A Conversation with Garth Fry
Garth Fry is an artist who creates works through a series of repetitious handmade processes. His methods of creation exemplify labor-intensive practices and embody aspects of physical endurance. These efforts are paramount to his practice and are used to instill action within his pieces to preserve performance in time and space. His creations are investigations of his relationship to materials, the temperament of meditation through process, and the generation of language through creative residue. The materials used by Fry are often excavated or retrieved found objects. His most regularly used medium in his current work is reclaimed wood. This salvaged material creates an intriguing mystery because its exact history is unknown. The marred, discolored surfaces found throughout these repurposed materials possess an alluring quality. They reflect a previous life and display a record of time. His extensive manipulation of these materials is intended to reveal the gaps between technological progress and the timeless quality of the handmade. He often uses a rigid printmaking paper to further demonstrate time and action. The paper allows Fry to explore his practice as a printmaker. The combination of these materials creates a unique and compelling visual experience. Fry chooses to manipulate his materials with tools that demonstrate the hand and its seemingly predictable nature. The tools he uses are as simple as the hammer, chisel, saw, stapler, paint, mop, or sledgehammer. Fry is conscious of his body and the activation of materials while using these tools. Through process, the tools reflect force and display aggression while promoting the delicate nature of the hand. This is evident through the crafted edges of Fry’s work. The dovetails reveal a structured sensibility, a coming together, while the fractured edges evoke a brokenness or loss. Regardless of the breaks displayed throughout Fry’s structures, they are able to withstand the forces of gravity. The objects and prints Fry creates are typically arranged precariously in space to challenge the natural force of gravity and test the element of time. In doing this, he relies heavily on chance and flirts with the notion of failure. His humble approach is haunting and ironic.
Garth Fry is an artist who creates works through a series of repetitious handmade processes. His methods of creation exemplify labor-intensive practices and embody aspects of physical endurance. His creations are investigations of his relationship to materials, the temperament of meditation through process, and the generation of language through creative residue.
Science, Research, and Play in the Studio
Interviewer:
I wanted to ask about the role of science in your work. Could you share some specific examples where your work intersects with science or other disciplines?
Garth Fry:
Absolutely. With the works you’ve seen in your space—like Exposed Knot—I was really looking into the life of the tree. That piece came from a 325-year-old tree. I wanted to explore a particular stress point and understand, through research, how it formed. I learned that those knots—or boils—develop in response to stress: maybe the tree lacked water, suffered a scar, or was otherwise damaged. And yet, it survived.
I often work this way—starting with research. I take a scientific approach: study the subject, form a hypothesis about the outcome, then test it. You don’t always know what will happen. Sometimes it fails or falls apart, but the process itself is the learning.
With Exposed Knot, once I understood I was looking at a boil, I knew I had to go deeper into the life of the tree. The research pulled me in. Another example is The Movable Barrier from Within. In that piece, I wasn’t sure if the stacked steel would be structurally supported by the wheels until I built it and tested it. There’s a precarious nature to that work—it rests on baby carriage wheels—but I compensated for that fragility with reinforced axles. That led me into engineering questions: weight transfer, structural limits, and how materials respond under stress.
Science always has a role in my investigations. As a kid, I even thought I’d become a scientist—working with beakers, testing theories in a lab. I was fascinated by the method of taking one idea and flipping it over and over, testing it against different outcomes and probabilities. Sometimes you’re just focused on one material, one mineral, or even one cell, and you keep investigating until something clicks.
That’s how I approach making. And I should emphasize the word play—because play is a constant in my studio practice. I’m always playing with materials, ideas, and forms, testing how they work together or fall apart. Sometimes you think, “If I combine this with that, it’ll work,” and it does—immediately. Other times, you keep flipping it, pushing it into new forms until a piece emerges. Without that sense of play, I don’t think I’d arrive at the outcomes I do.
Interviewer:
Yes, yes—that’s a fascinating way of seeing the connection.
COLLABORATION AND CROSS-DISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE
Interviewer:
Right, okay—yes, that’s very interesting. That’s a good way of seeing it. Have there been times when you actually collaborated with scientists?
