Larry Reid
Counterculture Curator, Owner - Graven Art Image
Larry Reid has been a defining force in Seattle’s alternative art world since the late 1970s. He co-founded the Rosco Louie Gallery in 1978, one of the city’s earliest experimental art spaces, and became known for championing artists outside traditional institutions. By the 1980s he was director of Graven Image Gallery, where he pushed Seattle’s underground visual culture into sharper focus, mixing punk-era irreverence with serious curatorial ambition. His work helped shape a blueprint for the city’s independent art scene: raw, community-driven, and unafraid of the strange.
Across the 80s, 90s, and beyond, Reid expanded that influence as director of the Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) and later as a curator for the Experience Music Project (EMP), bridging visual art, music, and counterculture. Today he continues that legacy at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, remaining central to Seattle’s comics, lowbrow, and underground art communities. His career runs through the city’s creative history as a curator and organizer who built spaces for unconventional artists to be seen and taken seriously.
Photo by Rachel Crick at Graven Art Image in Pioneer Square
Transcript
Good to go? After a successful five-year run at Roscoe Louie Gallery in 1982, I opened Graven Image the following year as my focus shifted from visual to performing arts. Graven Image hosted many memorable events, including Jody Foster's Army, Youth Brigade, and Sun City Girls on August 10, 1984.
Inspired by JFA's namesake incident, I designed a poster featuring Ronald Reagan's head in a gun scope. Predictably, SPD showed up and shut the show down just as Youth Brigade began their set.
With hundreds of pissed-off punks pouring into the streets, mayhem ensued. They built a bonfire and erected a fly ramp allowing them to soar through the flames. A delightful spectacle that resulted in my arrest on an obscure charge of posing a serious menace to human life. A few weeks later, I forcefully argued my innocence in court, having been in police custody when the offense occurred. I was found guilty with the judge pronouncing me insolent and unrepentant. I was sentenced to 30 days in jail with all but 10 days suspended on the condition I commit no similar offense within a year. Due to jail overcrowding, I was released after four days.
About 11 months later, at Bump 'n Shoot, in my role as manager of the human, I helped orchestrate the infamous pyrotechnic effect of setting the mural amphitheater pawn to blaze. It wasn't until a cadre of cops approached the stage with me and their sights that I remembered the conditions of my release still applied. I couldn't afford to spend a week in jail as the human were leaving on a tour in two days. With a major assist from the assembled crowd, I managed to evade the capture, freeing me to continue programming incendiary projects.