Hi!
Somehow four months have passed since I last wrote. And what do we have to show for it? Well, despite my desire to resist my ingrained capitalistic absolute need to achieve things at the risk of the disintegration of my personal feeling of self-worth upon not achieving them, I did “get a few things done,” as I like to say. The emphasis is on the word “few”. I completed a month-long performing residency at Francis Kite Club! I went to Yaddo where I sewed sequins on fabric, researched and worked on my book, and completed a textile masterpiece in collaboration with my friend Elana! I was/am in a group show at White Columns! I had my Larréons worn in fancy places from coast to coast! I had a whole thing about me on TV!
I will get to all that in exhaustive detail and photographic illustration (you know the drill!), but the most pressing thing for me to report at this precise moment in time is an event that will occur five days from the date of this writing: JIM AND ME ARE PLAYING A DAMN SHOW!
Hold onto your patchwork House of Larréon cowboy hats, because this will be a night to remember! I’m going on at 7:30 with a selection of my favorite personal compositions, MAYBE along with a cover song or two. Will I wear handmade costumes that display my semi-nude body revealing my month at Yaddo full of pampering and carbohydrates/void of any exercise? One way to find out! But the best part of all of this is that when I’m finished, JIM ANDRALIS goes on, and this man is on fire these days! Look out for some of Jim’s soul-filling musical creations, including some that will serve as a preview to his new album GHOSTS whose singles will start hitting the airwaves very soon!
You: “This is all very interesting, Mister Krone, but did I hear you say something about being on TV?”
Me: “Yes, you did!”
“The Art of Family” is a ten-minute profile about me and my work, produced by Emmy award-winner Tracy MacDonald for the Rhode Island PBS show ART Inc. If anybody would care to know who I am and what drives me to make the work I do, this is the thing to watch. Or, if you are somebody who already knows me and would care to see your friend thoroughly presented and celebrated in a way that is true to that friend, I believe you will enjoy it, too. Because I am so modest, I hesitate to get too hyperbolic about how extremely beautiful and validating I find this program to be, how respectful it is to me as an artist and as a person, how perfectly its representation of me aligns with how I see myself, and how inspiring it is as an artist to see what I do presented so lovingly and honestly, without the tiniest bit of skepticism or ridicule. So, I’m sorry, but I simply will not say it! But I’m thinking it, and maybe you will too when you watch it HERE!
Another thing happening RIGHT NOW (as of this writing) is the show I’m in at White Columns “Looking Back / The 14thWhite Columns Annual”. Every year White Columns gets a different person to curate a show that reflects the previous year in art through their particular lens. This year they asked my brother-in-law, acclaimed art writer and novelist Randy Kennedy to do it, and he was inspired to include a visual art masterpiece he had admired in my studio. This one:
I haven’t shown at White Columns since 2004 in Jane Harris’ excellently curated “Mama’s Boy,” so it has felt nice to be there again. Has it felt nice to be publicly referred to as a nepotistic inside joke by the New York Times and White Columns’ director, Matthew Higgs? Not really, but I can take it! Anyway, Randy did a great job, the show is beautiful, and it’s up thru March 9th when there will be a closing reception open to all. See you there??
Speaking of seeing people places, boy did I enjoy seeing so many of you throughout November and the beginning of December at my residency at Francis Kite Club! I did something new for this series of performances—I read from my WIP multi-genre memoir More Than You Need to Know About an Artist You’ve Never Heard Of, peppering my readings with related songs and costumes.
Each week I read from a different chapter, and each week I invited a different extremely talented dear friend or relative (OMG, am I a nepotist after all?) to play a set of their own music before I started. My guests included the inimitable Jim Andralis on manifesto nite when I read Chapter 6, “M.W.A.H. (Manifesto for Wayward Artists of Honor),” the fabulous Frances Sorensen when I read from Chapter 2, “Who Knows How Love Starts?,” my illustrious nephew Leo Kennedywhen I read from Chapter 3, “Krazy for Kanapés,” and the cool jewel Julie DeLano when I read from Chapter 12 “Dear Larry, I Have a Problem”.
I learned a lot about performing from having to come up with a completely new show every week, and I learned a lot about my book from reading it in front of people for the first time. One of the things I learned is that I think it’s actually going to be good! The response was great to the each of the different subjects and styles of writing, and the conversations with audience members after each show varied from personal stories about pre-adolescent sexual experimentation to attitudes about the art world to philosophies of being a good party host—all stimulating and encouraging to me that people might want to read what I want to write!
Side note: I am in the process of revising my book proposal for a new wave of solicitations to agents. If anybody out there IS one and would care to consider my proposal or if you know an agent who you think could be the right fit for me, please let me know! I’ll put your name in the acknowledgements. I’ll be eternally grateful. Hell, I’ll even make you 2 dozen of my world-famous technicolor deviled pickled eggs!
