Failure is an option
Frank Wick’s Art 365 project, It’s All Wrong But It’s Alright, explores failure and the future by Holly Wall The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s exhibition Art 365 will open at [ArtSpace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City in March 2011. Five artists each receive a $12,000 honorarium and one year of interaction with curator Shannon Fitzgerald. Visit www.Art365.org for more information.
Frank Wick hasn’t experienced any more failure than the next guy, and yet it’s the subject of his Art 365 project, It’s All Wrong But It’s Alright. The project is a set of sculptural works that “differ conceptually, inducing a low-frequency anxiety.” In his project proposal, Wick writes, “The pieces submitted are not documents of failure, but rather things charged with the potential of failure. The work reflects more about the roles we take in life, rather than the roles we aspire to.” “I think most failure is predicated on how we feel about ourselves or see ourselves,” Wick explained later. “I don’t think failure can always be avoided. It is a given factor in every situation.” Wick works in the exhibits department at the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, doing exhibits work and mount making. He teaches art classes when the chance arises. The “low-frequency anxiety” he refers to in his project proposal is a phrase he borrowed from a good friend, Gean Moreno. “I see this as a sort of unheard vibration that makes you feel something without knowing it outright,” Wick explained. “Low frequencies have a way of hitting you in the stomach, as opposed to a higher frequency that gets into your head. I took it that way, anyway; Gean may have meant it some other way.
A sculpture in progress in Frank Wick’s studio.
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