BOB CARR TRIBUTE
by Ron Sorter
“He was a talented artist and flawed man,
but lived and died his own way” – Jennifer
Robert Thomas Carr was a friend of mine, and he died on the first day of 2024 at the age of 81. He was an amazing artist and a master with tile, paint, plaster, and every power tool imaginable. He was smart, funny, and complicated. Sometimes, his turmoil got the best of him.
Mona Lisa House 1992 – Bob painted this entry facade onto clapboard siding. photo: John McEvoy.
He was a well-known artist in Redstone for an unusual reason. My wife Michelle often worked at the Redstone Art Center and said, “The one question Bev and I get the most is, ‘Who painted the Mona Lisa on that last house on the Boulevard?’ Redstoners knew it was Bill Jochem’s house, but to everyone else, it was simply “The Mona Lisa House.”
I asked Bill Jochems about it, and he said, “Bob had done some work for me and asked me if I’d mind him painting a portrait of Mona Lisa on my house. I didn’t, so he painted not just her but a window, porch, and curtain, and the finished product was so perfect that there was no way to tell from the Boulevard that it was painted on clapboard siding. A perfect trump l’oeil. He later added Da Vinci’s face, but it’s all been painted over now, except for their faces.”
Bill said, “His lithographs of local buildings like the Inn were drawn from photos, but he turned them into something else. The perfect angle, the perfect light, it seemed like magic.”
I asked Jennifer, his former wife, about Bob and their life together, and she told me, “Bob was a kid in Maryland and spent lots of time on the sidewalks in D.C., at 11 or 12, doing portraits of people for money. After high school, he was admitted to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he stayed a year and then went into the Army.
“I met Bob in ’84 at a party of artists and musicians in New York City,” she said. “He’d been living there since the ‘60s, and I’d been singing all over the city and at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center with the NY Philharmonic.
“I knew and sang with Renee Fleming while I was at the Aspen Music Festival from ’82-‘88. Bob visited me there in ’87 and painted a four-story mural on a building that was eventually hidden when the Ritz Carlton was built. But Ben and Jerry had seen it and asked him to do one for them in D.C.
“In ’87, we bought our house in Redstone and got married in the backyard in ’88. We had a grand piano out there! Renee came and sang with a choir of 30 opera singers, and Bill Jochems and Carrie McDonald brought buckets of wildflowers. It was wonderful!
“Then we rented our house and went to D.C., where Bob did the B&J mural. We visited friends and family, finally returning to Redstone, where our son Grady was born.”
Kevin Kelly had Bob do a private portrait on a building behind his house.“I asked him to do Vermeer’s Girl with A Pearl Earring,” he said.“I wanted it to be for Redstoners who use the road back there. Over the years, it’s rotted off from the sun. He did the same portrait on canvas, so I’m putting that out there, protected from the elements.
“Bob was one of the most talented people I’ve ever met,” he said. “He is the finest plasterer, and he can do amazing on-site calligraphy. He’s not easy to deal with, for sure.”
“We had a fabulous time in Redstone,” Jennifer said, “but with speed bumps. One of my favorite memories is having dinner at your place, little Grady playing with his trucks on the floor, and Michelle beating us at Trivial Pursuit. But we eventually wanted to start over somewhere new, so in ’98, we moved to Mancos, where Bob built us a house. It didn’t work out, though, and we divorced. I moved to Texas, and Bob eventually returned to Redstone.”
Bob did a masterly plaster job for me when he returned. I’d added a big room to our house, with a folded origami ceiling, reaching from 8’ to the 15’ ridge beam. I mixed mud and hoisted it to him on our scaffolds. This 65-year-old man moved scaffold to scaffold, all day long, 10’ above the concrete floor, hawk in his left hand, trowel in his right, saying things like, “I did a lot of Venetian plaster in New York. See, most guys if they’re right-handed, they’ll put all the plaster on in identical curves.
“Instead, you gotta do random swipe sin every direction, like this. If you don’t, you’ll see those identical curves forever.” Years later, I’d stare at that ceiling, amazed at his artistic talent. And his dedication to doing it perfectly.
He lived up Coal Basin in his van then. He had a compressor in it, and the airbrush portraits he did were terrific. He gave me this one. That hat is perfect.
As we worked together over the years, we talked about everything, including our kids, and he told me his greatest regret was that he hadn’t been a better father to Grady. Bob would sometimes explode when frustrated, and I know they both grieved his difficulty in finding some common ground. Nevertheless, later, when Bob was ailing and alone, Grady was the one who moved to Grand Junction to be with him.
Grady said, “The past few years, especially the last six months, were phenomenally different. We finally got so we could talk straight with each other. I was sitting with him one day and said, ‘You thought you were such a bad father. You were a great father. At least you taught me what not to do.’ We’d developed our bond enough, finally, that we both laughed at that. This is a linked picture of us both at about the same age.
“I requested his Army records,” Grady said. “He was always convinced he wasn’t eligible for anything from the VA; in fact, he’d always refused help of any kind. But eventually, he had to admit it was needed, and I helped him get care at the VA in Grand Junction and eventually to live in their domicile unit there.”
“At the end, as they eased his pain, we both knew we’d made it. I held his hand as he died.”
I wonder. How many parents can know, as they lay dying, with their son holding their hand, that both of their souls have finally been empowered by the other after a lifetime of it not being so? Bob knew that as he drew his last breath, a godsend from Grady.