Garth Fry:
Yes. Not long after grad school, I was involved in a project that brought artists and scientists together for conversations, exploring how our practices might intersect. There were a series of roundtable discussions—some of them with prominent Bay Area artists—and those conversations eventually took shape as a publication.
At the time, I was still fresh out of school, but I was drawn to the format. I’ve always valued that kind of forum, because so much of what’s happening in the world—especially around climate change—has both artistic and scientific dimensions. Artists are creating work that draws attention to urgent issues: sustainability, recycling, habitat loss. And in those conversations, you begin to see how habits shape habitats, and how culture and science overlap.
What made those discussions powerful was the merging of perspectives. Art can spark awareness and emotional engagement, but when paired with the concrete, data-driven outlook of science, it creates a deeper, more informed dialogue. Those overlapping conversations can generate new ways of thinking, and sometimes, new approaches for real change.
Art can spark awareness and emotional engagement, but when paired with the concrete, data-driven outlook of science, it creates a deeper, more informed dialogue. Those overlapping conversations can generate new ways of thinking, and sometimes, new approaches for real change.
Interviewer:
Overlapping conversations—you mean the shared ground where data and creative insight meet?
Time, Tinkering, and the Art of Assemblage
I tend to those avenues of mixing media. For me, that just happens naturally — even when I was doing printmaking, I was definitely radical in that form, taking different materials and printing on them. People would say, What are you doing? But I think there were successful outcomes from some of that exploration, and it’s something I was doing early on in my education as an artist.
Moving forward, I’m always thinking, How can I flip it with another thing, another material, another object? That’s why your idea of video, film, and photography together — I’m intrigued. That sounds like a great project.
Usually, I lean on time. The more time I have, the more refined the project becomes. That comes through time to research, time to think, time to just let life happen and the ideas simmer. When I was in San Francisco, my studio was a place to collect objects and arrange them. I’d drop my bike there in the morning, look at what I’d done the night before, take a mental snapshot, then head to work at Stanford.
In the evenings I’d come back, sometimes staying until ten-thirty, eleven, even one in the morning, depending on how far my investigations were going. I’d collect more materials — find things on the streets, bring them in, put them next to other things, take them apart, tinker. Sometimes they’d become assemblages. Sometimes they’d inform another piece I had in a box or in a corner.
Some pieces are more formal, with the ideas fully worked out. Others are raw, just assemblage. I think having that range is what’s true to the artist. Like Jerry said to his students — don’t get stuck in one avenue. Explore it. Get crazy with it. It shouldn’t be the same thing all the time.
Community Engagement and the Role of Shared Space
Lee Matney:
You’ve talked about your time in collectives and groups in California, and how that shaped you as an artist. I’d like to shift slightly and ask how community engagement has become part of your practice—perhaps starting there and continuing now through your work at the Chrysler and elsewhere.
Garth Fry:
Yes—there’s always been an element of social engagement in my work. Community-based practice is a powerful way to create awareness—whether about artmaking itself or about a specific topic—by working together in shared spaces. Being part of an art community, continuing to share ideas, and supporting each other’s creative processes has always been important to me.
That support can happen in a formal setting—like a museum or gallery—or in a looser, grassroots gathering where artists come together to create space for conversation. And it’s not just physical space we’re talking about—it’s also the psychological space to be heard and supported. Both are essential.
My interest in this deepened after being exposed to social practice projects. I became intrigued by the theory behind them—especially the idea that a sculpture can exist not only as an object but also within the care and interaction of people in a social setting. That human element adds an entirely new dimension to the work.
The collectives I worked with were about creating avenues for people to share and express themselves, while also maintaining an active, ongoing conversation among artists. One project, One Plus One Plus Two, started with that exact goal: keeping a critique culture alive. We wanted the supportive yet challenging dialogue we had experienced in art school to continue, so we organized critiques in various spaces.
