John Freyer
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Mentor, Ohio, USA
Art > Direct from the Artist > Textile Art
$1.00
$51.00
John Freyer is an artist, author and educator based in Richmond Virginia. His projects include All My Life for Sale, Big Boy, Live IKEA, Free Ice Water, Free Hot Coffee and Free Hot Supper. When he’s not buying, selling or giving his work away, Freyer is an Assistant Professor of Cross Disciplinary Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. Freyer’s practice engages accidental audiences in galleries, museums, and public spaces. He explores the role of everyday, personal objects in our lives – as commodities, fetishes, and totems and investigates how the circulation of objects and stories enrich social ties between individuals and groups.
Ghidini & Modrak
Objects are containers for stories, from the cherished family heirloom passed down from generation to generation to the humble pair of “party socks” left in the top draw of my father’s dresser, in his home in the Villages. My father’s life was reduced to a collection of objects with no purpose, which no longer really fit anyone, in style or in shape. This summer I helped my mother sort through huge black garbage bags of my father’s clothing. I remembered him wearing a particular shirt or sweater and put it asides. I saved all of the Syracuse University sports gear that he had, thinking my brothers would want something from the pile. In the end four and a half bags of clothing went to the thrift store, stripped of their history, freed from the burdens of memory, to be used, repurposed or discarded by future owners with their own set of stories.