Biography
Georgi Frie (b. 1998) is a Canadian-American artist, currently based in Forest Grove, OR. They graduated in 2023 with a BA in Visual Arts at Vancouver Island University, and have worked in the mediums of ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, and printmaking. Thematically, Frie seeks the universal for their work in the specifics of personal experience and centers around experimentation of the medium they are working with for that piece. They incorporate the practices and aesthetics from other areas of their education and life, bringing geometry into their ceramic works, and crafts such as beading and sewing into their sculptures, along with a general interest and understanding of design. In some works, they also incorporate using quotes from online research for collage elements. Frie traces their interest in balancing multiple types of practices into their work to the foundation provided to and encouraged by their parents, their father being an engineer and their mother an art teacher. Frie’s work has appeared in several student shows through their university, including the 2019, 2022, and 2023 “Progressions” annual student art shows, as well as their graduating class's 2023 group show "Phantasmagoria". They have also helped to organize several exhibitions and sales opportunities for fellow students through their position in the VIU Arts Club in the 2019/2020 school year. They are currently a member of Valley Art in Forest Grove.
Statement
I am responding and interacting with the world around me through art. Sometimes, I am seeking to say what cannot be said in the English language. Often, I am yearning for home. Sometimes, I just think it looks neat and there is no intended meaning beyond that. I have worked with mediums in ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, and printmaking. While my compositions, mediums, and topics are varied, the process I go through to plan and create my art is often very similar.
I am an artist with an interest in math, science, and functional design. This interest sometimes influences my compositions, and often influences my methodology. For the preliminary stage of my work, I keep a sketchbook and a separate notebook, which is filled with diagrams, measurements, and hasty calculations. Often before I start any complicated part of a work, I’ll spend hours making sure that everything is planned out so if needed, I could repeat the process and arrive with the same result every time. Two examples of this are: 1) in my ceramic work, I designed polyhedron, slab-built geometric vessels based of the measurements of a corresponding organic one, and 2) in "What’s In Your Control" (2022), the printed paper skin of the figure had to be first tailored onto the wire frame, then cut off into segments, traced onto cheap paper and carefully labelled, traced again onto the final paper that was then printed on and assembled back onto the figure.
For two-dimensional work, I spend more time researching the compositions by doing many preliminary sketches and finding reference images. For example, in my drawing "A Highly Detailed Account of a City That Does Not Exist, Which I Call Home" (2020), I tried several versions of combining the maps of Nanaimo, BC and Portland, OR digitally before selecting one to recreate on my paper.
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