The Local Art of Larry Bassett

The Local Art of Larry Bassett

May 2017

I decided early in my life to try to match my life with my values. One of the first issues I faced in my young adult life was Vietnam. If I was drafted was I going to go to war and kill other human beings. It seemed obvious to me at the young age of 20 that I was not going to be a warrior. I was not drafted in the 1960s because I was first a student and then a father. Because I was not drafted I did not have to decide if I was going to Canada or prison. As a human service worker I experienced the lives of people living in poverty in a Pontiac Michigan housing project. As a young person just out of college Iexperienced the killing of four Kent State students on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. By the end of the 1970s I had decided that I could not in good conscience continue to pay my federal income taxes when so much of those taxes went to pay for past, current and future wars. If I would refuse to fight in a war as a conscientious objector how could I pay for someone else to fight and kill and be killed? Rather than pay federal income taxes for war, I contributed the money I refuse to pay in Federal taxes to meet human needs. This I do openly as an act of civil disobedience.

When I moved to Lynchburg with my family 14 years ago we moved into Riverviews Artspace, a new community dedicated to the renovation of downtown Lynchburg by providing affordable housing as well as a venue for artistic presentations. Although I am not an artist, my sister was an artist and my father realized a lifetime dream of doing watercolor art after he moved into a assisted living facility in Michigan when he was 90. I started buying local art at the annual Ann Arbor Art Festival in the 1960s. When I found myself at Riverviews Artspace surrounded by art and artists, I felt quite at home. A small group of us who lived and worked here got together to be a part of the First Fridays movement in Lynchburg and to begin the Riverviews arts organization. And due to the work of many many people things just have really taken off in the past 14 years at the corner of Jefferson and Ninth Streets.

My values have led me to refuse to pay for war, redirecting my federal income taxes to work for peace and justice and to meet many human needs. My values have led me to support local arts in the best way that I know how, by directly supporting local artists. One of the ways we express our values is by how we use our resources. I choose to resist paying for a war paying instead to meet human needs. I value artistic expression and have chosen to support many local artists. I love being surrounded by local art that I have selected piece by piece over the years. My loft at Riverviews Artspace is filled with local art both in my home and in the spacious hallways. My goal has always been to make it possible for more people to see my local art collection and this exhibit in the Craddock Terry gallery in the building that I love is an incredible realization of that goal.

So this is a lot of information about me. But I want to share the spotlight with as many of the local artists as I can. I have bought a lot of my art at Riverviews and the Academy. But I have also bought quite a bit from the artist directly. I know almost every artist personally and that is a wonderful thing. I hope the fact that you have come to this exhibit and are reading this will help you to decide to buy that next piece

of local art that you see and love. Because that is exactly what I have done!