3/16/10

3. 203 Westminster Street


Susan Freda


Rhode Island Heavy Metals Climbing Vine
Mixed media

About the Work
My artwork has a parasitic relationship to its environment, it grows from what humankind has accumulated and overlooked. The provisions of these resources depend on the industrial, medical, and architectural environments and on the electronic, insulated, and plumbed conditions that society has built

By combining industrial and natural materials with forms based from the world of nature, including those of the body, I am building hybrid organisms. These organisms are alive and flourishing, often invasively, as they grow salt crystals or channel water or electricity from their host. At times they become the record of a natural process, leaving behind delicate and ephemeral marks as a trace or memory of a life. My organism’s exhibit the duplicity of impermanence and resilience found in all biological life, from the great expanses of solar and ecological systems to the most minute and personal, the self.



About the Artist
Susan Freda is a sculptor and jeweler working in RI. She received her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1996 and her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2009. Inspired by the detritus of RI’s textile and jewelry industries, her work is informed by the intricacy, shine, and the handmade qualities of the products made here. Susan's work often incorporates industrial materials that have been utilized to approximate natural and organic systems. Her work references nests, wings, vines, arteries, scales, and neurons, assuming a range of forms from dresses and shoes to hybrid incarnations of plant, mineral, and animal structures. Susan has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and an artist residency at the de Young Museum of San Francisco. Her work can be found in the collections of Fidelity Investments, Meditech, and Neiman Marcus, among others. Susan's shoe sculptures can be seen traveling with the Fuller Museum as well as with Craft Alliance of St. Louis, MO. Her wearable fashion pieces have recently been included on the runway in NY's Fashion Week 2010.


To learn more about the artist, please go to: www.susanfreda.com

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