Vessels of Satire: The Art of Magdalena and Michael Frimkess

The art of Magdalena and Michael Frimkess is retrospective of a life together that merges different cultural backgrounds into one collaborative body of work.  It is this collaboration of work that forces two individuals into one place in the history of ceramic arts.  For over thirty years Magdalena Frimkess has completed, as a collaboration, the vessels thrown on the potter’s wheel by husband Michael, who for thirty years or more, has battled with the degenerative disease multiple sclerosis.  Where his vessels end, her hand painted designs begin; an art and a life, dependent upon the other.  At the core of this interdependence is a struggle to be identified by their own individual achievements.

Michael’s ability to produce vessels with walls almost as thin as parchment, accomplished without the use of water normally used in throwing, is a technical feat attributed only to him.  His unique method of firing the forms to cone 11 (2400˚ F) in a time frame no less than 55 minutes and no greater than 3.5 hours on average is a technical achievement successfully practiced by no other ceramic technician known to date.

In the midst of this astounding alchemy is the meticulously detailed work of Magdalena Frimkess.  A fine artist in every aspect, her canvas becomes a three dimensional surface that is, as no other painter has the courage to do, surrounded in flames for the final result of art forever captured in glass and stone.