When Kenzie Larsen’s application for a Freedman Foundation Scholarship
was reviewed in 2009, the panel were unanimous in their opinion that
an ambitious project to cover each letter of the alphabet in a
separate country starting with Armenia, thereby producing twenty six
works of art, was unlikely to reach completion. Nevertheless, the
argument that she put forward was supported by a clear rationale that
indicated a sincere need to expand her horizons and although her
beginning in Armenia fell through, an inspirational trip through the
southern states of America provided an exploration into the myths and
legends that became the foundations of popular American B-grade
culture.
Pop culture became enthralled with the desert as a landscape for the
post war American avant-guard of the late 1950’s. Set against the
backdrop of space exploration that had already been the inspiration
for a bourgeoning comic culture, beat poets, film makers and rock
stars began to draw their own inspiration from concepts of alien
visitations and mystical ruminations that were invariably located in
Arizona. The desert became, and still is, the setting for films that
catalogue the struggle between the natural and the supernatural, the
familiar and alien as well as the romanticist space where good and
evil could be played out within a context of race, morality and creed.
It is little wonder that Kenzie Larsen’s journey from California to
New York revealed a rich seam of kitsch that continues to be developed
in her blog and travel diary “A is for America”
http://aisforamerica.wordpress.com/. This is a travelogue of an artist
who has delved deeply into her subject area to verify that popular
culture is just that, “popular culture” whether it takes the form of
depictions of American Indians painted on the blanched skulls of
cattle from Highway 61 or groups of animals preserved forever in the
taxidermist’s laboratory. A kitsch object can be identified as holding
little aesthetic value only if there is a pre-existing notion of
aesthetics and in this context, Kenzie Larsen’s work explores familiar
and sometimes sentimental themes juxtaposed against her own informed
sense of aesthetics.
Within the Freedman Foundation no other scholar or emerging artist has
ventured down the freeway that Kenzie has taken. Nashville, Chicago
and the iconic Memphis are mere names in an atlas of destinations that
mean nothing to one person, everything to another, but in the sights
of an artist, our perceptions are bound for change.
By Nick Vickers
