Questioning the Status Quo Mixed Media Artist Sam Frazier by Scott Brassart Published 21 July 2006 Sam Frazier grew up in San Diego not even dreaming he would some day become an artist. “I was one of those kids, I always wished that I was artistic but I never thought that I was. I had art classes in elementary school and junior high and high school, but they were always ‘Lets paint a clown’ kinds of art classes. It never really clicked. I wasn’t feeling it at all.” It wasn’t until college that he realized art was his calling. He took an art course as a general education requirement, and fell in love. “It was an art appreciation class, mostly art history, and it just made me so happy. Not even making art, just learning about art. I knew right then I wanted to be an art major.” He ended up with a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from UCSD, specializing in performance art and site specific installation. After graduation, he found it difficult to find work in his field. “There weren’t a lot of jobs, you know, you can’t just go out and do performances and installations.” Unwilling to give up on his dream of a life in the arts, he started creating objects. “These very small pieces, boxes. I was living in a very small apartment, so I was making very small boxes inspired by Joseph Cornell. Then when I moved into a bigger place I started working bigger.” He has since gone from boxes to mixed media collages created from paper, fabric, paint, stamps, stencils and photography. The dominant element in each piece varies. Sometimes it is photography, sometimes a stamp or stencil, and other times a textual message. Frazier says text has been included in his artwork from the very beginning. “I used to write a lot of short stories,” he says. “In some of my earlier work I would incorporate entire stories. The stories would be printed and slapped onto the work, but that got to be a little much. I mean, who wants to stand there reading an entire story? So I started taking snippets of stories, little snippets that make you wonder what the rest of the story is.” He began incorporating photography early on as well. “I used a lot of found photography, images that I found at swap meets or in thrift stores, or images from online.” Eventually he decided he no longer wanted to work with other people’s photos, and he began taking his own. “I just bought a camera and started clicking away. I never took any photography classes or anything. I wanted to use photography more as a tool than an end, so I wasn’t really interested in learning the craft of photography. I just wanted to play around until I got the images I wanted.” Frazier usually alters the images he shoots in Photoshop to create the mood he seeks, though he does have limits on what he is willing to do. “A lot of people who shoot digital photography go in and run all these filters on the photos to make them look like a watercolor or a block print or whatever. I try to avoid that. I try to only use tools that photographers used to do in the darkroom. I try to get darkroom effects using the computer, and I try not to get computer effects.” Interestingly, the stamped and stenciled imagery Frazier uses often appears in more than one assemblage. Musical notations are very common. “The musical notes represent a person, somebody who came into my life and brought up a lot of questions—what does it all mean kinds of questions, what do we want, why do we want what we want. This person is very much into music, that’s his whole life, and a lot of the pieces have been inspired by him. So I incorporate the music to represent him.” Frazier’s work is definitely message-oriented, with both text and imagery contributing. “Mostly what I’m doing with my work is questioning the status quo of life, what people seem to expect out of relationships and why they never seem to be content, why no one ever seems to be able to enjoy life at this moment. They’re always looking for something better, looking for something more. My work is very much about appreciating things in the here and now, being happy with what you have and who you are instead of always reaching for whatever it is at the end of the rainbow that you can never quite reach.” Frazier is currently exhibiting his work at Kate Ross, a clothing boutique in San Diego. The show, called “Klue,” runs through the end of August. Frazier says the works are based on a film that is primarily a dialog between a woman and her therapist. “She’s talking to her therapist about how dissatisfied she is with her life. All the pieces in the show are going to incorporate bits of that dialog.” Frazier’s work can also be seen online at trustfido.com .   © 2006 The Bottom Line | A division of Saputo-Beale Enterprises, Inc.