When local artist Faiya Fredman passed away in 2020, she left behind an artistic legacy that spanned seven decades and included dozens of regional exhibitions and hundreds of works. She was considered to be the “matriarch of San Diego’s contemporary art scene” and was known for her often bold, always beautiful experimentations that resulted in a variety of works in multiple mediums. Nearly every major museum in San Diego County owns one of her works, as does the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

A new exhibition and an accompanying book will hopefully serve to embolden that legacy. Opening Sept. 10 at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, “Continuum: The Art of Faiya Fredman” will showcase the artist’s works while the book — simply titled “Faiya Fredman” and compiled by her family and friends — will also offer readers an excellent visual overview of the artist’s work and career.

“The goal was really just to continue her legacy, which is why the exhibition has that title and because it’s a word that also appears on a lot of her writing,” says Sara Stewart, Fredman’s granddaughter who, along with Allwyn O’Mara and Carmel O’Mara-Horowitz, compiled the book and co-curated the exhibition. “That specific word, ‘continuum,’ was a word we’d run across often.”

“Continuum” is also an apt title for another reason: One of the constants throughout Fredman’s career was that there was no constant. She had an unwavering commitment to experiment with new technologies and mediums and continued to work within and embrace new technologies while others her age were often fearful of new techniques.

“She always liked new media. She was always excited about it,” says O’Mara, a friend and frequent collaborator with Fredman for over 25 years. “She liked a sense of making things for your eyes that were surprising. She was never afraid to jump in, to go in feet first and see what we could do. And then she’d push it even more.”

It can be tricky to find thematic commonalities among the diverse amounts of art that Fredman produced over 70-plus years. The sheer amount of works is one thing, but there’s also the fact that she never fully settled on a specific medium, using photography and printmaking as much as she used paints, pencils and plants.

“One of the things that fascinated me about her was that she didn’t stick to any comfort zone for long,” says former Union-Tribune art critic Robert Pincus, who wrote the introduction for the “Faiya Fredman” book. “She was relentlessly pushing herself to try something different. She was not so much interested in the idea of, ‘Let me create a style and then I’ll be recognized for that style and that will be my career.’”

Still, time and nature seem to be at the center of most of Fredman’s work. To call her a “nature artist” would be a bit of a misnomer in that most people would envision a landscape painter or the like. Yes, she incorporated the natural materials that were often the source of her inspiration — things like sand and plants — but the natural world and the cyclical nature of life and humanity, death and decay, were also a consistent inspiration.

“There was a cellular nature to her work,” says Suda House, a local artist, teacher and frequent Fredman collaborator. “I think she always worked on a very cellular nature of how things were and her point of view. Someone has to look through that microscope, and in this case, it was her eye looking at the cellular nature of things.”

This seemed to almost culminate perfectly in her last major exhibition, “The Steel Goddess: Works by Faiya Fredman,” where she displayed some of her “Goddess” series sculptures alongside gorgeous lenticular prints. These prints layered images of the goddesses within organic and decaying materials such as leaves and flowers, creating an illusory, almost three-dimensional depth that changes depending on the angle. The 2018 exhibition at Oceanside Museum of Art, curated by her longtime champion Mark-Elliott Lugo, was a perfect representation of Fredman’s four key attributes as an artist: Working in a variety of mediums, always experimenting, using non-traditional materials and a predilection to learn and use new technologies.

Fredman’s fascination with nature likely began at an early age. Born in 1925 in Ohio, she spent most of her early life in Arizona. Her father bought her an easel when she was 4 years old, and throughout her life, she would incorporate natural materials into her work even while embracing new technologies (she learned Photoshop at age 73, for example).

“She was an only child and so even as a young child, she had this amazing imagination, and I think that nature played into that,” Stewart says. “When she lived by the beach, we’d often go for a walk to find leaves and shells, and all those different pieces would find their way into her art. There were always buckets of sand in her studio.”

Before graduating from UCLA in 1951 with a degree in visual art, she married Milton “Micky” Fredman, and the couple would go on to have two kids. But for the next 60 years, living in both Del Mar and La Jolla, Freiya would remain committed to her art. And while many of her peers would move away and go on to become something of icons in the contemporary art world, Fredman stayed in San Diego. Most of her friends and colleagues agree that while her humbleness about her work won her friends and local champions, she lacked any sense of self-promotion.

“I don’t think Faiya went down to her studio every day to put San Diego on the map. I think she went down every day to make the work,” says House, who will be hosting a workshop and a walk-through of the exhibition at the Athenaeum. “She needed to make the work. She needed to do something bigger than herself.”

Fredman’s “Goddess” sculptures — arguably her most recognized series of works — are a good example of this. O’Mara says Fredman was keen on letting the viewer interpret the works any way they saw fit, to the point where she didn’t title the sculptures.

“People ask, ‘How could she not have a name for her sculptures,’ but she wanted the viewer to come and see this goddess, and decide what goddess it was for them,” O’Mara says. “She has a whole notebook about asking women what they thought the goddesses were. That was her whole thing. She said, ‘If they can’t bring themselves to it, then it’s not worth doing.’”

Stewart and O’Mara, along with a few others, were working to archive Fredman’s work before she passed away in February of 2020 at the age of 94. Stewart recalls that Fredman was working on new pieces up until the very end. A few months later, the first surge of COVID-19 came and the work had to be delayed, but they’re pleased with the way everything has turned out.

“Putting the book together really helped us curate the show. It was a labor of love and a lot of time spent on Zoom,” says Stewart, who calls the book a “visual arts catalog” of her grandmother’s work.

They spent hours and hours poring over materials, scanning and documenting everything from sketches to clippings, poetry and hand-written notes. As a result, “Continuum” will be a mix of old and new work with no restrictions on time period, but curated in a way that the pieces will make sense being showcased together. They also made it a point to showcase some of the never-before-seen work that Fredman was working on at the time of her death.

The team behind the exhibition and book are already planning on another “more biographical” book that will focus more on Fredman’s place in art history. For now, they’re happy to offer something that is all about the work, a “visual representation of who she was,” as Stewart puts it.

Pincus sees the exhibition and book as “an important inflection point,” one that will hopefully bring attention to someone who was not only an important San Diego artist, but a champion and supporter of so many other artists.

“I am always taken with the devotion of the people who love her work,” Pincus says. “It’s a good idea to have a show and book now, because it allows people to look at her work in a broad, more panoramic way. My feeling is that it will cement the idea that she is an artist who deserves to endure and that her work deserves to have attention posthumously.”

Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla

Combs is a freelance writer.

Get U-T Arts & Culture on Thursdays

A San Diego insider’s look at what talented artists are bringing to the stage, screen, galleries and more.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service Sign Up For Our Newsletters