David Freed (printmaker)

Last updated

David Freed (born 1935) is an American artist based in Richmond, Virginia where he taught in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. His art has been shown extensively throughout the world and is in the collections of major museums and private collections. He is known for his masterful prints using the intaglio technique of etching and for his collaboration with major poets such as Charles Wright and Larry Levis in creating artist's books combining his etchings with their poetry. [1] [2]

Contents

Education

After earning a BFA from Miami University, David Freed attended the University of Iowa in the early 1960s where he met the poet Charles Wright [3] with whom he would later collaborate. Freed and Wright were both pursuing MFA degrees, but in different fields. Wright was working on a degree in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Freed was in visual arts, studying under legendary printmaker Mauricio Lasansky. In 1963 both Freed and Wright were awarded Fulbright grants, with which Freed continued the study of printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London and Wright worked on his poetry in Italy.

Exhibitions and collections

In Richmond, Freed is represented by Reynolds Gallery. [4] [5] [6] [7] Also in Richmond, his prints and collaborative poem books are in the collection of Virginia Commonwealth University's James Branch Cabell Library's Special Collection and Archives. In 1996 he curated an exhibition 30 Years of VCU Printmaking at Artspace. [8] His art is included in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery. [9] Other collections include: Albertina Museum, Austria; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Bowes Museum, Exeter, England; British Government Art Collection; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England; Frederic R. Weisman Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Kings Place Gallery, The Ruth Borchard Collection, London; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Holland; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.]; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 2001 Ted Potter presented David Freed, Printmaker, the first comprehensive museum exhibition of works by Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts faculty member David Freed. Ted Potter, then the gallery director of VCU's Anderson Gallery both curated and wrote the 107-page illustrated exhibition catalog for the David Freed retrospective show. [10] "David Freed epitomizes the artist/teacher, whose commitment to teaching excellence enhances rather than limits his ability to make significant art," said Potter, adding, "This retrospective exhibition is a fitting tribute to this master printmaker and dedicated teacher."

Critical reception

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright said of Freed: "There is a modesty in Freed's work - not of ambition but of presentation - that is like the spread of light in certain Renaissance paintings. One doesn't know where it comes from, but it is everywhere, enlightening, leaving us, somehow, more room to look in, a seduction of sorts that eschews excess." [11] Freed and Charles Wright met again while on holiday in Italy from their Fulbright grants. From that meeting began the idea of Freed's collaboration with Charles Wright on "Six Poems." [12] The collaborations of Freed with Charles Wright, in 2014-2015 the Poet Laureate of the United States, and with award-winning poet Larry Levis have been chronicled in the pages of Blackbird, an online journal of literature and the arts. [13]

In addition to the Fulbright Grant, other awards to Freed include Virginia Commonwealth University Award of Distinction, Southern Graphic Council (2009); Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts, Richmond, Virginia (2001); Faculty Grant-in-Aid, Virginia Commonwealth University (1989–90; 1983–84); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1983–84); Nattie Marie Jones Fellowship (1983); and World Print Competition (1977).

Teaching

Beginning in 1966 Freed was a full-time printmaking professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. [14] After his Fulbright work, he returned to the United States in 1964 to teach sculpture, design and children's classes at the Toledo Museum of Art.

In an interview by Roy Proctor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Freed said, [15]

Every new generation comes along with a new set of problems, and I've learned far more from my students than they've learned from me. . . . I don't like to make students work in the way I would work, and I would not presume to tell students that they should work in a certain style. But there are certain things I've told students that have stood the test of time. I tell students that there are no new stories, but that they have to tell those old stories as if they're telling them for the first time. In other words, they have to be true to themselves." [16]

Freed has been a visiting lecturer at Reading University, England (1992); Central School of Art, England (1989, 1986, 1977, 1976, 1969); Brighton School of Art, Brighton, England (1989); Is Bisonte, Florence, Italy (1989); Loughborough University School of Art, Loughborough, England (1986, 1976); University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1997, 1974); and the John Ruskin School, Oxford, England (1972, 1970).

