptual artist Mark Oliver. Oliver's, no holds barred art attack upon the object, and his insistence upon conceptual priority were beyond Larson's own artistic maturity at the time, but that year of working together under the same roof left an indelible impression upon Larson's artistic psyche. Living in Oakland yielded yet another important development for Larson and his art. After classes Robert began taking walks along the railroad tracks that ran behind his studio, exploring the industrial working class neighborhood that contrasted so sharply with his picturesque and privileged hometown of Santa Cruz. Here in the open air he felt a strange urgency to create unlike anything he had ever felt in the studio. He began collecting the scraps of rusted metal and distressed wood, which could be found in abundance along the tracks—overflow from the many junkyards that lined them. Bringing his tools with him in a knapsack he assembled his constructions in the field leaving them where he worked on them and often returning with just the right object to complete them. This deeply profound connection Larson made with the urban environment has remained an essential part of his art today. In 1989 Larson returned to Santa Cruz supporting himself as a carpenter and house painter in order to maintain a studio and continue his art. For the next 5 years he continued his investigation of urban art, making weekend trips to Oakland and other Bay Area Urban Centers in search of material and ideas. Then In 1995 Larson began working with sculptor Richard Deutsch, assisting Richard with the creation of his large-scale sculptures, environments, and public commissions. Deutsch's sculptural understanding of gravity, space and the monumental have significantly influenced Larson's work. From 1995 to 2002, with Deutsch's coaching, Larson worked on his seven year project, "Evidence," an exploration of the urban landscape and the found object.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_art

The term found art—more commonly found object (French: objet trouvé) or readymade—describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th century. Found art derives its identity as art from the designation placed upon it by the artist. The context into which it is placed (e.g. a gallery or museum) is usually also a highly relevant factor. The idea of dignifying commonplace objects in this way was originally a shocking challenge to the accepted distinction between what was considered art as opposed to not art. Although it may now be accepted in the art world as a viable practice, it continues to arouse questioning, as with the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize exhibition of Tracey Emin's My Bed, which consisted literally of her unmade and dishevelled bed. In this sense the artist gives the audience time and a stage to contemplate an object. Appreciation of found art in this way can prompt philosophical reflection in the observer. Found art, however, has to have the artist's input, at the very least an idea about it, i.e. the artist's designation of the object as art, which is nearly always reinforced with a title. There is mostly also some degree of modification of the object, although not to the extent that it cannot be recognised. The modification may lead to it being designated a "modified", "interpreted" or "adapted" found object.