Kevin Frances

2014-15, Woodblock prints, Pochoir, Watercolor, Ceramic sculpture

Lucas is a character study of a fictional teenage boy. It's about a specific individual in a specific time and place, but also about making decisions, how we consciously and unconsciously decide who we went to be, first experiencing death, and love.

2012-2014, Japanese Woodblock Prints, 22" x 30", Mixed media sculpture, Digital Photographs

In New Apartment, New City, I tell the story of a young woman, fresh out of college, who moves into a new apartment. The story is told entirely through still images of her material possessions. At first it is sparse, a few boxes, but as she buys furniture, settles in, cooks meals, has guests over, more and more information is supplied with which to build a character. The narrative is an open-ended question about how we construct our adult persona, what it means to be ordinary, and how we form our assumptions about other people.

The project started with a scale model. I built the living room of the character, pulling from places I'd lived and friends' homes. The kitchen layout is from a new apartment in California, the bay windows from my old Providence apartment. I sketched the character in my mind as I built her possessions in miniature. The scale allowed me to work quickly and intuitively, and in taking the photographs, be unconstrained by gravity.

2012, ceramic, screen prints, MDF, acrylic paint, 12' x 8' x 5'

Over the course of several months I observed books, bills, notes to self, pens, and computers that sat on the desks of myself, my wife, and on our mutual coffee table. I remade each out of ceramic or paper, until I had amassed what felt like a sufficient vocabulary, then I remade our desks as well. I placed the objects on the three desks, imagining what each piece could tell the viewer about it’s owner, and how as things accumulated, you could get something of an idea of these two people, their interests, books they love and books they aspire to love, their worries, their day to day concerns.

2012, screen prints, masonite, wood, foamcore

In Our Bedroom, I was thinking about how stage sets operate; the slightest clues of an environment are provided, and the audience is asked to fill in the details. In this work, using screen prints pasted to the walls, and made into cut-outs, I wanted to suggest a room and it’s inhabitants, create an intimate atmosphere, and allow the viewer to direct the focus of the narrative.

2011, Japanese woodblock prints and screen prints

The studio can be totally utilitarian, very private, but can also be opened up to visitors, with the expectation that they are seeing a privileged view, the man behind the curtain. In this series of prints, I visited the studios of my peers, experiencing the ways in which they interacted with their spaces, and how the tools with which they made their work became small portraits.

2010, Ceramic, wood, drywall, woodblock prints over light boxes, 10' x 12' x 8'

Kitchen, F St. shows my kitchen at one moment in time, while I was making a sandwich. I was thinking about how the act of remaking something confers onto that object a sense of significance, even if it's just a sponge. Why is that sponge sitting where it is? Who is the person that placed the sponge there? To this end all the objects are deliberately crude and lumpy, while being at actual scale, so that you can experience the work as a real space.

2010-2011, Japanese woodblock prints

The Home series is a meditation on that very particular moment when an object or arrangement ceases to be familiar and becomes strange and beautiful.