Biography

David Freed was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1936, the first child of Clark and Thelma Freed. [17] He and his wife, Mary, live in Richmond, Virginia and have two sons.

Related Research Articles

Roland Conrad Petersen is a Danish-born American painter, printmaker, and professor. His career spans over 50 years, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and is perhaps best-known for his "Picnic series" beginning in 1959 to today. He is part of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

Siemon Allen is an artist working mainly with installations. He is living and working in the United States. Allen is considered one of the most prominent exponents of the South African arts diaspora in the Northeastern USA.

Nell Blaine American landscape painter (1922–1996)

Nell Blair Walden Blaine was an American landscape painter, expressionist, and watercolorist. From Richmond, Virginia, she had most of her career based in New York City and Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Willie Anne Wright is an American photographer known for her colorful cibachrome and grayscale Pinhole Photography.

Theresa Pollak American painter

Theresa Pollak was an American artist and art educator born in Richmond, Virginia. She was a nationally known painter, and she is largely credited with the founding of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a teacher at VCU's School of the Arts between 1928 and 1969. Her art has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She died at the age of 103 on September 18, 2002 and was given a memorial exhibition at Anderson Gallery of Virginia Commonwealth University.

James Bumgardner (1935–2015) was an expressionist/figurative painter, multi-media artist, and stage set designer who was a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of art in the VCU School of the Arts. As an undergraduate student at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), Bumgardner was encouraged by his mentor Jewett Campbell to study with the notable Art Students League of New York instructor Hans Hoffman (1880–1966), and Bumgardner received the last scholarship given by Hoffman, a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. Using his scholarship, Bumgardner studied with Hoffman in Provincetown in 1957, during which time he became friends with gallery director Richard Bellamy and artist Jan Müller. In 1963 in Richmond Jim Bumgardner and Jon Bowie co-directed a series of multi-media events or "happenings". The first was called "Synthesis" and was influenced by the productions of Allan Kaprow and the ONCE Festival of New Music of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After "Synthesis" Bumgardner and Jon Bowie invited notable outside performance and visual artists who joined in a series of annual "Bang, Bang, Bang Arts Festival" happenings in Richmond.

Susie Ganch is a first generation American artist of Hungarian heritage. She is a sculptor, jeweler, educator, and founder and director of Radical Jewelry Makeover.

Tanja Softić

Tanja Softić is a Bosnian-American visual artist and art educator who works in media of drawing, printmaking, painting and photography. She is Professor of Art Practice in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Richmond.

Davi Det Hompson (1939–1996), also known as David E. Thompson, born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and raised in Warren, Ohio, was a Fluxus book artist, concrete poet, creator of mail art, sculptor and painter living and working in Richmond, Virginia. Hompson's chosen professional name was a nom d'art for David E. Thompson and a transposition of the letters of his name.

Melissa Potter is an American interdisciplinary artist who works in handmade paper, printmaking, traditional crafts, writing, and video. She is a three-time Fulbright award recipient and was Director of the MFA in Book & Paper at Columbia College Chicago from 2014 – 2017. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and a MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

John B. Ravenal is an art historian, writer, and museum curator. Before 1998, he was the Associate Curator of 20th-Century Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. From 1998 to 2015 he was curator of contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, where he organized exhibitions of Ryan McGinness: Studio Visit (2014); Xu Bing: Tobacco Project(2011), and Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit (2010). He was curator of the VMFA's Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch exhibition, Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life. His lecture about the exhibition took place in the Leslie Cheek Theater in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The show opened in November 2016 in partnership with the Munch Museum in Oslo. He is the author of the exhibition catalogue Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Inspiration and Transformation.

Joseph H. Seipel is an American sculptor and conceptual artist who was formerly the Dean of the VCU School of the Arts. He was a member of the VCU faculty for over 40 years. As Dean of VCU arts, he also had oversight of the VCU School of the Arts branch in Doha, Qatar. He administered VCU exchange programs with art and design schools in Finland, India, Israel and Korea. He retired in 2016.

Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU in Richmond, also known as the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art at the Markel Center, is an arts center at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. It was designed by architecture firm Steven Holl Architects, and built by Gilbane Building Company. Steven Holl Architects was selected from 64 competing architectural firms worldwide, along with local architect, BCWH Architects. Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, in announcing plans for the ICA in 2011, said that the prominence of the museum's location, "bordering the city's Arts District and in the Broad Street Corridor which links the VCU Monroe Park Campus with VCU's Medical Center" would have symbolic significance. The ICA opened to the public in April, 2018.

Jack Glover is an American artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts is a public non-profit art and design school located in Richmond, Virginia. One of many degree-offering schools at VCU, the School of the Arts comprises 18 bachelor's degree programs and six master's degree programs. Its satellite campus in Doha, Qatar, VCUarts Qatar, offers five bachelor's degrees and one master's degree. It was the first off-site campus to open in Education City by an American university.

Richard Carlyon (1930–2006) was an American artist who lived in Richmond, Virginia and taught at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts, where he became a professor emeritus.

Barbara Tisserat American artist and lithographer

Barbara Tisserat (1951–2017) was an American artist and lithographer born in Denver, Colorado. She taught lithography at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a member of One/Off Printmakers and also taught at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Robinson House lithography workshop with Marilyn Bevilacqua. She was active with the Richmond Printmaking Workshop and served on the Advisory Board of Studio Two-Three in Richmond, Virginia. She was a member of the Summer 2007 graphics faculty at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and was a visiting artist and lecturer in the Lyceum program at Emory and Henry College.

Lester Gordon Van Winkle is an American sculptor living in Virginia.

Caitlin Cherry is an African-American painter, sculptor, and educator.

Regenia A. Perry is one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in art history. In 1975, Perry served as the first African American guest curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has written extensively about African American artists and folk artists.

References

  1. ↑ Potter, [curated by Ted (2001). David Freed, printmaker : a retrospective : [exhibition], Anderson gallery..., Richmond, August 31-October 28, 2001 (First ed.). Richmond: Anderson Gallery. ISBN   0-935519-24-6.
  2. ↑ "David Freed - 21 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  3. ↑ ""Improvisations on David Freed" by Charles Wright | Blackbird v13n2 | #gallery". www.blackbird.vcu.edu. Retrieved 15 January 2017.
  4. ↑ "David Freed | Reynolds Gallery". www.reynoldsgallery.com. 2012-01-08. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  5. ↑ "David Freed | Reynolds Gallery". www.reynoldsgallery.com. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  6. ↑ "David Freed | Reynolds Gallery". www.reynoldsgallery.com. 2015-11-11. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  7. ↑ "David Freed: Windows: For Bev | Reynolds Gallery | Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  8. ↑ Potter, Ted (2001). David Freed, printmaker : a retrospective : [exhibition], Anderson gallery..., Richmond, August 31-October 28, 2001 (Artist's Chronology). Richmond: Anderson Gallery. p. 83. ISBN   0-935519-24-6.
  9. ↑ "David Freed | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  10. ↑ "VCU's Anderson Gallery announces 'David Freed, Printmaker'" . Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  11. ↑ "David Freed: Artist". davidfreedartist.com. Retrieved 31 December 2016.
  12. ↑ "Prints & Poems Introduction | Blackbird v13n2 | #gallery". www.blackbird.vcu.edu. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
  13. ↑ "VCU English – Announcing Blackbird v13n2". english.vcu.edu. Retrieved 8 January 2017.
  14. ↑ "David Freed, Blackbird". www.blackbird.vcu.edu. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  15. ↑ Proctor, Roy (August 19, 2001). "Drawing from Life". Richmond Times-Dispatch. pp. G1, 6.
  16. ↑ Potter, [curated by Ted (2001). David Freed, printmaker : a retrospective : [exhibition], Anderson gallery..., Richmond, August 31-October 28, 2001. Richmond: Anderson Gallery. p. 145. ISBN   0-935519-24-6.
  17. ↑ "David Freed: Artist". Archived from the original on 2016-05-08. Retrieved 2017-01-25.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.