Bob Dohrmann received his MFA in Painting and Drawing in 1992 at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington. In 1999 he took a position at The University of Oklahoma, mainly teaching foundation courses. Over the years he has taught a variety of Studio and Art and Criticism courses, but currently the bulk of his duties are sophomore drawing, collage & assemblage and comics & sequential art.
In 2018, Dohrmann took the pseudonym Leon Richmond. In combination with traditional found 2D and 3D materials, the objects used to construct his body of work consist of thrift store large romantic cardboard print paintings, shadow box clocks, unlistenable LP records and a variety of 3D objects for assemblages. The process of cultural anthropology (picking though thrift stores) is conducted anywhere he happens to find cheap material Americana ephemera. He likens these stores to museums (also consumer graveyards) where billions of affordable consumer goods go to die and hopefully be reborn. When he finds something that piques his curiosity, he “re-arts” the object and gives it a new life through remix and mash-up strategies. The antiquated appearance in the found pieces are crucial, as each vintage object comes with a ready-made veneer of age. This age signifies American consumer history and points directly to our current relationship to many concerning topics of today. His work mainly addresses the impacts of: 1. Middle/upper class consumerism, 2. Low-cost mass production (and planned obsolescence), 3. The subjective and social well-being of traditional home and domestic life, 4. Unmonitored capitalistic greed, 5. Climate concerns, 6. Patriarchal power systems, 7. The legacy and dilemmas we are leaving our youth and 8. White American hierarchies.
Email: bobd@ou.edu
