Stars

Charleston

In a landmark urban renewal effort, city planners, developers, and architects partnered to commission this 120' mural on a concrete DOT wall in downtown Charleston.
Located at King Street and Fishburne, next to Recovery Room.

While in Charleston, I painted this mural in West Ashley with the support of ChArt Outdoor Initiative.

Located on Alycia Alley behone Gene's Haufbrau.

Living Walls: East Atlanta Village

I painted this mural on the side of Tomatillo's in East Atlanta Village.

Bay of Banderas, Mexico

I did a two-week tour of the Bay of Banderas, on the Pacific Coast of Central Mexico, with Festival Anonymous, an international street art organization. I painted murals in towns along the bay, including Bucerias, Sayulita, and Las Animas. These pieces were inspired by the natural landscape there, as well as the mesmerizing art of the Huichol, a group indigenous to the Nayarit region.

Thanks so much to everyone involved in this project, especially Nicole Majewski and K.T. Kirkpatrick, Harold and Sue Sokolove, Megan Kirkpatrick, Jesse Cann, Ian Ferris, and the Sayulita Cultural Center.

Large mural in Bucerias:

Small mural at the Sayulita Cultural Center:

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Miami Art Basel 2013

Pictures from this year's Miami Art Basel trip! All of these are in the Wynwood District, painted over a two-week period in late-November through Early December. Thanks so much to Danielle Brutto, Jon Graham, Josh and Tracy Kohn, Ishmael, the whole Heineken Mural Project crew and artists, Jorge Moreno, Living Walls, Samson Contompasis of Marketplace Gallery, Fountain Art Fair, and everyone else who helped make these possible.

On NW 25th between 3rd and 4th.

On NE 20th between Biscayne and North Miami Ave.

Courtyard mural installation at Fountain Art Fair, collaboration with Pixel Pancho, Never 2501, and Ever.

Courtyard mural installation for Fountain Art Fair, 8'x 8' latex on wood panel.

Exterior collaboration on Fountain Art Fair with Jaz, Elian, Cope2, Pixel Pancho, Pastel, LNY, Never 2501, and Ever.

On the way home, our group stopped in Jacksonville, FL to paint pieces on the outside of Cork Art Collective. Here is my part:

TRI-COLOR: a coloring book by molly rose freeman

I love books, and after seeing a zine show put together in part by Laura Calle, the Director of Programming for Living Walls, I started looking for ways to make one of my own. It began as just a hand-made book of my small drawings (I have a lot of these since I don't sketch--they're basically studies, experiments on fitting pieces together in different ways.) But then I remembered what I used to do in St. Louis at the middle school where I worked as an after school assistant. The program I was working for had very little money for supplies but they asked me to run an art class three times a week, so I started making drawings that I could photocopy in the office for my kids to color. I won't say I won over everyone with these, but there was a little group that would sit at a round table in the cafeteria, surrounded by tons of noise and action, and they would color page after page and tune out everything else. I realized how important that had been for me when I was in school, and how I have built my work around it--the desire to focus intensely on something without self-consciousness. So I'm offering up this book for whoever wants to color and lose themselves in the repetition of something. It's a good way to ground yourself, even in the midst of total chaos.

 

Every copy of TRI-COLOR features 16 pages of drawings and is independently printed and bound by hand with thread. You can buy them here for $10.

 

 

Sample pages:

Atlanta!

In January, I am relocating to Atlanta full-time, and I can't tell you how excited and proud I am to be a part of one of my favorite cities in the world!
Last month I spoke to a Philosophy class at Emory University about public art, and got

 to share the work of some of my favorite artists and talk with them about the possibilities in public spaces. One student really responded and is now spearheading a light projection project on the Emory campus. I am so inspired by this, and by all the people and organizations in the city that are taking the initiative to cultivate the spaces around them. As if I needed another reason to love Atlanta!!

From Catherine Homan's Philosophy of Art class blog:

Ever since Molly Rose Freeman gave that lecture in class, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about public art and how it affects our community. I was completely moved by the entire notion of the genre, its spontaneity, its risk. I loved the work of Armsrock, the artist who employed projections in his work, and I wanted to share those ephemeral “light drawings” with the Emory community. That is where the Light Observations project began. I applied for a grant from Emory’s Center for Creativity & Arts to pursue this project, and I just found out that my project was selected.

