Larry Krone


Artist Statement & Biographical Note

In many ways, my work carries on traditions of American craft and country songwriting, though it comes from my particular place of queerness and my education and history in contemporary and conceptual art. I present my work relatively traditionally as art, though I smuggle in unexotic realities and aesthetics that often raise questions of taste and artistic validity. My life increasingly blends with my art, as I theoretically and literally include in my greater art making practice my work over the past twenty years teaching art to senior citizens as well as my past involvement in “fashion club,” a diverse design group co-founded by my ten-year-old niece and myself. My immersion in the worlds of such polarities in life stages, while experiencing my own “mid-life” experience in my domestic life with my husband and dog, socially among my friends, and most dramatically within some extreme disruptions in the family I was born into, has brought me to steer my curiosities in my work toward questions of individuality in the context of belonging, kinship, chosen family, and the progression of life.

Many of the images here are from my “Then and Now” series, which I see as a celebration of community, collaboration, and chosen family. I start each piece with a found piece of embroidery, imagining the person who made it and what their inspiration and experience might have been. Sometimes I join 2 or more pieces, creating a relationship among those unknown craftspeople and myself. I add found sequins, representing the taste and sensibilities of whoever discarded them. The final piece represents a new sort of family, rich with identity and bonded by at least one commonality – our impulses to sew.

Born in Chicago, IL in 1970, I was raised in St. Louis, MO and now live and work in New York City’s East Village. I have been exhibiting my drawings, sculptures, installations and videos since the early 1990s, most notably at The Contemporary Baltimore, The Museum of Contemporary Craft in conjunction with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), The Whitney Museum of American Art Philip Morris Branch (New York), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), the Drawing Center (New York), and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis who, in 2006 presented “Larry Krone: Artist/Entertainer,” a ten-year retrospective of my visual and performance work.

As a performer, I have appeared at music and art venues in New York including Joe’s Pub, La MaMa, Dixon Place, PS 122, Starlight Bar & Lounge, and the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as Mercer Union (Toronto), Croxhapox (Gent), Blueberry Hill (St. Louis), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Better Days Project (Hamburg), and Someday Lounge (Portland, OR).

My costume design and fabrication for my own performances has led to the creation of House of Larréon, my line of custom gowns and stage costumes, outfitting cabaret performers, dancers and rock singers including Bridget Everett, Neal Medlyn, Adrienne Truscott, and Kathleen Hanna.

I am a 2019 Caldera AIR, a 2011, 2012, and 2018 MacDowell Colony fellow, a 2017 Yaddo Fellow, a 2013 Millay Colony fellow,  and a 2009 and 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow.

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A Portfolio