Collage exhibit brings layers of history and art to Falls Village

From July 12 through August 8, the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village will host “Collage Redux!,” an exhibit featuring the collages and box constructions of Lakeville resident, Ingrid Freidenbergs.

A highlight of the exhibit will be Freidenberg’s Art Talk on July 24 at 5:30 p.m., featuring a screening of “Cycles,” a short film by her son, Paul Feder, who also co-composed the score with fellow musician Sam McCoy. The film presents the photography of Freidenbergs’ late husband Jack Feder, whose photos appeared in “Life,” “Newsweek,” and “The New York Times.”

The film is an important piece of the show.“This is my first show without Jack here. A way to bring Jack in is to show the film.”

Although both Freidenbergs and her husband were psychologists, they also pursued and loved the arts. When they first met and throughout their years together, “Art was the thing we communicated about,” said Freidenbergs.

Freidenbergs recalled a trip to the British Museum.She’d been studying watercolor with painter John Hardy and with a letter of introduction from him, she and Federal went into the vaults and spent the day looking at cases of Turner watercolors. “I loved it,” remembered Freidenbergs.

She and Federal traveled the world together, bringing home pieces of art they loved.

Freidenbergs’ art was — and continues to be — heavily influenced by her family’s flight from Latvia when she was just an infant in 1944.In her personal statement she says, “World War II changed my life, so little wonder that collage has become my mode of expression as well. The family farm disappeared; fortunes were buried and scattered. So, we too were scattered around Europe, then America, picking up pieces of culture and cast-off debris along the way.”

She and her family spent seven years in displaced persons camps in Europe before emigrating to the United States.

Freidenbergs began her pursuit of art with watercolor but after her son’s birth, she found collage to be a perfect fit for her. “It was something I could do with the many distractions of a young child.” She developed a method of working that she still utilizes.“I could put things down, walk away, go back, move things, look at them upside down and all ways, and walk away again…” until she arrived at the perfect composition.

Collage also combined her love of cloth, paper, color (red being a recurring theme), feathers, buttons, old books, and other found materials.

And most perfectly, collage gave her an outlet to “make sense of a shattered world. Form, line, texture, and color are joined to balance the disparate parts. Through the process of assembling these parts I can once again start to feel in control of my life,” she explained.

Of one show Freidenbergs participated in, “The New York Times” wrote “there is no doubt as to Freidenbergs’ gift for conveying atmosphere thick with something, be it guilt, intrigue, death or simply a relish for the forbidden.”

The David M. Hunt Library is located at 63 Main Street in Falls Village and Collage Redux! will be on view during library hours.