Chautauqua Institution to exhibit Frerichs’ ‘Ice Out Lake Chautauqua’ this summer

“Ice Out Lake Chautauqua,” a site-specific installation by Department of Visual Arts and New Media Professor Timothy Frerichs, will be displayed at Chautauqua Institution’s Smith Memorial Library throughout the summer season.

A part of Professor Frerichs’ body of work, “Waterways,” that was the culmination of his 2023 New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Grant Waterways grant, “Ice Out Lake Chautauqua” can be currently viewed at the library before the Chautauqua season opens. The library’s schedule is here.

“For the ‘ice out’ process, I collected ice from Lake Chautauqua at Long Point State Park in January 2023, stored it in a freezer and then collected the melt water during a heatwave in May,” Frerichs explained. The collected melt water was then used to watermark/drip/blowout variations into the blue/green pigmented pulp. This was then transferred to a recycled hemp/cotton/jute base sheet.

Archival digital photographs documenting the ice formations (from the January collection site), ice out graph imagery from Skillmans clothing store in Bemus Point, NY, archival Lake Chautauqua maps and microscopic imagery (from under the ice) were then printed onto the handmade, pulp painted paper.

The work is intended for the general public and is situated around the Chautauqua Lake community as it is a site-specific project.

Frerichs extends his appreciation to all members of the Chautauqua Lake community who generously contributed their knowledge and resources to help him create this work. Special thanks go out to aquatic ecologist and Department of Biology Associate Professor Courtney Wigdahl-Perry.

Frerichs and Dr. Wigdahl-Perry will give a presentation on the collaboration between art and science for the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) group speakers series at Chautauqua Institution on June 25.

Corresponding works from the “Waterways” project will also be exhibited, with staggered opening dates, at the institution’s Athenaeum Hotel, beginning late June, as well as in early August at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in Jamestown, NY, as an element of the “Art that Matters to the Planet 2024: Clarity” exhibition. More information on this exhibition can be found here.

A comprehensive exhibition of Frerichs’ entire “Waterways” project artwork will be brought together for exhibition this fall at the Weeks Gallery at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, NY. More information on this exhibition and the gallery is available here: 

The “Ice Out Lake Chautauqua” artist book is also currently on view as an invited artist book for the 10th International Artist Book Triennial, Vilnius, and will later be exhibited at multiple international venues in Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and the United States. Information about those venues and exhibit dates can be found here.