Michelle Frick | Portal: Governors Island 2019

Michelle Frick will present a site-specifc installation for her fourth inclusion in Portal: Governors Island. Three works will be gathered to interact with one another in the exhibit. Two of the works, Megafauna: Cuban Cursorial Owl and Bloodbirds, were made during the 4heads artist residency on Governors Island this summer. The exhibition will be on view August 31 – September 29, 2019.

Frick makes impressions of living things, their struggle, their fragility. Her sculpture and installation work exists at the intersection of medicine and nature. There is a quiet, observant quality to it. Her practice took this focus when she observed something few people see–family members undergoing repeated surgical procedures. As nurses applied bandages and placed intravenous lines she began, also through repetitive processes, to make objects–multiples of birds and nests–from the the hospital trash that the healing process generated. Recently, she has begun to make birds with materials derived from petroleum products, such as resin and silicone rubber, in an intermingling of the synthetic and natural worlds.

In Frick’s work, a series of contradictions are implied. These include nature and the arti cial world that sustains us, the natural resilience of the human body and the advanced medical technology we have come to rely on, fear and sweetness, and waste and environmental awareness.

Michelle Frick’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 90’s in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Rome. Her work has been featured four times at Portal: Governors Island in New York. Frick has received an Artist in the Marketplace fellowship from The Bronx Museum of the Arts and a BRIO grant. In 2013, ‘14, and ’19 she was selected for the 4heads artist residency on Governors Island. Her work has been featured in Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities and written about in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time Out New York. Michelle lives in the Bronx and works in Yonkers, New York.

Contact:
michelle.frick@mac.com
michellefrick.org
@michellefrickart

About ArtsWestchester

For more than 50 years, ArtsWestchester has been the community’s connection to the arts. Founded in 1965, it is the largest private not-for-profit arts council in New York State. Its mission is to create an equitable, inclusive, vibrant and sustainable Westchester County in which the arts are integral to and integrated into every facet of life. ArtsWestchester provides programs and services that enrich the lives of everyone in Westchester County. ArtsWestchester helps fund concerts, exhibitions and plays through grants; brings artists into schools and community centers; advocates for the arts; and builds audiences through diverse marketing initiatives. In 1998, ArtsWestchester purchased the nine-story neo-classical bank building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue which has since been transformed into a multi-use resource for artists, cultural organizations and the community. A two-story gallery is located on the first floor of ArtsWestchester’s historic building on Mamaroneck Avenue. artsw.org