If I Were a Bird
The Birdhouses of Joseph Frink
Joseph Frink has been making things his entire life. I’m not sure if he ever thought of himself as an artist but he is one.
He is an obsessive maker. Furniture, goofy signs, countless clocks, toys for his grandchildren, holiday decorations and many other things. He has made paintings and he draws, he is a compulsive creator and maker.
For the last several years he has been making birdhouses. These are not functional birdhouses, not really. Although I suppose a bird could live in one. Frink’s birdhouses are more idealized, fanciful houses for an imaginary bird. What kind of bird would live in one of these homes? One with bright, exaggerated plumage? Maybe a big pink bird that has the magical ability to shrink down, slip through the entrance hole and sit back to watch a bit of television. Maybe you or I can be that bird imagining living in one of these houses.
Each house is different. Frink uses found materials, natural and human-made, to create designs and embellishments on the exterior of each house. The backs of many of them are reserved for a special statement or symbolic purpose. He never adds an embellishment for simply a decorative flourish, indeed, there is always a conscious scheme to what he does. He uses appropriate and well thought out color choices for each birdhouse. Sometimes it’s a muted palette other times a bright, strong combination. These choices are not arbitrary, rather they are well thought out deliberate constructions.
Frink loves to give his birdhouses away to special people in his life. All his children have been given one or more. He loves to give them to people that he has regular contact with. People that attend his church, good friends, neighbors. He donates them for his church fundraiser, his favorite waitress at Grandma’s in Duluth, he sent one to friends in Japan.
He doesn’t create these to make money. They are a gift to the world. They are objects of humor, joy and delight possessing a particular and unique aesthetic vision.
The Art Spirit is the gift of our species to the universe. It is true that artists sell their work for money, a necessity for sure. However, The Art Spirit at its core is a gesture of giving. A person, an artist, makes a choice to live their life in service of this ultimate human compulsion to create. It is a pure, genuine response to the world of our imagination.
We all construct imaginary places to be, houses perched on a branch teetering with possibilities, dreams and vision. Frink’s birdhouses tap into our collective desire for play, for imaginary lives and identities for fanciful rainbow hued realities.
If I were a bird I would live in one of Joseph Frink’s birdhouse. Now that I consider it, perhaps I already do.