Jack Lenor Larsen | 80

Jack Lenor Larsen at his apartment
55 Park, NYC

There are influencers in life — people that connect with you, and connect you with others, that are profound change agents in your experience. I can recount a number of them — people that generously did things for me, with me, that changed me forever.

I walk back through four and more decades, in my mind, and think: who changed my life?Surely I’d count my parents as key inspirators.

In no sequence, then…try this yourself.

And Jack Lenor Larsen. These are some of the people that I’d connected with, over the past 40 years — amazing people that I’d reached to, in the interests of learning more, visiting them, being with them, talking to them, writing to them, or working with them. And some were clients. And others were teachers. And others who I just connected with — all with instances of linkage that were profoundly changing in my perspective —my sighting of things.

The keystone, to any of this, is the sense of absolutely undying curiosity. Surely there are more, many people and influencers, that I never met, that changed me forever. But these are the closer ones to my experience in the living world. And this world is mostly the space of creativity and intelligence.

What I learned from Jack was a deepening of the love of the international, the crafts scene, the character of the artisanal endeavor. And that’s when I first met him — in Portland, the Oregon School of Arts & Crafts. On the Board there, as well as Board of the American Crafts Council. I’d been commissioned to create the identity and the signing — I did them both, drawing the drawing the logotype with a brush, in all capitals, loosely packed together — almost as if an unskilled renderer had drawn the art. These were then applied elsewhere. Ceramics, weaving, paper, signing the other modern buildings — all of porcelain enamel. And since that time I stayed in touch, speaking with him, visiting now and again, being out at Longhouse, listening, learning, examining. Sharing…

Jack turned 80, it was just last weekend — a celebrity bash, I surmise. And he had a party at the Longhouse Reserve, his estate in the Hamptons:

http://www.longhouse.org

The point to his efforts here, at Longhouse, is a kind of conceptual containment to everything that he is — a man of profound connoisseurship, in the classical if not Chinese tradition. One learned in the historical, the artful, the unassuming in a sense of scholarly understanding and thoroughness of study. So being with Jack is like being ambushed — the knowledge, the experience, the connections, it comes at you from all sides. Anywhere he’s been, he seems to triangulate on the best connections, the most interesting people, the most amazing things. He goes in, he comes out. With magic.

And the legacy of his work, his inspirations, the influences and what he’s brought to market are remarkable, detailed, fascinating and endlessly curious and diverse.

http://www.cowtan.com (see Larsen)

Yoko Ono’s contributions to the party?
Yoko Goes To Hamptons

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There’s more, all ways.

And more is rarely enough.

TSG | queen anne hill

Jack Lenor Larsen | 80

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