1950 - Dec. 23, 2011
A founding member of the (x) Gallery, Howard was an AAN board member and master printmaker of the hand-colored woodcut which he took up in the 21st century.
From an interview with Fraker, 1996:
For construction artist and printmaker Howard Fraker, it is the science of his limitations that inspires him.
“My art is certainly related to the mechanism of sight. The eyeball takes in light to its rods and cones. Then passes on the sensation.”
For Howard—legally blind all his life—the condition of the eye is certainly not a fixed matter. Since his cataract operation in 1985, even his good eye betrays this.
“After being outside, in the bright sun, I get an after effect. The sun goes down, and all the white surfaces or those that have a high value of white look rosy to me. As if theater lights were on. Also: dark areas and shadows take on this green cast, a compliment to the rose.”
“I no longer have all the crystalline lens in my good eye.
“Also, sometimes when I’m lying down to sleep I get an odder effect. I breathe in and things go green. I breathe out and things go red. I imagine that oxygen is green, and carbon dioxide is red.
“In my art I’m actually sharing my life, my physical experiences with the viewer. Through a technical means.”
Talking Subtleties with Howard Fraker
Howard Fraker is a sculptor with a good deal of art education. He has a formal training in technique. He’s studied art history. The man knows his stuff. But Howard doesn’t appear to have a lick of interest in creating formal art.
“I’m experimenting. I’m not tied down to anyone’s conventions.”
I ask him why, and he offers an expansive gesture.
“It’s the times. Art now means anything goes and no holds barred. Video. Holography. Computer graphics. Various mediums of plastic.”
Yet Howard has been working in less technological media. Maybe low tech is the term. He’s working with paper to form geometric color pyramids.
“They are simple forms. They kind of dictate a minimal approach. It’s something I seem to be craving.”
Howard uses exacting techniques to color stiff card stock, a spraying or spattering technique he says is akin to sponging or ragwooling a wall, both decorative painting techniques It leaves a fine patina of dots, which Howard builds in complimentary and contrasting colors. If you isolated a centimeter square of a Seurat painting, you would see this same patterning of dots. Ditto if you you put a magnifier to computer generated graphic. He then folds the paper squares, bringing the four corners up into a pyramid. Inside, under the four petals of the pyramids, he places a color meant to work with, or against, the external color. The pyramids are set up in a grid pattern, often 6 X 6, under glass and in such a way that you can look inside the cracks to the interiors of the pyramids.
With the aide of orchestrated light sources, the internal colors glow. But not in a straight forward manner to the viewer’s eyes. The internal color is strictly ambient light. You can’t see what color he has actually created there.
“You can’t see the color in there. It’s reflected light. Yet it shows out alongside the surface color of the pyramids. It’s subtler, but more alive.
“I guess I’m interested in the subtleties of life.”
But there’s more than that. We talk about the pure physics of light and how the eye works.
“My art is certainly related to the mechanism of sight. The eyeball takes in light to its rods and cones. Then passes on the sensation.”
I speculate that color is not a fixed truth. Like the hardness of an object. Or its weight as defined by a steady pull of gravity. It depends on light bouncing off the object, and it depends on the condition of the eye. For Howard—legally blind all his life—the condition of the eye is certainly not a fixed matter. Since his cataract operation in 1985, even his good eye betrays this.
“After being outside, in the bright sun, I get an after effect. The sun goes down, and all the white surfaces or those that have a high value of white look rosy to me. As if theater lights were on. Also: dark areas and shadows take on this green cast, a compliment to the rose.”
It’s physics. It’s unavoidable.
“I no longer have all the crystalline lens in my good eye.
“Also, sometimes when I’m lying down to sleep I get an odder effect. I breathe in and things go green. I breathe out and things go red. I imagine that oxygen is green, and carbon dioxide is red.”
I push him to comment further. To bring it back to his art.
“I’m actually sharing my life, my physical experiences with the viewer. Through this technical means. Light is a concept that intrigues me, and I deal with the qualities of light on a reflective surface.”
I question him for other interests involved in his work.
“Well, yes, I’m also dealing with order and repetition. Doing minor variations…remaining stable in concept. Also, the pyramids echo organic things. Flowers. With something alive at their center.”
And origami. The folding adds that sense of exacting order.
“I do try different things.”
One variation involves pyramids with collaged exteriors, color pictures all of natural and organic subjects. It’s called “Planet #3—Blue,” and may or may not hang in his upcoming show at The (x) Gallery, at the end of June and into early July. He’ll feature his latest works in the show.
Earlier pieces dealing with the ephemeral attributes of light were wooden constructs, white strips or blocks mounted away from white surfaces. The hidden color on their backsides glowed under the gallery lights.
“It’s all staged for the viewer, the hidden meaning, the iconography of older representational art. This is no different. All for the viewer.
“But they should learn to look through their eyes. Not just see, but look. Probe. Think.”
I know what he means. Like most people I take my eyesight for granted. Talking with Howard, listening to him talk about this, albeit reluctantly, gives me the same charge I received from the Australian movie ”Proof,” about a blind photographer. And about much, much more.
The subtleties are the thing. The subtleties.
Fraker - Education
B.A. degree, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, Phi Beta Kappa. 1973
M.F.A. degree, Cranbrook Academy of Art. 1976
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME Summer, 1983, Assistant to Instructor.
Fraker - Instructor
St. Andrew’s School, Middletown, DE, as Head, Studio Art Department 1981-84.
Holderness School, Plymouth, NH, as Studio Arts Teacher 1976-79.