Gina Marie Freschet

Background

Gina Marie Freschet was born on March 9, 1960, in San Francisco, California, United States. She is a daughter of Ferruccio Freschet, educator, and Berniece Louise Freschet, maiden name Speck, writer.

Education

Gina Freschet wrote and illustrated her first little book when she was in third grade. The book was about a horse - a little black foal who would grow up to become a sort of Pegasus. She was under the influence of Walter Farley's Big Black Horse and Black Beauty at the time. Gina Freschet received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the School of Visual Arts.

Career

As an artist, Gina Freschet taught a class at the School of Visual Arts for an academic year during which she became a freelance illustrator at The New York Times. The artist took a liking to oils due to their forgiving properties - oils could be easily manipulated wet or dry - unlike other mediums such as watercolors. Up until the 1980s, Freschet was working strictly in black in white. Consequently, Freschet had to readjust her mode of thinking; instead of working from a mental palette of grisailles, she was suddenly executing her ideas in Technicolor. Her unique illustrative style depicts sociopolitical themes through cartoon figures and elementary sketches. Seemingly simple caricatures are representative of a complex thought process laced with satiric humor. A self-proclaimed sign painter, Freschet considers her work unmoored from any specific artistic movement in the canon of art history. Stylistically, Freschet's compositions are a pastiche of pictorial and script-based signs, graffiti gesticulations, and children's drawings. Given the wide scope of her craft, Freschet’s oeuvre refuses the fixity of any one genre.

By the late 1990s, Freschet relocated to Mexico. She sought spiritual refuge in Mexican culture, folk art tradition, vibrant hues, and extraordinary topographical elements. She discovered Mexican artists to be great sign painters, which allowed for significant grooming of her own pictorial lexicon. Distanced from her native soil, she began to slake her soul with a form of expressionist painting. Images, icons, and impressions were slathered onto canvas like acts of contrition. She was constantly inspired by the quotidian of Mexican life - from casual conversations with people on the street to cultural customs - and soon these impressions began to reconfigure in her head in the form of a narrative. As a result, the artist began writing and illustrating several children's books. Saturated with dreamlike, folk-art-inspired imagery, Freschet's books were a reflection of the new life impressed upon her. In Naty's Parade, one of her first self-illustrated picture books for children, Freschet writes about the Mexican dance festival of Guelaguetza. The festivities, including descriptions of music, color, and dance, are relayed to the reader via Naty, a young girl who is participating in the celebration dressed in a mouse costume. In a text accompanied by lively and colorful pictures, she skillfully conveys the "surrealism" of the "wild parade," effectively blending the two to convey Naty’s fright as she gets separated from her father. In Beto and the Bone Dance, Freschet returns to Mexico once again, this time celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Throughout the years, Gina Freschet has continued to expand her artistic repertoire by creating works on paper, watercolors, and collages. Freschet's process is not tethered to the restriction of time; sometimes work can be birthed easily, whereas in other instances it can take up to a year to complete. The one element that does matter is scale. She confesses to there being a certain amount of intimacy between her and her work, which in her mind, would not successfully translate in a large composition. Her largest works measure 3' x 4'. Perhaps this can be attributed to her background in illustration that required a certain amount of detail within a restricted space. When asked about certain themes in her work, she prefers the call them "attitudes."

Gina Freschet illustrated Bernard Sees the World, Bernard of Scotland Yard, and Bernard and the Catnip Caper - books written by her mother Berniece Freschet. She is also a contributor of illustrations to various periodicals, including, New York Magazine, Esquire, Psychology Today, Ms.

Achievements

• Gina Freschet's illustrations appeared in famous periodicals. She wrote several books with her own illustrations.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Lute's Tune

    (An orphan boy with one cherished possession - a magic lut...)

    1992
  • Naty's Parade

    (A colorful, surreal trip to a Mexican fiesta Naty is so e...)

    2000
  • Bernard of Scotland Yard

    (Bernard goes to England to help his cousin, Foster, a Sco...)

    1978
  • Bernard and the Catnip Caper

    (When the quietest, sleepiest, most timid cat in Boston is...)

    1981
  • Winnie & Ernst

    (Winnie (a possum) and Ernst (an otter) are best friends w...)

    2003
  • Bernard Sees the World

    (Bernard sets out to see the world and ends up seeing the ...)

    1976
  • Up and at 'Em with Winnie & Ernst

    (Winnie the possum and Ernst the otter are back with four ...)

    2005
  • Beto and The Bone Dance

    (Today is Beto's favorite holiday - the Day of the Dead. F...)

    2001
  • Feet Man and Mr. Tiny

    (Feet Man has two gigantic problems - his feet. His foot s...)

    2006

Views

Gina Freschet thinks that the purpose of art is to encourage people to believe in the possibility of transcendence, and that its reason is to remind people that there is an elevation that belongs to them.

Interests

• Writers

  Howard Pyle, Arthur Rackham, Newell Convers Wyeth, Edmund Dulac, John Tenniel, Ernest Howard. Shepard, Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House), Garth Williams

Connections

Gina Freschet married Steve Cieslawski on November 27, 1997.

Father:

Ferruccio Freschet

At the age of 16, Ferruccio Freschet went on to serve in World War II as the United States Marine where he saw heavy fighting in Okinawa. After the service, he got involved with semi-pro boxing and went on to win the Golden Gloves Inter-Mountain Championship. He gave up fighting when he went into education. He taught at Aragon High School for several years and was a Coordinator of Flexible Scheduling. There, he implemented "Block Scheduling" which was a pioneer model that many high schools use today. In 1969, he joined the Far West Educational Laboratory in Berkeley, and soon after at the Far East Educational laboratory in Boston. By 1973, Ferruccio was High School Principal at Rockville Centre and later, Yorktown Heights. He finished his career as High School Principal and Assistant Superintendent at Ardsley School District. Ferruccio Freschet was awarded the "Outstanding Educator of Hudson Valley" for Lifetime Achievement in Education.

Mother:

Berniece Louise Freschet

It is the land, the wildlife, and the plants of her native Montana that inspired Berniece Louise Freschet to become a children's book author. At the same time that she and her husband, Ferruccio, were raising a family of five active children, Berniece Freschet was also bringing to life the diverse "characters" of Montana animals in the pages of close to over forty published children's books: "characters" such as Little Black Bear, Henrietta's Hen, the Old bullfrog, and many others.

husband:

Steve Cieslawski

Many of the elements in Steve Cieslawski's paintings pertain to the journey of the individual from life to death, and, symbolically the growth of the psyche through rising states of consciousness. He is interested in the world of people's own created reality as opposed to the existing reality created around people. Steve Cieslawski uses a variation of the technique of the 17th century Dutch Master, Johannes Vermeer. Each painting is done with many glazes of different colors. The effect is one of light traveling through perhaps 20 layers of glazed pigment and bouncing back through layers to form an inner light source. Every inch of the canvas is meticulously painted so that each day, with the changing light, the viewer will invariably see something new and different.

Sister:

Leslie Ann Freschet

Sister:

Maria Teresa Freschet

Brother:

Francis Paul Freschet

Sister:

Dinah Hair

Friend:

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Living in downtown Manhattan as an artist in the 1980s was pivotal for Gina Freschet. As an East Villager, Freschet frequently crossed paths with Jean-Michel Basquiat and eventually maintained a brief friendship with him. Stylistically, some of Freschet's work can be likened to Basquiat's given their mutual penchant for bright colors, rudimentary sketches, and ideogrammatic compositions.

References

• Gina Freschet