February 5-27, 2016

UNEARTHING: Images of Silence

UNEARTHING: Images of Silence feature three sculptures with videos of water (the river/the lake), walking (over sandy areas), and viewing the trees (into slow moving Northern California redwood trees). Round glass surfaces atop the sculptures provide these edited moving images of algae and rocks, dunes and plants. These are intended to provide light to dark exterior/interior experiences as if the viewer were inside the mind of the artist during exposure to some of the oldest living organisms in the world that now are facing a “hospice” condition.

Also featured are several paintings that further describe the activities of creatures that wonder about the changes in their endangered environment. Metaphors of the primordial forests are indicated, and are featured and developed in a video installation at the The Phillips Collection in Frederick’s ACTS OF SILENCE exhibition, February to May, as part of the museum’s Intersections project directed and curated by Vesela Stretenovic, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Frederick extends appreciation to and presents fellow artist Sean Watkins with his video assembly and production, ingenious video installation design, and for his collegial assistance and collaboration with the installation. Frederick also extends her appreciation to Matt Nolan for his photographs of the primordial forest taken in Northern California and accomplished during Frederick’s George Mason University provost award for creative study.

Helen Frederick is known mainly for hand-driven media such as custom-formed paper, artist books, paintings, drawings, and prints that often incorporate the use of language. She also adapts electronic media and sculpture in her installations,as seen in the 2016 interactive work exhibited at The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Frederick’s work is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC and many other national and international collections. Major exhibitions of Frederick’s work have been held at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, VA, Dieu Donne’ Gallery, NY, Henie-Onstad Museum, Norway, and in traveling museum exhibitions in Japan, Scandinavia, Europe, Greece, The United States and South America. Frederick founded Pyramid-Atlantic, a center for contemporary printmaking, hand papermaking, and the art of the book, which she directed for twenty-eight years. As an advocate for and active participant in the Washington DC metropolitan area art scene, she has served on the directorial boards of various local and national organizations and national peer review panels. She has exhibited and curated exhibitions and fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines. Her recent interest lies in understanding how assimilated technologies grow from indigenous cultures and are a primary trajectory of this century. Currently she serves as Professor of Art, School of Art and Design, directs printmaking and enjoys working with graduate students at George Mason School of Art, Fairfax, VA, where she is director of the department’s imprint Navigation Press, in tandem with her interest in coordinating international cultural projects. In 2008 she received the Southern Graphic Council International Printmaker Emeritus Award. She is featured in the Feminist Art Base, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and serves on the College Art Association Board of Directors.

Recent exhibitions include: IN UNISON: Twenty Washington DC Artists, Kenkeleba Gallery, NY, that featured prints produced in the School of Art, George Mason University printmaking studios, sponsored by Millennium Art Salon, FOUR PERSPECTIVES: Becoming MPA, McLean Center for the Arts, McLean, VA.; Celebrating Six Years of Hillyer Arts, International Art and Artists, Washington DC, anniversary show featuring over 86 artists from the greater metropolitan area, and Personal Patterns, curated by Claudia Rousseau for the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz. Foundation Art Center, Maryland.