“Patching the Earth” by Bert Monterona
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Creating Common Cround
A conversation with Larry Richard
by Max Eternity
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Larry Richard in 2008 at the Common Ground exhibition in Beijing
Blending philanthropy with the visual arts and environmental concerns, Larry Richard has a long-standing career in bringing interested parties together through his own style of innovative marketing strategies. A humanist, naturalist and entrepreneur, Richard is the founder of Common Ground, a non-profit organization whose motto is “Merging art and Digital Media for a Healthy Planet.”
Richard says the organization helps artists and the environment in three ways: raising visibility and awareness in the media, selling books and prints then donating part of those funds to other environmental groups, with the third way being what he calls “leveraging corporate social responsibility”
First envisioned in 2004 and formally organized in 2007, Richard launched the Common Ground International Touring Exhibition in 2008. That exhibition and presentation was first shown in Beijing, coinciding with the Summer Olympics held there that same year.
Selected from a pool of over 1000 international artists, 40 artists were been chosen to participate in the show, which makes its way to Los Angeles next month–opening at the A & I Gallery on July 8th.
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Max Eternity (ME): Hi Larry
Larry Richard (LR): Hi Max
ME: In 2008 we met online through an arts organization you founded, Common Ground (CG). You had a call-to-artist for an exhibition in China. I submitted a work and was accepted with a group of about 100 artists from 40 countries. Tell me about vision for Common Ground—why you created it?
LR: Sure, back in 2004 I was approached by the Americans for Graphic Art (AIGA) who knew of my background in promoting events, some of which had to do with technology and art. They came together with AIGA realizing that I have an interest in the cross-section of the visual arts and technology. The asked how would you feel about working with us to help artists in Cuba and the US who would use the internet to share their dream—their perspective across the divide–being so close yet so far away?
They asked for ideas, and asked if I could go to Cuba. They said sure, and I said…I’m in. I connected with the idea of increasing communication between art in the US and Cuba, with an event called Shared Dreams, part of the Cuban digital design exhibition in 2004/05/06. One of my ideas was to bring that concept to the US, and was told I couldn’t do that because the Bush administration would shut you right down.
I said I wanted to show art, and cleared some hurdles and we brought the exhibition to the US, selling posters (unsigned prints) donating the money to a non-profit that supports Cuban artist world wide.
It was at that moment when I realized that I could bring artists together despite all the boundaries. If I could do that, I would bring artists together to work on the environment, starting Common Ground in 2007. The positive response was overwhelming.
Larry Richard poses in front of the Huan Tie Museum in Beijing, 2008.
ME: “Merging art and Digital Media for a Healthy Planet” is the Common Ground motto. Tell me some ways, this is achieved.
LR: Well, in 3 ways. The most important ways is raising visibility and awareness in the media—a group of artist can have an impact to have a much larger visibility in the press. The second: through the sale of books and proceeds from the prints, donating money directly to 3 different non-profit organizations, World Wildlife Fund, Global Giving, and the Global Environmental Institute in China. The third way is something I’m calling leveraging corporate social responsibility. By that I mean for example, with Hewlett Packard as a supporter, we’re able to leverage directives given by almost every fortune 500 corporate board. Every one has a core directive–a corporate social reasonability directive, because every corporation wants to be seen as good corporate citizens demonstrating to shareholders and the public that they are good stewards. So we use that that leverage to offer them an opportunity to be that by supporting CG—technology and the environment by giving us the ability to have a platform.
We give artist a way to express themselves about the environment, and give corporations a way to prove their good corporate citizenship.
“Time of Rethinking” by Li Tiejun
ME: And about yourself, where did you grow up?
LR: In Los Angeles
ME: Were environmental concerns always important to you, and who influenced you in this direction?