And then there was Yaddo. I recently returned from 4 weeks in Saratoga Springs, New York where I was under the care and encouragement of the amazing Yaddo! I wish everybody I know, artists or not, could have the experience of a residency like Yaddo, where you are able to recharge and be assured that what you are doing in your life is important and deserves support. Yes, it is a dreamland utopia that sets a person up to crash upon reentering regular, real life where one is more likely to be drained of energy and confidence while being told that they are unimportant and to fend for themselves, BUT STILL—they will always have those exquisite four weeks in paradise!
I spent most of my time at Yaddo working on my eternally-in-progress masterpiece of the future, “Then and Now (Everybody Loves Flowers #4)”.
I assembled all of the found embroideries, needlepoints, and latch-hooks of flowers for this piece the last time I was at Yaddo in 2021, taking advantage of the beautiful, spacious studio to create an ambitious larger-than-usual wall piece. This one is three feet high and thirteen feet long—too big for any of the walls in my home studio, so I have learned that the times when I have access to a bigger space, I need to go wild and work like hell on this piece while I can! My work now is to blanket all of the un-embroidered areas of fabric on the entire piece with sequins that I sew on one by one. Here’s what is finished on the piece so far.
Everything from the red sequins on over to the left is new work. Not bad, but I still have a ways to go!
I did break away from the sequins now and then to do some special “Love is in the Air” drawings on some old stock photos I’d found of outer space.
Some collages composed of much of the ephemera I keep tucked into my sketchbook.
And a bigger project, a collaboration with my friend Elana Herzog.
Elana & I traded materials a long time ago with this kind of a distanced collaboration in mind. I’d been sitting for years with these “samplers,” as she calls them—experimental weavings made from a variety of textiles, skewing patterns and creating a disorienting effect as the functionality and familiarity of these domestic objects gets messed up and reframed. So, what was I to do but queer up the whole thing even more (of course)! I laid Elana’s pieces out in a makeshift checkerboard pattern and connected it all by first destroying it and then Frankensteining it all back together. I cut a spiral throughout the whole thing and then immediately sewed it back together using yarn and my signature double reverse blanket stitch.
Just as I arrived at Yaddo, the Postcards From the Edge silent auction benefitting Visual AIDS happened in New York. Luckily, I planned ahead, and this little 4 x 6” honey did their part to help Visual AIDS bring in the most ever from this years benefit: over $140,000!
Thank you, Visual AIDS for what you do and for letting me be a small part of it for the past however many years!
Where’s the House of Larréon news? Heck, we’ve been on snooze! (For now!!!!) After a huge burst of activity and glory this past Summer & Fall, and with my current focus on the book, the sequins, the travelling, and all that, who has the time to create history-making elegance for the most beautiful and dynamic superstars of the world (you)?? Don’t worry, though, I’m sure by my next newsletter, I will have plenty of photos of new House of Larréon garments to make your eyes pop and your panties drop! Until then, please enjoy these two moments recently when my Todd Oldham Maker Shop x Larry Krone Peekaboo half t-shirts made it into the wild and were caught by the paparazzi:
Here Jeff Hiller—joined by House of Larréon muse, Bridget Everett who wears a gorgeous gown by somebody else—dons their P-H[o]TS at the HBO Emmy party in Los Angeles.
And here an unidentified supermodel and his date, Carin Kuoni enjoy Adam Weinberg’s going away/welcome to new director Scott Rothkopf party at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Speaking of Carin Kuoni, this is a song, debuted on my Krazy for Kanapés night at Francis Kite Club, which I wrote about what happens when I attend one of her and John Oakes’ wonderful dinner parties, and my compulsion takes over to be the…
Last to Leave by Larry Krone ©2023 I enjoyed your dinner party You really aimed to please The wine and the cuisine divine The abundance of cheese I see the hour is late And some begin to go But I think you know me well enough to know You can save my goodbye hugs and kisses Cause I’ll be sticking around to help you with the dishes Yes I’m the last to leave Whenever I can do it The last to leave When my hosts approve it When I’m done with all the social stress and fretting And my hyperhidrosis lets me stop sweating Alone with the one’s I came to see I can’t help but want to be the last to leave Don’t get me wrong, I love a crowd Of people interesting and new Tonight I met some great ones But my favorites still are you I’m full of canapés, dinner, and dessert I’m buzzed but one more with you couldn’t hurt Let’s soak the pots for now it’s only fair So we can sit back down and let down our hair Yes I’m the last to leave When I can achieve it My pride is gone And I may never retrieve it I would never want to intrude Or overstay my welcome, I know that’s rude To be alone here with the one’s I came to see Please let me be the very last to leave Our evening is not over can’t you see Please let me be the very last to leave
THAT WAS A TRUE STORY!!
Thank you for your attention, everybody, and for reading this. Do YOU have something to say to ME? Send it on over, and I’ll read it, too!
*P.S. and by the way, Gregory Kramer is also a wizard when it comes to solving website problems & stuff. He helped me spruce up and unkink this old dinosaur, and I could not be happier with the results! Contact Greg thru his website if you’re interested in hiring him for your website needs!
Oh, and please follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube if you are so inclined.
Thank you, and good night.