Eventually, we took those conversations on the road—bringing the same footprint and format into new environments. Out of that grew a residency program within our shared studio space. This was very much shaped by the Bay Area context: space was scarce, and if you had it, you had to make it work creatively. We were constantly thinking about how to maximize the use of space.
That’s why I’m drawn to what you’re doing with your own space—it’s not a typical gallery setting. You’re taking the space you have and using it in inventive, intentional ways. To me, that’s exciting, because it shows the same kind of thinking I value: how a space can be shaped by and for the conversations and creative exchanges it holds.
it’s not just physical space we’re talking about—it’s also the psychological space to be heard and supported. Both are essential.
Printmaking Roots & Artistic Influences
Lee Matney:
So we also talked about your influences, and I saw three brief paragraphs in my notes. Was there any one movement or artist—Fluxus, Gutai, perhaps someone you met early on—that crystallized things for you? Or maybe an encounter with a less-famous artist that changed your perspective?
Garth Fry:It’s a broad range. I started out studying printmaking, and early on I was really influenced by Warhol—not so much the celebrity aspect, but the concept of the Factory. He had this incredible production model, a team of people supporting the work, and he acted almost like an art director, orchestrating the projects.
A lot of artists still work that way, with entire teams, never physically touching the piece themselves. But I took that idea in a different direction. I told myself: I can become the factory. I want to touch every element—cutting the angles of the metal bar, welding them together—seeing a project through from start to finish, on my own timeline. That’s still a guiding principle in my studio.
From there, my interests expanded. I was always drawn to Jackson Pollock, but it wasn’t until I learned that he had influenced the Gutai group in Japan that I understood the depth of the connection. Gutai artists studied the body in motion—something Pollock embodied in his drip paintings. They analyzed that physical engagement as a theory in itself.
What I admired most about Gutai was that so many of its artists were also educators. They weren’t just making avant-garde work; they were teaching, passing those ideas on. That combination—innovation in practice and commitment to education—resonated deeply with me.
Addicted to Process and the Artist in Transition
Garth Fry: Although the outcomes were maybe a little more formal in what they represented, that’s when I got really addicted to process — to the time spent making something and letting the hours dissolve into the work.
To come full circle to the pieces in your studio now — for the metal work, it meant cutting the angles for all those bars and committing fully to that task. For the wood piece, Exposed Knot, it was sanding. I hand-sanded that angled section, figuring out the best way to do it. I stood over a table with sandpaper glued to the surface and moved the wood back and forth for hours on end.
By the time I was done, sometimes I didn’t even realize where the time had gone — I had escaped into another round of sandpaper.
Lee Matney: You were in another… what, zone?
Garth: Another world, yeah.
Lee: I love that.
Garth: I think you’re catching me in a transition period. Changing a practice brings downtime to figure things out. There were moments when I knew the work was strong, that it raised questions and drew people in — but I still wanted more.
I’ve even taken my website down as I reconsider how to present my work. I want to do all of it — bring the coils back, release the videos, revisit earlier pieces — but I also want it to make sense as a whole. There are so many threads: the video art, the ephemera, the social practice projects. I’m figuring out how to release them in a way that people can truly see the connections.
Process, Change, and the Courage to Let Go
It was my own exploration with rolling paper. I was focused on light and shadow during what was, honestly, a pretty lonely time in the studio. I’d spend hours manipulating the paper, trying to get it to behave the way I wanted. It became a reflection of that period—just me, alone, making this thing.
When I discovered that Duchamp had also experimented with raw paper—tearing and shaping it—I was excited to see a connection with an artist I admired. Then I learned about Leonardo Drew, who early in his career encased objects in paper and then removed the objects, leaving only the paper form. I first encountered his work when he gave a talk at CCA, and it really inspired me. He explained how he left that paper practice behind and began working with more radical materials—like roadkill, which he’d leave on desert rooftops for years before incorporating it into sculpture. Eventually, he was drawn to wood and how it bent, warped, and changed under extreme temperatures.
What struck me most was that he gave himself permission to walk away from a successful practice and follow a new direction. That’s not easy—especially when, like Jerry once told students, change itself deserves appreciation. At the time, I was living in D.C., making and selling the rolled paper works, even living off the income for a while. Then I gave it up, went to grad school, and sought out different ways of creating. From Drew, I took away the lesson: just go for it.
