Alec Clayton, "All Around Art: Take a Tour Where Art Lives," Weekly Volcano, November 11, 2004, 1. (reprinted with the author’s permission)

November is Art at Work month in Tacoma, a month filled with art exhibits, musical and theatrical performances, walking tours, and more.

One of the most exciting activities will be two days of studio tours wherein the public is invited to visit the working studios of artists, see works in progress and talk to the artists about their lives in art. Eleven studios will be included on the two-day, self-guided tours.  The tours are Saturday, Nov. 13, and Sunday, Nov. 14, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with most studios open only one of the two days.

I recently visited two of the participating artists whose lives, homes and manners of creating art are polar opposites.

Becky Frehse and Holly Senn both work in studios that are converted garages in their homes.  Both have marvelous views of the Narrows.  There, the similarities end.  Frehse is a painter of humanistic, narrative paintings that appeal to a sensual love of color, line and texture.  Her studio is cluttered with paint and brushes and books and dolls and every knick-knack and found object you could ever imagine an artist glomming on to for inspiration or use in a collage or construction.  Everything is scattered in apparent disorder.  Senn is a sculptor in the Dadaist, idea-oriented mold whose large and airy studio is a model of perfect order.  Her tools are clearly labeled and stored in easily accessible drawers or hung in precise order on her walls.  In preparation for the studio tour, she has displayed her works on stands in museum fashion.  Frehse’s clutter seems perfect for her working methods, as does Senn’s precision for hers.  Each of these artists has created what for them is the ideal environment for creating their personal kind of art.

Frehse studied and worked in China, and for many years she made landscape paintings that combined Asian and Western traditions.  A few years ago, she began working with fellow artist Louise Williams, who died of cancer a year ago, on a series of art books that were filled with paintings and drawings of families and children.  Williams and Frehse influenced one another so much that, like Picasso and Braque in the early years of Cubism, their painting styles became almost indistinguishable.

That collaborative experience inspired Frehse to start working on figurative paintings in oil.  She is currently trying to decide where she wants to go with the figure. “Should I try to be cutting edge?" she wonders. “I haven’t resolved that yet.”

Her latest works are of figures in environments with heavy cast shadows.  She is fascinated with the dramatic impact of shadows and with the question of whether to “pare down” the figure to its formal elements or to be more specifically figurative and narrative. Seeing her works in progress and talking to her on the studio tour will afford a unique opportunity to see how an accomplished artist, even at mid-career, continues to question her art.

Senn began her artistic career around 1990 when she studied welding in California.  For four or five years she worked in metal sculpture, making tables and sconces that combined the artistic with the utilitarian.  After moving to Puget Sound and going to work as a librarian at Pacific Lutheran University, she began to search for ways to combine her artistic life with her work life. “I am surrounded by books,” she says. “I wanted to recycle and reinvent books (as art).”  By way of example she points to books that have limbs growing out of them, with words hanging from the limbs like Christmas ornaments (or price tags). “Ideas come out of books, literally growing.  What would that look like three-dimensionally?”

Senn’s newest sculptures are literary and philosophical ideas made visual.  Also on display in her studio will be some of her metal sculptures.

Visit Alec Clayton’s web site at www.alecclayton.com for essays, reviews, and commentary on art.