Over the course of two nights in mid-January, a series of projections will appear near and on the freshman residence halls chronicling the everyday life of Emory residents. Perhaps scenes of students catching up on some homework will appear- one student just happens to be perched on the ledge of a window, the other on top of the study lounge’s roof. Maybe a squirrel will decide to take a peek on the festivities going on in Turman or Longstreet-Means. I want to integrate some of my quirky line drawings with the geometric angles of Emory’s modern architecture to produce something unique, something humorous, something welcoming for the new semester. With these projections, the warmth that is inside the residence halls will be directly translated onto the residence halls themselves, uniting our community even greater. And through the use of digital networking media, I hope to set up a portal in which many other Emory community members can submit their quotes and drawings for the project. I’ve even had some interest from students in doing multilingual projections as well.

This project is definitely going to be a new working experience for me, both within the physical work and the philosophy that now envelops my perception of the artworld. I’ve realized my work strives to be more powerful than I had initially expected because my work explores the relationship between concealment and unconcealment just as much as any other work of art. So thank you Martin Heidegger.

Interview with Kristian Goddard

Recently I met the super-talented artist/designer/musician Kristian Goddard and caught up with him for an interview. Check out his work on some amazing projects on his website.

November 5th 2012 Ice Cream For Free Interview  Molly Rose Freeman is a North Carolina-based artist whose work is both intimate and grand. Whether she's working on paper or a wall, her work has her own individual style which is often based on geometric forms and organic elements. Her imagination and use of colour is really inspiring no matter which media she uses. She is currently working on mural projects in Miami and Mexico, alongside her ongoing studies and a book project! I recently caught up with Molly and got the chance to discuss her work. Do you have any art school training and, if so, would you recommend it to others? I went to an arts conservatory for my last two years of high school, at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and it was a turning point for me. It's not so much about the technique I learned as it is about how I trained my eye. I didn't learn how to draw, I learned how to see. My teachers were great mentors, they took pride in ridding us of any illusions we had and getting us to actually pay attention, to really observe what was there. I was also spending every day with other artists, musicians, dancers, and actors, and I learned how much I love collaboration and how important it is for me to be surrounded by creative, dedicated people. I know art school isn't for everyone, but I learned so much. How did you first get into working on public projects? I remember even when I was first making art in high school that I struggled a lot with the idea that it was something primarily to be bought and sold. And as time went on I felt less and less satisfied making work that I knew would only be seen by people who went to galleries or could afford to buy art — I wanted it to interact with the big wide world, with the complexity and the mess. So I just started where I could, helping out friends who were painting murals, volunteering on projects, seeing what other people were doing to make art more visible and more accessible. Once I started looking around and seeing ordinary places as possible platforms for art, it changed the whole way I saw the world. I don't think I will live long enough to do all the projects that I want to do! I started to see the effects public art could have, putting creative energy and dedication into spaces that most people had stopped seeing. Even one mural or one performance can transform a whole neighborhood. Art is amazingly powerful, and I think it's becoming increasingly important that we put that power toward the service of our communities. Would it be possible to describe your work/painting process? I use geometry and pattern as my framework, but my approach is very exploratory. Basically I devote myself to connecting lines together to create forms, and I try to pay attention to what is emerging so I can help cultivate them. I don't go into a piece imagining what it will look like in the end, I just begin with one point and let that point grow until it begins to take shape. There are a lot of paintings and drawings that I throw away, because I realize halfway through, or at the end, that I tried to push the process in an unnatural direction. But generally, I just try to stay in touch with the momentum of the lines and shapes, and they sort of guide me in the right direction. A lot of my process is getting out of my own way, fighting the urge to impose control. What inspires you and how does it affect your work? My work — and my life — are guided by the idea that everything is, on some fundamental level, connected to one giant (infinite?) network. This means that there are patterns all over the place, so I spend a lot of time just looking around and noticing them. I am always inspired by nature — geology and biology and the processes of growth and change. It's usually easier to see patterns in the movements of flocks of birds or glaciers than it is to see patterns in human behavior. But that's the most interesting thing to me, to see