Maria Friske moves frenetically about the colorful chaos of her Roosevelt Street studio.
With sketches scattered across the floor amidst paper-plate pallets full of
swirls, and larger renderings lining the walls, you don’t know where to look
first. Yet walking through her studio you simply can’t stop looking everywhere.
The intense colors, the characters, and the story they tell are all a glimpse
into Rochester
history and culture — and into the artist’s mind.
Friske speaks in excited bursts as her ideas tumble out on top of
one another. She’s a barefoot blur bopping from study to study to add, subtract
or contemplate. This is clearly a consuming passion. And it’s a passion you
quickly adopt when gazing upon her work from her perspective and then,
ultimately, your own. It plays out like an American folk song where, despite
our shared experiences, each listener takes away something different.
And like the singer
who sings that song, Maria Friske is as wrapped up in
the Americana
she paints.
“I consider myself an
American painter,” she says. “And a regionalist right down to the neighborhood
level. What I like to find and explore in my painting is aspects of American
culture — our common aspects, or most common experiences — and re-introduce
them to Americans as culture.”
The characters and
themes in Friske’s paintings are larger than life and
proportionately askew. They skirt a kind of abstract fringe and yet seem more
real than what they depict or imply. They breathe. Culturally and spiritually
her work is utterly human.
In keeping with this
scale-breaking, rule-busting, locally-centric approach, Friske
— an adjunct professor at Nazareth
and U of R — is deep into work on her biggest piece yet: a chronological,
pictorial narrative of the history of the Swillburg
neighborhood from the 1700s to present. The piece is currently being painted on
five 5’x10′ steel panels and the completed installation will be mounted on the
I-490 wall on Pembroke Street
between Goodman Street
and Monroe Avenue
in August.
When the Swillburg Neighborhood Association decided to commission
of piece of public art for the area, President David Chappius
began interviewing artists. It wasn’t long before he arrived at Friske.
“I talked to a couple
of people and I just didn’t get the feeling that I got when I talked to Maria,”
Chappius says. “And I said ‘Wow, I betcha I’ve found my woman.’ When I talked with her we just
really connected and I just got a great vibe from her. It was instant. And I
said ‘You know what? If we get this grant, you’re gonna
be the one.”‘
Funding in the amount
of $16,492 came through The Arts & Cultural Council’s Culture Builds
Communities Grant Program in February and Friske dug
in.
The initial concept
of five panels depicting significant points in the neighborhood’s history was
created within the neighborhood’s committee. “As far as the actual design,
that’s all her,” Chappius says. “She came up with all
that and we just ate it up.”
“I spent three months
going to libraries, historical societies, pulling photos, sketching, thinking
about it,” she says. The initial sketches and subsequent color studies began to
pile up in her attic studio.
Friske began painting in late May, with help from a handful of
assistants. The huge steel plates line the walls of her garage. Now full-steam into the project, Friskepinballs between panels and themes in a flash. She
works on the eye of Sky Woman one moment, then changes
the tone around Cab Calloway the next. This project spans centuries, yet she
paints it as a whole sewn together with the Swillburg
neighborhood as its common thread.
“Swillburg
is a triangle,” she says. “This was an important corner in a lot of things that
happened.” At various points in time this area featured East-West paths used by
Native Americans, housed Lock 66 when the canal went through, and was a subway
stop.
“But there was so
much more,” she says her voice rising in pitch with her excitement. “Cab
Calloway was born in this neighborhood, the Underground Railroad was in close
proximity, Hillside
started out here as an orphanage…”
Each panel of the mural has a time period and a theme.
The first panel, “The
Creators Garden,” covers the 18th and 19th centuries with symbolic and literal
references to Native American deities and figures from what was primarily a
matriarchal society. The Six Nations are represented, as are the peace paths (East-West)
and war paths (North-South).
Panel two, “Always
Know Your Neighbor,” depicts the area in its early canal and pig-farming days.
It was the early to mid-1800s and the Underground Railroad is represented along
with a portrait of Frederick Douglass.
Between the mid-1800s
to the 1920s, Swillburg began to take on more of a
neighborhood feel. Panel three, “Always Know Your Pal,” depicts children,
schools, the orphanage at Pinnacle Hill, and a young Cab Calloway.
The early Rochester skyline begins
to crack the horizon in panel four, “The Subway,” with interior and exterior
views of a subway car and current landmarks like the Highland Park Diner,
Cinema Theatre, and Colgate Divinity.
“Currents” is the
fifth and final panel. It depicts the neighborhood in modern times, and
embodies the area’s pride and spirit; consider the 1970s when the neighborhood
protested, fought, and won against plans to run route 390 through its middle.
While each panel
features a central, giant, point-of-interest character, a pig pops up — or
actually pops out — throughout all five sections.
“What I ended up
doing was an abstract pig as a relief element,” Friske
says. “In all the subsequent panels it’s abstract, but in the first one it’s
literal. Two-and-a-half D, I call it.”
Friske is painting the mural with high-end acrylics blended with special polymers. The panels were initially
coated to prevent rust and then primed. When she’s done, the five pieces will
be given an isolation coat and two coats of clear auto body finish with UV
inhibitors. The damned thing should last forever.
Friske isn’t concerned. Nor is she affected by its
magnitude or the potential size of its audience. She just wants it to be seen,
to be experienced.
“I saw it as an
opportunity,” she says. “I knew it was gonna be a
long haul and a hard project and a big project for one person.”
The project’s mission
is not unlike her own.
“I’m really trying to
find what’s cool in American culture,” she says. “‘Did you know this? Isn’t
this amazing?‘ And go beyond the
mural-y mural and give them the gift of some real art; something they’re gonna really dig and find something new every time they
look at it.
“I just hope what
happens is first you notice ‘Wow, what’s that over there? That’s cool,'” she
continues. “Then you go up to it and start realizing there’s really something
there.”
Maria Friske’s Pembroke Street
mural will be officially unveiled Wednesday, August 30, at 6 p.m. For more info log onto www.swillburg.com
or www.mariafriske.com.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.
