MENDOCINO, 6/27/24 — Larry Fuente, the Mendocino artist who put a million beads on his 1960 Cadillac, has died at 76.
His death was announced June 26 by his niece, Florida real estate agent Holly Fuente. In less than an hour, the news had made the rounds of social media with people expressing sorrow and offering remembrances.
“Mendocino icon Larry Fuente’s 2019 exhibition at the Mendocino Art Center was one of the most memorable and well attended exhibitions in MAC history,” shared MAC board president Debra Lennox.
After the devastating loss of much of his artwork in a tragic fire in 2020, MAC reached out to raise money to rebuild Fuente’s studio. “Mendocino has lost a vibrant, irreverent spirit in our community who is irreplaceable,” Lennox shared. “His laugh, his humor and his plastic beads will be with us forever.”
Fuente’s death struck many locals as particularly sad timing, as he was most beloved for his appearances at the sometimes wacky and racy, sometimes patriotic, sometimes just silly Mendocino Fourth of July parade. The parade is expected to once again pack the town full of locals and visitors next Thursday.
“Looking at Larry’s art car… the one he drove up Main Street at the end of every Fourth of July parade, registered or not—was like reading a Tom Robbins novel,” said Jennifer Kreger, a Fort Bragg physician. “When I’m shown a chain of Mardi Gras beads next to a Samurai sword and a glass slipper, I’m reminded… not all of life is tidily categorized, commercial or expectable.”
Anytime Fuente would appear driving “Mad Cad,” that extravagantly glam 1960 Cadillac, he was the star of the show. He almost never registered as a parade participant and often arrived after the parade was over. No matter. He always received a huge ovation. He and others from old Mendo coined the term “Mendo time” and resisted the structure that parade registration demanded. Even organizers admitted that nobody ever knew ahead of time what surprises the event might offer just made it more fun.
Fuente’s show at the Mendocino Art Center, “New World Hoarder,” opened in 2019. On July 3, 2020, as the world was locked down for the pandemic, Fuente’s shop burned down and much of his art was destroyed — but not the Mad Cad. Fuente escaped without serious injury, but a man who lived on Fuente’s property in Little River on the Comptche-Ukiah Road was treated for burns he suffered in the fire.
Later that summer, the Art Center held its fundraiser to help Fuente rebuild and replace some of the lost art.
Fuente’s only public black eye likely strengthened his credibility as an icon of the town of Mendocino. He was arrested in 1988 for marijuana, with a front page headline in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat blaring that Mendocino’s “junk artist” had been “nabbed.” He has been featured in shows big and small for decades, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to “American Pickers.”
His Smithsonian online profile reveals Fuente was born in Chicago and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1967 to 1968, after which he followed friends to California. “Since the late 1960s, Fuente has concentrated on producing a body of work that is marked by an obsessive interest in surface ornamentation. He delights in covering readily identifiable forms with beads, plastic baubles, buttons and mass-produced items of no intrinsic value, transforming the mundane into unique objects,” the profile states. “Size is no deterrent to Fuente, who once spent five years coating a 1960 Cadillac sedan with one million brightly colored beads, sequins, buttons, plastic lawn ornaments, and other items. Such works are related to a Latino popular-culture tradition in which automobiles and other objects are embellished with a profusion of brightly colored ornaments.”
Fuente’s art was featured in National Geographic in April 1983.
While his Facebook timeline shows Larry was born in September 1947, which would make him 76, this reporter was baffled, as the same timeline identified different dates the last time I looked at it for a story about the fire. Two different friends said that was just like Fuentes to play tricks like that.
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