Larrie King (aka Mister Larrie) Provides Creative Encouragement with Style

Larrie King (aka Mister Larrie) showcasing his vibrant creativity through a fun DIY project on his popular YouTube craft show.

If there is a Superman of craft, his name is Larrie King (aka Mister Larrie). He quilts! He paints! He dances and does drag makeup! He bedazzles cookies and cupcakes!

In Mister Larrie’s Craft Show on YouTube, he leaps across mediums in a single bound. He also boasts a robust following on Instagram and TikTok, saving the day with a steady stream of creative encouragement and approachable projects.

Early on

Aptly enough, one of his earliest creations was a comic book, the genre of superheroes and their derring-do. “I remember making a comic book about my first-grade class,” King says. “Just a little hand-drawn booklet of pictures…and some wacky story about a unicorn.”

But his watershed moment arrived in sixth grade when he took his first art elective. And who was instructing the class? “It was my first Black teacher, it was my first male teacher, and he led me through some interesting projects and crafts that I had never seen before,” he recalls, foreshadowing the “Mister Larrie” he would become to the kids attending a summer art camp he led at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.

He retained the Southern honorific for his handle as a content creator and social media influencer in the craft space. Although King is also a senior art director and graphic designer at an ad agency, he is angling to make the Mister Larrie universe his full-time occupation.

Becoming a video creator

While the centerpiece of Mister Larrie’s Craft Show is start-to-finish DIY projects, the video production alone is craft. Well-timed closeups, sound effects, and other impish edits testify to an artist’s attention to detail. But his engaging style–as colorful as his trademark rainbow apron–also reveals a theatrical bent.

It is clear that King loves connecting to his audience, from his shorter TikTok and Instagram offerings to the full-length episodes of his craft show. “I grew up in love with and enamored by television,” he explains.

Although church choir and school plays allowed him to explore his penchant for performance, he was met with closed stage curtains in young adulthood. “In college was when I sorta realized and I had my rude awakening that maybe people who look like me don’t always get the roles,” King continues. “So that kinda shied me away from my theatre career and from really being very publicly facing for a while.”

So he turned to the world of design, earning a BFA in graphic communication (with a photography minor) from Northwestern State University of Louisiana. He went on to garner a MA in graphic communication from the same institution, topping it off with an MFA in visual communication design from Kent State University. 

But the early days of the pandemic afforded King the time and space to return to his love of performing, especially in front of the camera. He says that his goal was also “to learn about and implement techniques from television” on the production side of things. “The learning process was a lot of fun but it’s always something I’ve thought about so I feel like I’ve had a lot of ideas for a long time just waiting to be used,” adds King.

His 15 years of teaching experience–which included being an assistant professor of design–inform his ability to make “edutainment” out of the tutorials and craft history lessons featured in Mister Larrie’s Craft Show.

Becoming an artist

King is also a fine artist. His mixed-media paintings have been exhibited in galleries and are available for commission. But his views on art and craft are as generous as his store of pom-poms (don’t miss his pom-pom sweater tutorial). “I think that division [between craft and fine art] is absolutely a farce. I think the more we evolve as people and we evolve our use of supplies and materials and techniques, the broader art gets,” King asserts.

“There have been times I’ve been in an exhibition where I’m looking at miniatures of a hoarder’s home, perfectly replicated. Some would consider that a craft because it’s very crafty in the way that it’s constructed.” He says, “My philosophy is if someone calls it art, then it’s art,” reminding us that storytelling helps frame the art.

“What we see in a gallery space might be different than what we see at a farmer’s market,” King continues. “But it’s really about the context of the person who’s looking at it.”

“There’s definitely things that I consider art that you only find at thrift shops and antique stores. The definition is broader than people like to admit that it is, and we live in an age where we are seeing that definition blurred at the edges both in the gallery and outside of it.”

Larrie King draws on his 15 years of teaching experience to turn crafting into “edutainment,” mixing art lessons with hands-on tutorials.

A big-tent approach to making

That unpretentious, big-tent approach to artistic production is a core message inside the Mister Larrie brand. His experiments with resin and gummy bears, to name just one example, illustrate his belief that the imagination has no shelf life. Banish the thought that King, 40, is too old for silly voices, zany socks, and a love of Popples. he’s too busy handing out permission slips to play, at any age. But first, he had to give that allowance to himself.

King explains, “ I conned myself for a long time–and I think a lot of others did as well–into thinking that adulthood would mean you have to give up things you love and care about. The model of adulthood that my generation had seen, there was so much sacrifice of your joy and your personality that had to come with aging, and starting a family, and all that sort of stuff.”

According to King, his generation rejected that notion in favor of self-actualization and re-creation. But he is a cheerleader for those who might fear that they have aged out of the creative impulse. “The need to create and explore and express oneself–I don’t think that goes away,” he says.

In fact, he hopes to reach people “who missed out, or dropped off, and maybe never let themselves do [arts and crafts] because of whatever stigma they may be facing.” In the end, to paraphrase King from one of his show episodes, making mistakes and having fun while doing it might be the most heroic feat of all.