((PKG)) SUSIE FRAZIER
((Banner: Beauty in the Broken))
((Reporter: Maxim Moskalkov))
((Camera: Sergii Dogotar))
((Map: Cleveland, Ohio))
((NATS))
((Susie Frazier, Artist))
My name is Suzie Frazier and I am an artist who works with organic and industrial materials to create art that causes a sense of wellbeing. So, I am using a lot of biomimetic patterns but I am also working with castoff materials that you wouldn’t necessarily see in nature to create repetition in the compositions. So, tonight, I am working on a piece that’s made out of the vintage machinery schematics. And I have always had a fascination with old things and discarded things and over the years, I’ve salvaged them and turned them into something new as a metaphor to sort of help me to find the renewal within myself. So, it started with a lot of stone that came off from rooftops, like slate roofing tile, and then it shifted. And I am always thinking about the visuals that will calm the brain, what reduces anxiety and I do that through various patterning with the compositions. So, a lot of times it’s biomimic in nature. I go into nature. I am such a creature of the forest. I go out all the time. I am wondering because I like to submerge myself in the energy of it but when I am there, I really look at the patterns all around me. So, what I see here that most people don’t see. You know, it’s not just the view, the broad landscape. Cleveland, kind of, you know, they built the city based on the Industrial Revolution and so a lot of industry was camped on the front beaches of the Lake Erie. It’s only in the last 30 years, 20 years, 10 years for sure that they’ve opened up the beaches and made them more of the place that people can explore and enjoy. So, we go down there all the time and we grab the driftwood and there are thousands of these literally they come tumbling on the shore right after winter because of just the huge waves. I love to work with this reclaimed wood and I’ve been lucky enough to come into about three semi trucks full of this type of boards and normally they are about 12 feet long (4 meters) and they were screwed together, stacked like this. When I came into this, I realized that it would be fun to engrave words into these. So, you know, I’ve been doing this for about eight years, just the engraving part and what we found was that they become very powerful mantras for people. And we like to keep the blemishes or the imperfections because, you know, for a long time, I’ve believed that if we can find the beauty in the things that are sort of broken, then it’s a lot easier to find the beauty in ourselves. So, that’s a powerful message for a lot of people.
