Cas Friese is an American photographer; a California native, by way of London and New York, now residing in the northeast with her family.
Friese's signature style oscillates from light, ethereal works to a dark perspective; opposites with familiar visual communication and tonal expressions.
Friese's practice begins with photography that is transformed into varying materialities, most noteworthy are her works on linen that she refers to as modern-day tapestries. Her unique works on linen are hand finished and suspended within a frame emphasizing their organic, delicate nature.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Captivated by what can so easily be overlooked unsung moments of nature are continuously brought to the forefront of my work.
My focus on flora emerged from an attraction to the waning view of these ever-so-delicate specimens. Similar to how they are appreciated in their natural environments flora are just as easily clipped, prodded, and arranged into celebratory trophies — enjoyed and just as easily discarded. As they enter the edge of their lifespan the sculptural state and tones in their fading moments is where I discover a new stage of beauty — the unwinding.
I wish to bring together a new perspective of how photography captures and memorializes the age-old subject of nature with a process that is representative of it all. My modern-day tapestries blur the lines between media; using photography on archival linen, and hand-finishing the works by unwinding the edges and stitch-mounting them so that they may suspend organically inside their respective frames. The result embodies the characteristics of the flora, and while the media depicts similarities to that of a tapestry, the approach is inherently unique — deliberately different.
These gentle works laud the unwinding, the ephemeral, the unsung.