Other artists have reinforced that for me—Agnes Martin, for example. She began with a different practice before refining her work into meditative line paintings on vast canvases. Like my paper coils, her process was immersive, a way to disappear into the making. Even when my outcomes were more formal, the real addiction was to the process itself—the hours spent on a single task, whether cutting angles for metal bars or hand-sanding a wooden piece for an exposed knot. In each case, it’s about being fully absorbed, letting time fall away, and trusting where the work leads.
Multimedia, Ephemera, and the Afterlife of the Artwork
Interviewer:
Earlier, you mentioned social practice and how your work can take many forms—film, sound, multimedia. For the blog post, I’d love to include links to some of these other projects. Would you like to expand on that side of your practice?
Garth Fry:
Yes. I think I’m becoming more comfortable talking about these projects—mainly because I want to find the right support to see them fully realized. For a long time, I’ve incorporated video into my work, often recording myself as I make a piece. In some cases, the act of making becomes a kind of performance, and what’s left behind is not just the physical work but also what I think of as creative residue.
Of course, there’s always more intention behind it—each piece has an artist’s statement, a conceptual framework. But sometimes it’s simply me working with a material until it feels resolved. That process might result in a finished object, or it might result only in a video. Over time, I’ve realized that in some cases the object no longer exists—because I moved, or it wasn’t preserved—but the video remains. That creates its own mystery: what time does to an artwork, and how its absence or survival changes its meaning. In those cases, the documentation is the piece.
I’ve also been revisiting older works and ideas to see if there’s something more there—something worth developing further. For example, when I lived in California, I began a project photographing construction cranes looming over the city. I became fascinated by the negative spaces created where the crane arms crossed. I printed some of those images as postcards and, through an artist working out of the Berkeley Art Museum, got a list of mail art collectors around the world. I sent cards to Japan and other countries, keeping a record of where they went.
My idea was to eventually map the project—either physically or online—so you could see the geographic spread of these small works. The postcard is just an object, but where it travels becomes part of the piece. That project, like many of my ideas, crosses forms: it’s ephemera, it’s conceptual mapping, it’s sculpture by other means.
In the end, my practice often extends beyond the traditional physical sculpture in space. I’m equally interested in the theoretical and documentary frameworks that can surround sculpture—the ways an idea can travel, transform, and live on in other forms.
In the end, my practice often extends beyond the traditional physical sculpture in space. I’m equally interested in the theoretical and documentary frameworks that can surround sculpture—the ways an idea can travel, transform, and live on in other forms.
The Rubbing Series: Loss and Reflection
Lee Matney: You don’t have to figure out what prices you want to put on those things if we go to sell them then.
Garth Fry: I was fortunate in San Francisco — and this is another project entirely — I guess it’s what started the Rubbing Series. I was living in Oakland at the time, and one night while I was asleep, I was woken up by someone shouting, “Your car’s on fire!”
I had a broken back window in my truck’s camper shell because a couple of weeks earlier someone had stolen my bike — they smashed the window to get to it. That night, someone set my truck on fire. I think there was a moving pad blanket in the back and they may have set that on fire.
I lost my truck, and it was right when I was graduating from my grad program — two weeks after graduation. I was floored because I had no way to get around San Francisco. The plan had been to collect my thoughts around making, take a road trip up and down the coast to surf, and then come back to the city ready to work hard. That whole break and time to reflect was gone.
So I made a memorial to my truck. One of the only things I had left was the license plate. I made a series of rubbings over the course of a year, until I felt I was over the loss. That body of work ended up being about 50 rubbings. I spent a lot of time sitting in front of that plate, investigating how I felt. The outcome might be one rubbing in a night, maybe two — at most three. Some nights I was so frustrated I didn’t make anything because I couldn’t bear to think about the loss anymore.
The whole series became an investigation into the loss of an object you value. I did sell one of them for a thousand dollars, and that number has stuck in my mind since.