Seeing the Art and Meeting the Artist at Frieda

 

Frieda for Generations is a lovely coffee shop and an intergenerational cultural space centered on conversation and connection in Old City Philadelphia.  I have been going there since it opened more than a decade ago.  From the beginning they have hosted events and art installations. I stopped at Frieda on my way home from the Brigade 76 reunion in Colorado Springs.

When I entered the high-ceilinged space hanging across the entire back wall and the part of the east wall of the restaurant were 40 wire sculptures. It is the first solo exhibit by New Zealand-born designer and multidimensional artist Michael Rex.  

As it happened Michael was having lunch at Frieda with his husband Hodi Poorsoltan and two friends.  I took a picture of the exhibit and one of the friends said with a big laugh, "Would you like to meet the artist?" I said I would.  And I did.        

Michael and Hodi have lived in Philadelphia since 2012 moving from NYC. Michael's website describes the origin of this bright wire sculptures:

Michael’s pieces are created by hand , mostly with 20 gage wire looped in continuous forms. Some are executed in annealed wire and others are in insulated copper to preserve the color of the wire. Michael has also created copper pieces in uninsulated wire that can be hung out of doors and will develop the greenish-blue patina seen on older copper pieces.  

 

The inspiration for Michael’s work is twofold. As a young child he was mesmerized by the mechanics of knitting and recalls many moments looking over the shoulder of his mother and grandmother as they crafted pieces from yarn. The mechanical memory of this was triggered at a 2017 exhibition in Chelsea, when he had the chance to view the work of the late Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa. Interestingly, she attributed her fascination with making wire sculptures to her own childhood experiences of tracing shapes as she worked a plow on her parents’ farm. Michael was inspired to begin experimenting with wire and in three years of intense work has perfected his process. 

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Michael and I talked about handling wire. I told him I was just returning from and reunion of my tank unit from the 1970s.  I told him back then when we set up an outpost or headquarters we often connect the forward troops with wire-connected phones.  Wire is more reliable than radio. We had to be careful with stringing wire hundreds of meters to support it and keep it from breaking.  Michael's sculptures are hundreds of meters of woven 16- and 20-gauge wire. 

For those who want a lunch spot for conversation, Frieda has no internet. It is an excellent place for conversation--possibly about the art on display!

(For those who want to use screens, Frieda has seating outdoors and in the northwest corner of the dining area.)

A Forest of Color will be on display at Frieda until August 30.  

First Book of 2022: Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

My first book of 2022 was in the category graphic novel. But the book in question is not a novel. It is a philosophy book that is written with words and drawings.  

But graphic novel is the category according to Wikipedia, so I will go with it:

A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" normally refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term "comic book", which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.

Before I read Unflattening, I heard Nick Sousanis talk about how his book came to be and what he was trying to do with his use of graphics.  I loved hearing him talk about how our eyes follow images and graphical cues and how he used that knowledge to create the book.

I liked this review by comicsgrid.com

Over eight chapters, Unflattening follows an anonymous, sleepwalking figure as they step out of a regimented life and take flight to explore new worlds. Sousanis draws the imagery of these worlds from TV, movies, the classical canon of art, and scientific diagrams. Unflattening embraces visual references from Paleolithic cave prints to James Bond films, and verbal ones from Bruno Latour to Wallace Stevens. The protagonist bears at one time Hermes’ sandals and at others wings of its own; it is incarnated as a Pinocchio-like puppet confounded by a centipede’s existential challenge, ‘Who are you?’, before finally being reborn as a child reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The comic’s final image is of that newborn’s eye opening to see the world as if for the first time.

In the course of this journey, Sousanis dethrones the primacy of the word in a kind of Copernican revolution. He argues that image is not mere illustration, subordinate to words, but an equal partner and component in thinking. He explores stereoscopic vision and the principles of astronomical observation as metaphors in order to define ‘unflattening’ as ‘a simultaneous engagement of multiple vantage points from which to engender new ways of seeing.’ (Sousanis 2015: 32).

An extended sequence takes us through the world of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, in which two-dimensional ‘A. Square’ encounters a three-dimensional sphere who exposes him to previously unimagined perspectives. We need each other’s points of view, Sousanis tells us, to avoid become constrained in set modes of thinking and blinkered perspectives, just as A. Square must be enlightened by his encounter with the sphere. Words and images together free us from the limitations presented by either the purely visual or purely verbal. 

And here are a few pages.  

I hesitated to read the book for a long time, but now I am reading two other graphic novels (both biographies of scientists).  Unflattening will take your mind places it has never been before.

Enjoy!

My books of 2021:

Fiction

Non fiction 

Favorite

Books of 2022