DE's 3rd Floor Exhibition Space
February 2022: Rebekah Frank
Rebekah Frank uses steel plate, handmade steel chain, and short lengths of steel wire to create minimal structures. Some are spacious flexible drawings that can be hung on the wall or worn on the body. Others are containers, reliquaries of sorts, designed to hold or be held. Despite the geometry and material, they are not hard pieces. The pieces drape and conform to the environment they interact with, the gentle pull of gravity, the planar surfaces of a table, the curves of the body. There is a delicacy in the line and in the structures.
These pieces stand alone, but they invite interaction while still maintaining their individuality. They leave room for interpretation, creating space for the viewer to exist. Rebekah is interested in the variety that one piece, one simple structure, can contain. How does the piece maintain its own perimeters no matter how it is pushed or pulled, draped or stretched…even when a human form is inserted into the space.
She received her Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2012 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas State University in 2010. Her chosen material is steel, a fascination discovered through a challenge received when she was 18. Her creative practice has focused on that material ever since, working as a blacksmith, a welder, a machinist, and, currently, a jeweler. She explores themes of protection, vulnerability, and boundaries in her work. Rebekah’s studio practice is based in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA, and she exhibits, lectures, and teaches workshops all over the world.
In addition to her art practice, Rebekah writes about artists whose work has a strong material focus. As a queer artist, she enjoys writing about other queer artists to celebrate their experience and process. Her articles have been published on Art Jewelry Forum, Metalsmith Magazine, and Surface Design Journal, as well as in international exhibition catalogs.
