SELF PORTRAITS WASHED
Group of 4, Digital prints on pigmented flax, 18” x 18”
Using my own self portrait as a witness, my face with eyes closed is digitally washed by water and words to emphasize melancholy and despair, but also to refer to an unconscious state closing off from danger, and in prayer.
PARADOX EXHIBITION
PARADOX was planned as an exhibition for the American University Museum, Katzen Art Center, Washington, DC scheduled for fall, 2020, but cancelled due to Covid-19.
American University features virtual materials for the exhibition.
In the fall of 2020, three veteran artists, including myself, Yuriko Yamaguchi and Michael Pestel, were invited to present our work on the first floor and the sculpture garden in the Katzen Museum of Art. Due to the coronavirus and lockdown the Katzen announced it was cancelling shows, including ours, along with 13 other international exhibitions.
In lieu of a physical show of my work, and in an attempt to show the work prepared over the past two years in preparation for the exhibition, I offer this new website for you to visit. The PARADOX/Milestones, Witness Wall, Words, Washed Portraits, and Hungry Ghosts were created for installation in the museum spaces. Other works produced during the pandemic lockdown are also included here.
The PARADOX exhibition explores contradictory inter-related elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time, and that grow from empathy rather than rational thought. It also refers to permanence and change. The Paradox title arises from our responses that are collectively paradoxical and refers to the works that consider humankind’s survival while we are perpetuating so many things that contribute to our own demise. Themes of enclosure, erasure, fragmentation, entanglement, contradiction, distance and belonging are nuanced in various juxtapositions in my works, revealing multiple cultural and aesthetic identities.
PARADOX - YouTube
In September 2019, Helen Frederick and Buzz Spector discussed the planning and context of the PARADOX exhibition, while Spector was visiting Reading Road Studio. Video credit: Susan Saandholland. Watch on YouTube
PARADOX ARTIST BOOK
PARADOX, the artist book, is based on artworks by Helen Frederick, Michael Pestel and Yuriko Yamaguchi, and was produced to serve as a record of the collaborative project PARADOX, 2020. Dynamic essays by Erin Devine and Buzz Spector are featured, along with reflective images of installation works intended for the American University Museum, Katzen Art Center. The artists appreciate that during the pandemic, the artist book provides essays and details of installation works intended for the museum. Designed by Helen Frederick with assistance from Emily Fussner, the artist book includes scored flax covers produced at Reading Road Studio, Silver Spring, MD, with 47 interior pages printed by Brown Printing, Portland, Oregon.
Edition 60 with 10 artist proofs
Available for collection: $250 plus shipping and handling
Contact hfrederick1945@gmail.com to order
