Frank, who studied painting and drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in her native Munich, Germany before moving to New York City, where she received her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design and participated in the highly competitive Studio Program of the Whitney Independent Study Program, is fascinated by the intersection of technology and nature as well as the local and global. She has recently had solo shows in New York, Boston, Venice, Italy and Goppingen, Germany and taught for nine years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied system dynamics and produced a book of interviews with 33 researchers, each of whom specialized in a particular technology; collectively, the interviews enable the reader to make connections across the different disciplines. “I’m offering the reader these different pieces of a puzzle and putting them in a book, which is unusual,” she said.
While at MIT, she got “super-interested” in system dynamics and audited some courses on the topic. The notion of “thinking in systems” pushed her work in new directions – and also her method of exhibiting it. For example, in her show in Italy, Frank juxtaposed work related to the extinction of species with her series on global trade. Exhibiting the two disparate series “forced the viewer to think about these together and how we’re implicated. Our ways of thinking seem so natural, but they’re learned. We have to challenge our societal paradigm and our habits. Our ideas of how the world should be and what’s good need to be reconsidered.”
The global trade series evolved after Frank spent several months in Venice on an artist’s residency and became fascinated by the large container ships docked near the Lido, which formed such a contrast to the beautiful, historic city. She went out on a boat with a friend and began shooting them, which led to a project photographing freighters around the world.
Having witnessed the sinews of global trade in action, what’s her reaction? Frank sums it up in a single word: “absurd. Having 20 ships bring one piece of equipment to a certain destination in the cheapest way possible is a huge waste of energy, pollution, and creates waste,” she said. “While once trade involved importing expensive spices and silks from Asian, now it’s cheap baseball caps. We don’t need the stuff. We need one good hat, not a bunch.” She added that “The complexity and logistics of global shipping are mind-boggling. It’s quite a feat, timing and scheduling all these containers so that each arrives at a certain place and time.”
With her Systems series, Frank is now focused on the area around New Paltz, and her fascination with the local meant that she was excited to have the opportunity of showing locally. “I’ve always engaged with my environment,” she said, noting that she was a participant in a Germany-based group called the Department of Public Appearances while she was living in New York City, making work related to her experience as an immigrant and specifically focusing on her German background. “I respond to where I am and try to use the available tools. After I got this job at SUNY-New Paltz, my focus shifted to nature.” In fact, her move to the mid-Hudson Valley was perfectly timed, considering her growing concern about climate change and the degradation of the environment – besides the fact that the community is ideal for raising her five-year-old daughter.
Frank is already shooting for another series, called Search of Tree-Climbers, in which she aims her camera straight up through the trees into the sky. The series is related to “this idea of perfection and wanting to escape from Earth.” She’s also working on another project called Feedback, which is related both to her love of systems and the community. It involves having conversations with people about the community’s challenges and then having them do a “systems drawing” to illustrate their concerns and thoughts. “By making a map, we can see how people fit into the larger picture. We did one with colleagues, seeing how we could figure out how to work together. Looking at everything together is impossible, but at least we can try,” she said, noting that many of the world’s problems stem from producing something without considering the repercussions. “With this piece, New Paltz is a case study of how we can transform our ways of transporting waste, so we are living sustainably. It’s thinking big and small.”
Frank’s photographic pieces are the latest in a series of experimental art shows at the Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, which is located in a space adjacent to the offices of Team Love Records, an independent record label founded by Calder’s husband, Nate Krenkel, 11 years ago. The Gallery (directly across from the synagogue) also hosts music events and talks related to the art on display. For example, this fall Calder plans to accompany the Gallery’s annual diorama show with a storytelling night. The Gallery is open Friday through Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment.
Andrea Frank’s “Systems: Tree” opening reception, Saturday, May 10, 6-8 p.m., through June 29, Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, 11 Church Street, New Paltz; (845) 389-8263, www.tl-rh.com.