LR: Yes, being a Californian I live at the beach. I have camped and hiked my entire life. I’ve been a longtime supporter of environmental organizations for many, many years. For most of my adult life I’ve been passionate about the environment. One of the reasons that galvanized my passion was when I had a granddaughter–to imagine my going camping with them, going to the beach. It would be such a loss to not have them experience the passion for a clean environment that I feel. If I can do anything to make sure they have clean rivers, oceans, skies and food. I’ll do all I can. They are a good reason to make me maintain my passion about the environment.
“Common Ground” by Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada
ME: Before CG, you were experienced in organizing for various causes and missions?
LR: Two things: back in 1996 I produced an exposition trade show here in LA called Online Expo. Think back, most of us had no idea about what the World Wide Web was to become. But, I knew it was about to explode. So I gathered corporate sponsors like Sun, ADM and Microcenter and rented an L.A. convention center to create the event. 35,000 people attended. We were talking about what the online world would be like for business and the consumer. That was my introduction to producing an event that had to do with technology, bringing that to the public.
Many years before that, I produced a touring exhibition of photography back in 1989-1992, called the Fine Art Collection of Dezo Hoffmann. His claim to fame was he was the personal private photographer to the Beetles. This was way before digital. The original negatives were owned by his family that had passed to someone in Australia. I went and negotiated rights to have the North American rights for distribution for signed and certified prints for this exhibition.
That’s the background that brought it all together.
“Hovering Child” by Fran Forman
“Ribs Cage” by Iv Toshain
“Miami” by Amalia Pellegrini
“Ec(h)o” by Peter Boyadjieff
ME: I see so much overlap happening these days—artists becoming entrepreneurs, community organizers becoming environmental activists, writers becoming publishers and so forth. Is this something you observe as well; a new more dynamic business model?
LR: I guess the word overlap is good. Another word might be multiple-income streams, because, it’s not enough in this day and age to be an entrepreneur. It’s also about using that ability to identify a product or service to make money, and accomplish other good things…raising awareness. And money then gets donated for other good products.
If I can accomplish this, leveraging my talent and expertise while making money, and artists get to make money while donating some proceeds to environmental organizations, that makes a perfect storm for a good way to use my life, right for my own desk. I would never have thought 20 years ago that this would have been possible—integrating passion with my work.
Me Larry, thanks for your time.
LE: I’m very grateful that you took the time to speak with me.
“Mother Earth” by Karen Swaty
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To learn more about Larry Richard and Common Ground, click here. A full 3-year archive of AD MAG articles and interviews can be found here.
Techno Meditations
In Art, Commentary on July 18, 2010 at 9:38 pm______________________________________________
Techno Meditations
b y A n d r e w R e a c h
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- Kathleen Kern-Pilch, Art Therapist
The Digital Age certainly seems to provide a path to higher learning, but can technology serve as a gateway, fusing spirituality with artistic enlightenment?
I volunteer myself as a case study, demonstrating how spiritual engagement can merge with digital technology, to create a vibrant, conceptual platform for art.
Having had a long career as an architect with one of America’s most notable firms, HOK in Miami, I started using digital tools for visual art after a spine disease forced me to stop practicing in the field.
As a creative person, having no other outlet at that time, I found myself restless and frustrated.
The pain from my spine took control of me both emotionally and physically. Then, at the urging of Bruce Baumwoll, my life companion, I began to learn Adobe Photoshop; using the software program to make greeting cards, employing images from Bruce’s collection of vintage ephemera.
I quickly took to Photoshop, having a built in advantage because of my experience using computers in architecture. The creation of these cards were a transition to what would become—making original digital art from scratch.
From the basic knowledge of Photoshop that I had learned, I was surprised with the results of my first venture into creating something visual; not from cutouts of a magazine but from the ingredients of my imagination. The need to create was so strong. My mind went into overdrive.
Prior to my disability, I considered myself an architect; practicing a visual art form separate from the sphere of the other visual arts. My artistic abilities were always in service to the making of buildings. Now I found myself creating art on a computer program as if the works of art had been inside me all along, waiting for the day that technology would come around to realize them.
Thinking back, I remember being exposed to modern art as a child, and during my college years I studied both architecture and art history. While at Pratt Institute, I also took a course on Islamic art, which began to open my mind to cultural aesthetics beyond what was familiar in my Western existence.
