Kenneth Freed’s recent gift to the University Art Collection honoring Professor Emeritus Curtis Rhodes

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In March of 2020, Kalamazoo-based artist Ken Freed gifted ten lush intaglio prints to the University Art Collection in honor of  his friend and mentor, Professor Emeritus Curtis Rhodes.  Made in 1976, while Mr. Freed earned his M.F.A. at Western Michigan University's School of Art (now the Frostic School of Art),  these ten prints capture the open and figureless studio spaces of working and living  in the 1970s New York City art world.  

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The recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant,  Mr. Freed was aided, as he recalls, by “the kindness of so many artists who took pity on a twenty-some year-old student from Michigan.” Freed visited the studios of Lowell Nesbitt, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Philip Pearlstein, Louise Nevelson, Richard J. Haas, William S. Haney, Stephen Woodburn, Hiroshi Murata and Robert Indiana. The resulting prints provide an intimate view into private spaces that ultimately gave way to works of great public interest and historical importance.  

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Influenced by late 19th century French illustrator Félix Hilare Buhot's custom of including writing and small images into the border of his etchings, Mr. Freed added textual elements and Egyptian symbols around the edges of these images as well.  Combining etching, aquatint, and drypoint, and printed in a small edition, the series took Mr. Freed one year to complete.