Dennis Larkins

Dennis Larkins (born May 12, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his Grateful Dead posters and album cover art, as well as his gigantic outdoor concert sets created for rock promoter Bill Graham (promoter). Through his painting career, he became closely associated with and a contributor to the Los Angeles Lowbrow (art movement).
== Biography ==
=== Early life and education ===
Born in Kansas and raised in Colorado, Larkins got his start in creative expression when young. Although his earliest artistic memories are of painstakingly copying Disney comic book covers, it was through years of partnering with his older brother in the creation of scratch-built, complex and highly detailed model railroad dioramas when they were children, constructed out of scrounged materials. He went on to study painting at Kansas City Art Institute, Yale, and Colorado University.
=== Career ===
Larkins' early art career focused on landscapes around the New Mexico cities of Santa Fe, New Mexico and Taos, In the early 1970s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and began painting on a monumental scale for the San Francisco Opera. This led to a decade-long working relationship with Bill Graham and his team as designer, art director, and scenic artist for the massive concert sets of the annual Day on the Green rock festivals held at the Oakland Coliseum for Led Zeppelin, Eagles (band), Santana (band), Van Halen, and many others. The zenith of Larkins' concert set design career came with his collaboration with the graphic artist Kazu on The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981. The previous year, after creating an event poster for the Grateful Dead's 15-show residency at the Warfield Theatre, Larkins produced another poster design commemorating an eight-night series of sets put on by the band at Radio City Music Hall. Due to objections from the venue, the poster's sales were cut short and remaining copies were ordered destroyed. Enough survived, however, to make the poster a collectors' item. The following year, Larkins created the cover art for the Dead Set (album).
Later in the 1980s, he pivoted from live music to themed entertainment, working for a time as an Imagineering (company) for Walt Disney and as theme designer and art director for Warner Bros. Studio Store. Studio Stores, before going on to a 20-year career in theme park event and attraction design.
Throughout his career in the entertainment industry, Larkins continued to paint, eventually showing his art in the emerging Lowbrow (art movement) in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Larkins' fine art combines painting and relief sculpture on a canvas and/or panel backing, building up intricate layers of proprietary materials developed from years of experimentation for a three-dimensional effect. Described as "the Kurt Vonnegut of visual art", Larkins references vintage Popular culture, culled from from the pulp magazines, comics, and advertisements of his youth to construct open-ended narratives in his three-dimensional paintings. He has shown in galleries internationally as well as in galleries from Los Angeles to New York, and currently shows at Keep Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe.
Since the early 2010s, Larkins has occasionally returned to rock poster art, creating a series of pieces for the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System.
== Personal life ==
From the late 1960s, Larkins has lived off and on, and currently resides in, Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, he and his son David collaborated on a biography and career retrospective, Startling Art: Revealing the Art of Dennis Larkins, published by Last Gasp Press.
== Exhibitions and collections ==
Larkins exhibits his work at KEEP Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe. Collectors of his work include Cheech Marin, Don Henley, Baron Wolman, and the Estate of Bill Graham.
== Selected publications ==
* Startling Art: Revealing the Art of Dennis Larkins
* The Art of Rock
*Rock Graphic Originals: Revolutions in Sonic Art from Plate to Print '55 -'88
* Grateful Dead Scrapbook: The Long Strange Trip in Stories, Photos, and Memorabilia
* Art of the Dead
* The Moonalice Legend (vols. II–IX)
* La Luz de Jesus 25: The Little Gallery That Could
* ¡Orale! Kings and Queens of Cool
* I Am 8-Bit
Category:1943 births
Category:American artists
Category:People from Kansas