Sam Lasseter

Give a cardboard box to a kid and they will play with it and inhabit a world that few adults can see, and if another kid joins the play they enter that world with ease. Unfortunately, as we grow into adulthood, we lose that ability to play—frankly, it is taught out of us. We conform kids to our sense of etiquette and put them in a school system that cannot teach toward creativity. Traditional galleries also have a tendency to fit into an adult’s perspective, with unwritten rules and etiquette that kids struggle to fit into. And yet that creativity and play is inherent in us, it is still there, just buried under societal norms. I try to bring the “cardboard box” into the gallery and break that convention; to bring a sense of play and humor to the white wall setting. To do that I rely on nostalgia and humor; to give the viewer permission to reminisce on the child they once were and just play.

Sam Lasseter’s fundamental goal with his art is to spread joy and happiness to his viewers. His art has always played with nostalgic subject matter to connect with viewers and bring forward memories of childhood and play. Lasseter’s current body of work is no exception, he brings classic American toys and candies to the gallery wall, realistically enlarged to show every detail; it is a blend of pop art and hyperrealism. Lasseter’s history of making art to make people smile goes back to his work as a puppet builder for the theater, theme park and movie industries in Atlanta, Portland and New York. In 2015 he exhibited in a solo gallery exhibition called Joy—an accumulation of his time at The Savannah College of Art and Design—where all of the art was meant to make the viewer smile and share a laugh. Lasseter contends with the challenge that galleries are predisposed to be serious environments, nonetheless, he understands the power of nostalgia and humor and tries to make art to connect with the inner child within all of us.