Uncle Ernest (Virtual Artists Collective, Chicago, 2013)

In Uncle Ernest, as in many of his other works, you will want to turn away. You will see how love can twist and deform the very ones it cloisters. In some of his other collections, Larry has shown us how open, dry spaces can lay bare secrets or be the perfect place to forget the past. In the preceding pages, Larry reminds us that the deep, dark woods nurtures secrets so dark, the mind can barely conceive of them, even by those who commit the atrocities. Too much distance from society twists and hones the taboo into normal, but even out there, there are still limits of what is acceptable; there is an inherent moral compass. Sometimes, those minds bend to envelope the deeds they've created, but sometimes they break. Larry reminds us that madness is the only option for some in order to cope.

In a blue expanse of desert sky, the blue moon shadow of an owl's wing sliding across a clearing, or jars of sparrows' hearts on a window sill, Larry shows us the delicious pleasure and beautiful pain of the weight of memory, real and imagined. I am comforted to know that Larry is there to remind us of the things we're sorry we've forgotten and the things we wish we could.