Probing further, I began to learn more about how other civilizations, both Eastern and Western, integrated art into their societies. And this gave me a new, more inclusive, dynamic outlook when thinking about grand creative constructs.
Unsurprisingly, the “total art” manifesto and practices of the Bauhaus school ended up becoming the greatest influence on me as a designer. For it was through studying the Bauhaus, how I came to fully realize that architecture and visual art could be married as one.
I was fortunate to have had such a myriad of educational experiences, because even though my Photoshop skills were rudimentary in the early days, part of me felt fully prepared to paint, with my resulting first piece being a color intense abstraction closely resembling a vertebra.
Like each of early works that followed revealed a hidden physical and psychological drama playing out in my body.
The richness of the imagery that sprang forth with a limited Photoshop repertoire taught me that more important than whatever tool, it is the imagination which is foremost—being the source of all creativity. However tools do matter, and transitioning from a place of crushing defeat as a result of my limited physical abilities, with Photoshop I began to feel like an explorer ready to take on the unknown. In the spirit of discovery I began to investigate aspects in my art that would give me a way out of my physical self—my pain.
Yet to charter new territory, every explorer needs tools and/or a vessel. Photoshop would be mine.
With conventional desktop printing the maximum size is 8 ½ x 11. This worked for a short while. However Bruce made the observation that I could benefit from having the artwork rendered at a larger size, and we subsequently invested in a large-format digital printer. It didn’t take long before my growing portfolio was printed and pinned up around the house, and finally I could experience the results of my imagination for the first time as I had envisioned the work from conception.
Imagination and technology were beginning to reach a critical mass for me, and revisiting earlier studies I recalled how the whirling dervishes in Islam dance themselves into a trance, seeking spiritual bliss. I also remembered how Tibetan monks make intricate sand Mandalas, only to destroy them shortly thereafter, emphasizing humanity’s transitory nature.
And so I began making spinning works and Mandalas in my own digital way.
Using imagination and technology, I cleared a space within my consciousness to channel in a spirituality that became mesmerizing. In finding myself creating virtual circles, I realized that my own life had come full circle. Like the whirling Dervishes and Tibetan monks, I was using imagination and design to connect the ethereal to the real—the physical to the spiritual.
The mechanical part of making the art–clicking on buttons, inputting values, moving the mouse–often goes into the periphery of my consciousness while working, allowing me to feel like a child again; curious, vibrant and full of life. In art-making, the pain that is always with me temporarily recedes to the background, and for moments I am lifted from physical restraint to unlimited spiritual potentiality.
My body of work requires multiple aspects—technology, intellect and imagination. When all of these elements come together in just the right way, I feel an indescribable sense of well being.
I’m grateful to be living in the digital age with technology facilitating my artistic reinvention, helping me cope with my disability and allowing my imagination to see the light of day; giving me a gateway to learn, grow and inspire.
Incorporating the archetypal circle form, today I’m continuing my techno meditation; an artistic odyssey that began 5 years ago. For I’ve discovered that with passion, vision and intelligence, digital technology can provide a potent platform to spiritual liberation and enlightenment.
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About Andrew Reach:
Andrew Reach, architect-artist (b.1961), spent his formative years in Miami. From an early age he had an appreciation of art, graphic design and architecture and enjoyed drawing and sketching as well. Decades later, Andrew’s work has been exhibited in solo and international juried exhibitions in Miami, New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Washington DC and Baltimore .
On his way to becoming an architect, Reach studied at New York’s Pratt Institute of Art & Design. And at various points in his architectural career, he worked with such notables as Yann Weymouth and Harold Zellman.
Reach was part of a small team of HOK architects responsible for building the Frost Art Museum in Miami, also having been deeply involved in the restoration with Harold Zellman of a couple of houses by Lloyd Wright; son to Frank Lloyd Wright. Andrew and life companion, Bruce, now reside in Cleveland Ohio.