how we — even as ardent individualists — fit into something that we often times feel so distant from. In my work, I use connecting lines to represent these networks, and to explore how they can fit together. Quite often, the shapes that emerge look like things in nature — cells or organs or animals — and I think that speaks to the universality of these connections, to how basic they are to the composition of things. Do you enjoy working on a large scale? Yes! To me it feels so natural. I get to use my whole body and not just my arm or my hand. When I'm drawing I can only sit and work on something for a few hours at a time, but when I'm painting a wall I can work for twelve hours and feel amazing. There isn't a place in the world I feel better. How do you go about finding projects? Every project is different: some I put together myself, some I worked really hard to be a part of, some just fell into my lap. I don't have a specific approach to finding things, I just put myself out there, work hard, and trust that I'll cross paths with the right people at the right time. I've been really lucky to find incredible people to work with. Do you write your own proposals and if so is that something that you actually enjoy? I did a project in Asheville in 2010 that was a collaboration between me and two very, very talented friends — one dancer, one musician. We wanted to put on a free, one-time, outdoor public performance along the French Broad River, on the concrete foundation of what was once a transmission repair shop. The idea was that we would build a temporary backdrop and I would paint a mural on-site leading up to the performance, which would feature a dance piece inspired by Spring rituals. The whole thing would be set to an original score, played live by a percussion ensemble during the performance. And we didn't know what we were doing really, but we knew we wanted to make this project happen so we just started doing it: we wrote the proposals, we got the permits and the permissions, we raised the money. And we had our performance in May, with our friends and family and strangers there all standing and sitting together in this field, watching this beautiful performance as the sun went down. To be able to build an experience like that, to share something you believe in — it's worth writing a thousand proposals! Some community-based art often feels like design by committee. How much freedom do you get when you work on community-based projects? I generally have total freedom, but I always try to take into account the needs and identity of the area where I'm painting. I think it's important to be sensitive to what was there before, and what will be there after you leave. How do you hope the public will react to your murals? I hope it sparks their imagination. Beyond that, it doesn't matter to me what they think or see or do with it, I just want to give people a chance to look at something and let themselves experience it in whatever way is natural. So much of our visual culture is advertising of some kind — for products, for politics, for a certain lifestyle — and it's not often we get to see pictures that don't have an agenda. But I think it's essential to let our minds wander sometimes without an endpoint in sight. I don't think we let ourselves do that enough. Do you get much feedback about your work? When I'm working on a wall, I get a lot of immediate feedback which is cool because my pieces usually evolve without a strict plan, so they become an open dialog with people in the neighborhood, people passing by. I painted an underpass in Atlanta in August and it was kind of an unwieldy space — long and uneven with bridges going over it. And I was struggling a little bit with how to really engage the space, because there was so much going on architecturally. And someone suggested painting part of my design on some of those other planes to help integrate it. And once they said it I was like Of course! And I started to see all these possibilities. It's important to have more than one set of eyes because after you've been staring at something for so long, it gets harder and harder to see it. What are you currently obsessed with? A friend of mine made me some CDs that I've been listening to on repeat — Laura Marling, Mountain Man, Neil Young's “Heart of Gold.” They just feel right for this time of year. I've loved watching what's come out of the Nuit Blanche festivals this year, which are these one-night events in the Fall in cities around the world. They open up the galleries and museums for free until dawn and have exhibits and installations and performances in the streets — really mind-blowing stuff. For Paris' Nuit Blanche, Jacqueline Dauriac did these beautiful colored light projections on the steam coming out of two huge smokestacks over the Seine and I would have loved to see that in person.

you and me and the devil makes three

new small drawing available here:

"you and me and the devil makes three" 

human relationships

since i set up my new studio, i have been working on some black and white drawings. for these, i start with a few central points and let lines grow outward until they form bigger and bigger shapes, and eventually start to meet and influence each other. for me this mirrors, among other things, the experience of human relationships. when i begin these drawings, i imagine that each point represents a person, and the lines that grow out are their experiences, their personalities, their lives. these drawings are a way for me to explore how people affect and adapt to those closest to them, and how intricately our interactions are woven together.