Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World

Join Squeak Carnwath, Nancy Lim, and Cynthia de Bos as they discuss Viola Frey’s life and artistic practice in conjunction with the newly released monograph, Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World, which will be available for purchase.

This event coincides with the recent release of her first monograph, Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World, and Oakland’s pt.2 Gallery show Transitory Fragments, on view until February 22.

About the Book

Known for her beloved larger-than-life ceramic sculptures, Viola Frey’s prolific career spanned over fifty years and straddled mediums, seamlessly transitioning between three dimensions and two, from the intimate to the monumental. Known best for her large-scale figurative ceramic sculptures—many towering over 10 feet tall—Frey’s dedication to her art practice extended beyond her devotion to clay, and encompassed painting, drawing, and varied mediums for sculpture.

Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World (December 2024; Gregory R. Miller & Co.) is the first monograph on her extraordinary career. In the late 1980s, Frey began a series of drawings she titled Artist’s Mind/Studio/World that serve as the inspiration for the book and speaks to the breadth of her work. As the introduction states, “[the] title is an invitation to consider the ways an artwork originates in the artist’s mind, is manifested in the studio, and then infiltrates the world” and is ultimately what charged her practice.

This monograph is extensively illustrated with recent discoveries and never-before-seen materials pulled from the Viola Frey Archives—including newspaper clippings, correspondence, slides, and photographs. Containing major new critical texts alongside an illustrated chronology, Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World explores the life and work of a vanguard multidisciplinary artist whose influence resonates with contemporary artists and audiences today.

About the Artist

Viola Frey (1933–2004) was born in Lodi, California and lived and worked in Oakland. She received a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland (now CCA in San Francisco), studied graduate coursework at Tulane University, New Orleans, and in 2000, received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from CCAC where she taught for 30 years. She twice received an Artist’s Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, among many other awards and accolades. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Paris, France; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA.

Viola Frey with her sculptures at 663 Oakland Avenue, Oakland, CA, 1981.

Photo credit: Viola Frey Archives, Artists’ Legacy Foundation.

About the Panelists

Squeak Carnwath draws upon the philosophical and mundane experiences of daily life in her paintings and prints, which can be identified by lush fields of color combined with text, patterns, and identifiable images. She has received numerous awards including the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, two Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award for Visual Arts from the Flintridge Foundation, the Award for Individual Artists from the Flintridge Foundation, and the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In 2019, she was inducted into the National Academy of Design and Art. Carnwath is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a founding member and current president of Artists’ Legacy Foundation. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Nancy Lim is an Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Her recent exhibitions include Creative Growth: The House That Art Built (2024), Chiura Obata (2023–24), New Work: Anna Sew Hoy (2023), Joan Brown (2022–23), and Mythos, Psyche, Eros: Jess and California (2019). She also contributed to the retrospectives of Vija Celmins (2018–19) and Bruce Conner (2016–17). Prior to SFMOMA, Lim held curatorial positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Cynthia de Bos is Director of Collections and Archives at Artists’ Legacy Foundation, which stewards the Viola Frey estate and manages the Viola Frey Archives. Since joining the Foundation in 2013, de Bos has organized the papers, photographic materials, and digital assets in the Viola Frey Archives, as well as overseen exhibitions, publications, and public programming. She served as co-editor and contributor for Viola Frey: Artist’s Mind/Studio/World.

Host or Publisher California College of the Arts