Viola Frey was an artist often credited with pushing the boundaries of traditional ceramic sculpture. Although best known for her larger-than-life ceramic figures, over the years her practice also encompassed painting, drawing, bronze sculpting and photography. Frey’s subject matter often features aspects of daily life such as men in blue business suits, women in floral dresses or in the nude, as well as collage pieces including seemingly random trinkets and collectibles in a style often referred to as bricolage.
In her 1992 exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (then known as The Fabric Workshop), Frey displayed two wallpaper designs—entitled Classical and Artist’s Mind/Studio/World—alongside her six-foot sculpture, Pink Lady. Both wallpapers were printed on paper-backed cotton, depicting the naked form with “cross-cultural” objects such as Buddhas, Western figurines, and Pre-Colombian pots. With these objects Frey hoped to illustrate a sense of interconnectedness, a recurring theme in her drawings, ceramics, and paintings.
Whereas most Artists-in-Residence travel to Philadelphia to work in FWM’s studios, Frey developed her designs remotely from her San Francisco, CA studio. FWM Project Coordinator and Master Printer Mary Anne Friel, then based in the Bay Area, would work with Frey in the studio and travel back and forth to Philadelphia to prepare screens and make proofs for the artist to edit and approve. With 24 screens required to screenprint the designs, Frey’s colorful and dynamic wallpapers would prove to be some of the most technically complex undertaken by the institution.
After her residency at The Fabric Workshop, Frey went on to showcase her monumental ceramic works in galleries across the United States and beyond. Her bold techniques and prolific practice have long been considered a significant contribution to modern art. With a celebrated career spanning over five decades, Frey continued working in her Oakland, CA studio until her passing in July 2004.
