The Nature of Ritual

A collection of original artworks by artist Helen Frederick

Currently on view at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery in the Inova Schar Cancer Institute

“My work weaves together the personal, the communal, and the universal by layering elements of visual information onto and into the surfaces of hand-formed paper. Paper is a material that is capable of advancing hybrid statements. I attempt to form a bridge between the past and the present by exploring a fundamental quality and lineage of materiality that guides us in our contemporary lives and binds us in a larger evolutionary process.

By linking Asian traditions that I have studied with Western ones, I create a framework, a personal language of markings, symbols of regeneration or universal shapes for introspection. I rely on sources near and far for geographical immersions, drawing on sound, environmental recall, and diminishing aspects in nature that are often determined by our damaging behavior. My intention is to capture fleeting or eternal moments of recollection and plant them onto surfaces that are formed by the kinesthesia of my own corporeal abilities.

Ritual is a grounding aspect of my work. I consider myself a laborer of art, aligned with all those who acknowledge the many disciplined steps required by hand labor for the making of objects. I use the tools and processes that I have come to understand best, but I am always available to the unpredictable.” - Frederick

About the Artist

HELEN FREDERICK is a distinguished artist, curator, educator, coordinator of international projects, and the founder of Pyramid Atlantic, a center for contemporary printmaking, hand papermaking and the art of the book. As an advocate for and an active participant in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area arts scene, she has served on the directorial boards of alternative art spaces, various local and national boards including the College Art Association, and national peer-review panels.

Her works, held by over 45 international public and private collections, have been exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Dieu Donne Gallery, and The International Print Center, New York, Henie- Onstad Museum, Norway, and the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, and are in collections of the Whitney Museum and Brooklyn Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Rhode Island Museum of Art, among many others. She is represented in the Feminist Art Base, the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Frederick who is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Art at George Mason University, has fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines. She lives and works in Silver Spring, MD and directs Reading Road Studio, a collaborative atelier for works in and on paper.