Select Multiple: Turchin Center

Commissioned by the Turchin Center in partnership with the Department of Art students, under the direction of Lynn Duryea and Lisa Stinson, for temporary installation as part of the 23rd Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition and in honor of An Appalachian Summer Festival's 25th Anniversary.

Born in 1965 in Manchester, Connecticut, Fred Spaulding grew up in Ventura, California. In 1990, he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at California State University, Long Beach. The following years were spent training for the 1992 Olympic Games in which Fred competed in the single canoe events. The next two years were spent working as an artist assistant to James Melchert and Viqui McCaslin on tile mural projects for the Los Angeles Metro and for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During this time, Fred was introduced to Walter McConnell at the 49th Scripps Ceramic Invitational in 1993. Walter was an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Connecticut and invited Fred to apply to the M.F.A. program, which Fred began in 1994. At UConn, Fred began working with bricks to create sequences of stacked shapes rebuilt at regular intervals. In 1996, Fred took a job in the Ceramic Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an evening ceramic technician. Fred was encouraged by Katherine Ross and James Lawton to use the studio to continue his work. He began to take photographs in the streets of Chicago and to silkscreen these images onto bricks. In 1997, Fred included these glazed bricks in the sequence of brick forms, which he exhibited at the G-2 gallery in downtown Chicago. Fred moved to Texas in 1998 to pursue a series of teaching positions at Victoria College, Tarrant County College, University of Texas Pan American, and University of Texas at Arlington. Fred has continued to explore the possibilities of constructed structures of brick expanding the number and variety of manufactured and hand made shapes in his collection enabling him to create larger forms with more irregular shapes.

A series of exhibitions and sculpture installations including showings in Kansas City, MO; San Diego, CA; Newcastle, ME; Chicago, IL; Boston, MA; Charlotte, NC; Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio TX, Skaelskor Denmark, Los Angeles, CA; Helena, MT; Matamoros, MX, and Bangkok Thailand, chart the development of this work. Fred has completed further study in translating his work into new material forms through residencies at Kohler’s Arts in Industry program in iron casting, and Penland’s Winter Residency in Printmaking. Fred is currently Associate Professor of Art at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, TX. Fred and his wife Victoria maintain their home in Arlington, TX.