How to Live in the World – SSS

Carol Wiebe posted on her visit to the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and the work of Irene Frolic. An excerpt:

“….Gloria Hickey describes Frolic’s approach in the March/91 issue of New Glass,

It is true that Irene Frolic’s sculptures are made from cast glass, but her real raw material is emotion. Emotion determines the form and character of the human heads she is best known for. Modeling first in clay, Frolic prefers not to use tools. She uses her fingers — to smooth brows, pinch noses and caress cheeks from the responsive clay. Her fingers coax out form and pass on emotion in the alert flare of a nostril, the sleeping tranquility of sleeping lips, the introspective curve of a neck.

Frolic is fond of the continuous line that extends from forehead to nose tip . . . . She explains that “the fragility of the glass will show here. This curve exactly fits the crook of my hand – my hands understand how a face must be. Sometimes I think, this is how God must feel.”

This is a moving statement, but there is more to it than that. You see, Irene Frolic is a Holocaust survivor. Some would be surprised that she isn’t still cursing God rather than identifying with how God might feel. Frolic puts it this way:

What it was that I was working through, as many of you know, is that I’m a Holocaust survivor and somehow this whole idea of glass and fires of annihilation and the fires in the kiln and everything, it just took hold of me and held me gently and fiercely for almost ten years while I worked through certain things in my work.

Then there came a time when she could put being a survivor behind her:

I just had had enough of it and I somehow put it away . . . . I wanted to make works of beauty, which I think I have, because I thought we need more of that and that’s helpful.

Once again, Irene Frolic serves as a testament to how the human spirit can shine through whatever darkness befalls it. Creating beauty is her answer for how to live in the world.

Click here to read the original post. Image in post is Frolic’s ‘How to Live in the World.’