In essence, an architectural installation is a site-specific piece we custom design and create for your space. Each piece is unique because it combines your ideas, the parameters of the project, and our intuitive responses. Some spaces may need a calming influence while others may need a more dynamic energy. In a home or business this art may be solely for its aesthetic presence, or it might have a utilitarian purpose as well. Our most recent accomplishment was a collaborative effort with the North Shore Hospital Auxilliary (above). It is two works 3.5′ X 9′ in kilnworked glass and steel.
In our architectural installation at the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic, there are three panels representing help, healing, and gratitude. They are 3/8 ” fused stained glass partitions with ancillary copper frames.
Our first major installation piece arches across the kitchen at the Angry Trout Cafe in Grand Marais. It is over 15′ long and represents major phases of Lake Superior: the icy winter, the calm lake at night with aurora borealis dancing across the surface, and the strong waves of the lake in motion. It is three traditional stained glass panels with copper cane mounted in angle iron covered in sheet copper.
George Wilkes and Barb LaVigne, owners of the Angry Trout Cafe, now have five more custom-designed pieces featuring Lake Superior “critters that eat fish”.
We are happy to have our art displayed at a restaurant so dear to so many of Grand Marais’s residents and visitors.
This series of windows, called The Shen Cycle, is in a private home in Minneapolis. It is a visual exploration into the Chinese energetic system of the five elements. The sequence is the seasonal transformations in nature, in creativity, and in life–from birth to death. The large panels represent the Chinese elements of wood/spring, fire/summer, earth/late summer, metal/autumn, and water/winter. The small transom windows above include the Chinese characters for each respective element.
Below are several more of our larger artistic endeavors, including a dalle de verre (slab glass) window, a forged-iron fireplace screen, a hand-hammered copper fireplace surround, a forged-iron wedding/garden arbor, a set of hand-carved doors with forged-copper pulls, and a cemetery monument of steel and fused-glass.
Frykman Art Studio 