Larry has lived in Chicago for over fifty years. The windy city has served as home, education, inspiration, and history-keeper. Qualities of Chicago have also integrated themselves into how Larry carries himself. He is functional and persistent, with a strong artistic center—still standing after years of hardship and many winters. New reflections of his spirit are created on the regular.
Originally, Larry hails from Terre Haute, Indiana, a small town in the southern part of the state. If he wanted to get out of rural living and try something new, he had to reach high—and he did. Accepted into the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, Larry received a BFA in Painting and Printmaking.
The move to the big city was a cultural shock, Larry explains. Despite his artistically stifled feeling back in Terre Haute, his hometown was a lot more integrated than how he found Chicago. Yes, there were more opportunities, but there was also an aptly felt divide in the city. At school, Larry came face-to-face with protests and a community-wide desire for change. Vietnam and the Trial of the Chicago Seven brought black student unions rallying together toward peace.
“When I was in Indiana I drew ‘pretty pictures,’” Larry shares. “My favorite artists were the Impressionists. I did portraits and still lifes. And when I got to the Art Institute, the philosophy was that you had to be an artist, and art wasn’t exactly doing pretty pictures. It was ‘finding yourself’ or being political. If you’re black, you do ‘black art.’ You had to show the times.” Larry felt as if his inclination toward creating peaceful scenes capturing the harmony in nature was rejected by his teachers. “One [teacher] said, ‘You paint like you’re from the 16th century.’”
Larry ended up making his living not only in art, but in gardening. Which, knowing his inclination toward the Impressionist era, makes sense. He describes his job as being an “interior landscaper.” His primary artistic realm these days is in landscape paintings—he’s best known for his water towers. Larry has also created a book for grade-school children, aligning his paintings with the history of the water towers in and around Chicago.
“There used to be thousands of them. And now,” he says with a rueful tone, “there are only a few hundred left. Less and less. They were the reason that you flushed your toilet; the gravity forced water up and into the tanks.” He goes on to explain the system, built back in the 1800s, and in his voice remains the curiosity of the young man who was admonished for painting in too “old” of a style.
Larry is respectful of the past and regards it lovingly. Raised amongst farmland—pure nature—he has not lost that sense of the “old world” where things took longer, science and nature could work in harmony, and water towers were a phenomenon as fascinating as a lightbulb.
After school, Larry met the woman whom he would soon marry. They had two children, Nathan and Lizzie. Happily ever after, at least for a bit. Until Larry got sick.
He went to the hospital thinking he had the flu. After multiple examinations, he was told his kidneys were “the size of prunes.” Larry trails back into memory: “The next thing I remember was being on a gurney with people over me, trying to hold me down. I just had to go pee. And they said no.” The experience was terrifying—from what Larry recalls, a tube was shoved down his throat, he was injected with medication, and then he passed out. Four days later, he woke up in the ICU to the news that his kidneys had fully shut down. He was then told that he had been put on emergency dialysis with a catheter. Soon afterwards, he received a fistula to replace the perma-cath. The dialysis continued.
Sadly, Larry and his wife had to sell their interior landscaping business, as Larry could not do the physical work any longer and had to commit to a dialysis schedule of three times a week. Larry was added to the wait list for a transplant, but in Illinois the wait time was between seven and ten years.
After applying for the Wisconsin list (he jokes that it’s shorter “because they don’t have motorcycle helmet laws”), Larry began an internet search. Craigslist for a kidney. Why not? He posted, and a week later, learned via his hospital that a woman had come forward. She had been called to do so by God, this anonymous woman from Haiti, and she was a match. The transplant was a success. Larry says, emotion reverberating in his voice, “It made me believe in miracles.”
The kidney lasted ten years. Three years ago, Larry’s body rejected it. Through the years, Larry had kept in touch with his donor via Facebook. “The only time I cried is when I talked to [the donor], because I felt so bad I lost her kidney.” With the transplant’s rejection, Larry had to go back on dialysis. In the years leading up to this, Larry and his wife separated. He is grateful he has his two adult children who are making their mark in the world; he could not be prouder.
There is one thing which has gotten him through the tough times, a practice that has reconnected him with his younger self, the art student. Larry has been keeping an art journal for the days he does dialysis (currently, three times a week), wherein he draws his arm. Every day he is on the machine, Larry does a drawing. His dialysis access in his forearm is the primary subject, all the blood lines that connect to the machine, and each time it is a little different. More details some days on the bandages, the needles, the tubes. “And I write little notes about the weight and blood pressure and all that,” he adds. Right now, he has about six of these art journals. Nearly 500 drawings. “I post them on my Instagram,” Larry shares.
Sometimes it is hard for Larry to find things that make him happy. He feels grief toward losing, in his eyes, the great outdoors; he used to take trips periodically to Michigan, go fishing, be out in nature. These days, he watches cartoons which make him laugh, and he enjoys immersing himself in science fiction. He gardens when he can, which gives him that connection to nature. He is working on selling more of his art and is interested in creating another series soon—possibly something linked to dialysis, or maybe another landscape set.
It has been a long road for Larry, but he has never lost his artistic soul. Even in the way he speaks of his history, he paints landscapes, filling in the details of sorrow and curiosity. The shadows, the pockets where light filters through. Larry is the true “artist in residence,” looking at the world around him like the “en plein air” painters of the 19th century. Sitting, observing, reflecting what he sees, and making meaning of the life held within the stillness. In the sadness and in the joy. Truth and beauty in the whole of the journey. The entire landscape.
Maxine Phoenix is a freelance writer and she also volunteers for RSN.
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