Anthony Freda
Q&A with the Artist
By Peggy Roalf Monday April 27, 2015
Q: A native Long Islander, what do you like about living near the Sound?
A: Originally from Port Jefferson, NY, I grew up a couple of miles from where we currently live, on the north shore of Long Island. We live in a nineteenth century home that once served as a convent. It’s a peaceful place to work, but watching my son experience childhood in the same place I did can lead to sometimes overwhelming bouts of nostalgia.
Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between the art you create on paper versus in the computer?
A: My notebooks are filled with very rough sketches of ideas and rambling thought crimes. I have not been able to digitally reproduce the quality and expression of line I get from ink flowing onto paper. I am in awe of those artists who are able to bridge that gap between man and machine that I feel when using a Wacom tablet. I prefer starting with traditional media and surfaces, and scanning them into the digital realm.
Q: What do you like best about your workspace?
A: The view.
Q: Do you think it needs improvement, if so, what would you change?
A: Whenever I see one of those blog posts showcasing the amazing studios of famous artists, I experience severe studio envy. Then I remember that some of the most beautiful images ever made were drawn in a cave in Lascaux, France.
Q: How do you organize an assignment before you start drawing? Do you make lists and thumbnails?
A: Sometimes a concept presents itself to me immediately, and I know it’s the right solution. When ideas are more elusive, I make a list of keywords from the story and draw their visual counterparts.Then it’s just a matter of making connections.
Q: How do you know when the art is finished?
A: When it stops making me angry.
Q: What was the strangest or most unusual assignment you’ve taken?
A: Field and Stream once asked me to paint a deer on, well…a deer.
They liked the work I do on found objects and actually mailed me the hide of a White-tailed Deer. Not a vegan-freindly assignment, to be sure.
Q: What was your favorite book as a child?
A: Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak’s pictures still make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Q: What is the best book you’ve recently read?
A: The Obama Files, by my friend and antiwar icon Cindy Sheehan. Full disclosure: She asked me to illustrate the cover.
Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?
A: I would recreate an old schoolroom and spend a year drawing my own history lesson on the blackboards with white colored pencil.
Q: What are some of your favorite places/books/blogs/websites for inspiration?
A: Book: Faces of the Enemy: The Psychology of Enmity, by Sam Keen is essential for any visual communicator who wants to understand how archetypes have been used by war-justifying societies to create hate-bonds of consensual paranoia. It’s also a great reference source for historic propaganda art. It reminds me that images can have the power to move history. Blog: The Jealous Curator, because they are jealous of me. DART: because I don’t have to remember to go to a website. It’s just sitting in my inbox waiting to inspire me.
what the hell does this have to do w 9/11?
Here somethinbg more relevant, from Baltimore:
Freddy Gray is being murdered again- first the polic- now by Batts, Mosby and the media.
re the “nicklet ride”- yes but this plays too easily into what the police are saying that- the van killed Freddy- not us. If you
watch the video at the beginning and hear Freddy scream- and listen to eye witnesses about him being folded like a crab and perhaps even beaten at a later stop- you must include these facts in any account. The knelt on him and you can see him limp and wounded AT THE FIRST- so please self correct- otherwise- admirable. Now focus on the cover up by – of all people- the black states attorney- just like Ferguson, just like Staten Island.
this is a great collage of all the documentary questions risen about the mystery of what 9-11 was really about and the republican lust for “a new world order” check out Olive Stones, final episode of his history of the united states.