The Widlund Gallery at Tannery Pond Center presents: Mood, Message, Mischief Featuring Pat Frik and Dan Predmore
Tuesday | December 19 - Saturday | January 27
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM | Sat, 12:00 - 4:00 PM | additional hours by appointment
Reception: Friday, January 5 | 5-7 PM
Though Dan Predmore and Pat Frik work in very different media, their work shares an often whimsical and playful view of the world. Chance is a shared jumping-off point, both artists looking to the world around them for inspiration, be it an intriguing detail in a photo, an unusual color combination in a magazine ad, or an errant splat, drip or stitch during the execution of the work. Pat and Dan are both currently working primarily within a square format, which with its simple, graphic qualities, is well suited to minimal compositions which emphasize theme and abstraction. They each incorporate unexpected materials in their work, such as Pat's use of horsehair and rusted iron with felt, and Dan's use of recycled wood, cardboard, dirt and semi-dried-out chunky paint. Dan's bold colors, recurring symbols, and provocative words reflect his love of edgy, raw, and unique expression. Pat's use of sewing thread as line enhances her more muted compositions. Both are open to creative interpretation of the unexpected.
Pat Frik - Fiber Art in the Forest Having grown up in rural England, Pat has always felt a deep connection to nature and the natural world. After many years in NYC, Pat continued to take my inspiration from her current surroundings in the northern Catskills.
During the last few years, Pat has begun to combine her love of surface texture, developed during an earlier career as a hand-weaver, with stitched marks on paper and more recently on silk and felt. These base layer materials were initially enhanced with random dying and later with photographic imagery.
One of the themes of her most recent art work stems from closeups of patterns found in nature: rock formations, melting ice, pine needles on the forest floor, traceries of tree branches, tree bark. The associations that develop from this imagery through the addition of layers of thread as a linear element are often unexpected, playful and experimental. They represent her personal reactions to the outside world, as well as being open to wider interpretation.
The works are purposely small in size and demand close inspection by the viewer: each detail is important to the whole. Each piece poses an inherent challenge to the viewer to discover their own meanings in answer the question “what is this?” Pat’s fiber art work encompasses exploration of materials such as wire, toothpicks, paper collage, stitching on paper and more recently combining stitching with dye and with photo transfers on felt, often interpreted in a whimsical way.
Dan Predmore likes his art edgy, raw and bold, with the hand of the artist apparent. Making art is his playtime, creating works that delight him, and hopes you like them as well! He traces his artistic origins to childhood, when he first plunged his grimy digits into a pot of finger paint, made a mess, and never looked back. Self-taught, he has an insatiable appetite for abstract art – forever scouring books, magazines, museums and the internet, for new ideas to incorporate into his work. He eagerly explores new materials and techniques, especially delighting in upcycling found scraps and other objects (rusty screws, old socks…).
Dan’s work has evolved significantly over time. In the past, he created highly textured, 3D mixed-media pieces with bold colors and irregular borders. Recently he is working within a tighter 2D square format, using wordplay, recurring symbols, smoother surfaces, and a still-bold, but-limited color palette. Resin is applied to some pieces to achieve a slick, glossy effect. You can see examples of old and new work here.
Dan regularly shows his work each September at the Villagers Art Show in the Schenectady Stockade District. In his prior life, Dan enjoyed a 31-year career as a Turbine Design Engineer with GE where he satisfied his creative urges earning multiple patents in New Product Development.
