Article and photos by Yulia Rock
With medical waste objects such as vials, surgical tape, surgical drain tubing and even an intravenous stand, Michelle Frick creates sculptures and installations.
Frick, 50, began experimenting with those unique, yet widely recognizable, materials over a decade ago when two family members were hospitalized for extended periods. “For four years, I witnessed the aftermath of high-risk medical procedures and became familiar with a wide variety of nurses’ supplies,” Frick said.
She took some of those clean items home and made a bird sculpture, which she later brought to the nurses. “I’d love to make a flock of these; can you collect these two objects?” she asked them.
Frick believes a new form of life can be created with the materials doctors use to save patients.
When she returned, the nurses had collected all kinds of other supplies. “They took me into a storeroom and showed stuff that was going to expire,” Frick recalled. “‘We are going to throw it out anyway. Just take it,’ they told me.”
Frick points at the shelves in her studio that are stocked up with boxes that contain numerous medical items. Whenever she needs an inspiration, she looks at the objects and “sees what they suggest.”
Frick lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and travels daily to her studio in Yonkers after her main job as an after-school teacher in the Bronx.
Even with her busy schedule, she is full of positive energy. Frick greets visitors to her studio with a warm smile. In a soft voice, she tells visitors about the purpose of her art. Her hands move quickly as she shows her birds and sea creatures.
“I am taking a different turn and not using medical supplies as much,” she said. “It’s a bit tricky because my audience really likes medical supplies, so I have to figure out a way to make it equally engaging.”
Frick received a bachelor of fine arts from Pratt Institute, and later, studied at the School of Visual Arts with Andrew Ginzel. Her installations have been shown in New York galleries, as well as in Philadelphia, Vermont, and California.
When she is not at her YOHO studio in Yonkers creating pieces for upcoming installations, she teaches kids up to high school age in the after-school program at the Riverdale School in the Bronx.
Birds, including the swans seen here, are common in Frick’s art. Some take up to eight hours to produce; the smaller ones sell for $85.
Birds can be seen almost in every Frick’s installations. She says her inspiration comes from her son, who since early childhood was fascinated by all kinds of birds. She thinks the birds created from medical objects “defuse the feelings” that hospitals tend to bring out.
White geese take over the big table in her studio; they were a part of her 2014 installation at Governors Island Artist Residency.
Some of her birds can take up to eight hours each to complete. She uses handmade molds and covers them with Japanese canopy paper, due to its durability and versatility. Her smaller birds sell for $75, and she makes them either from paper or hand-made dye-cast cotton with non-piercing syringes, which resemble bird’s beaks.
Frick believes that the knowledge that goes into saving a life is vital, but the waste that is generated when doctors save a person’s life also matters. She uses her sculptures to send her own message to her viewers, “by combining synthetic man-made materials with organic, I am transforming these objects that can be threatening into something sweeter. They emerge a new life – a different kind of life that is made of trash.”
Frick was inspired to make art from surgical supplies after two family members were hospitalized for an extended period of time.