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VIDEO: Meet the artist behind NYC’s architectural ‘icons series’

April 24, 2018 By Liliana Bernal Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Tom Fruin at his studio in Dumbo. Eagle photos by Liliana Bernal
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Meet the man who is turning water tanks into art.

Tom Fruin’s fantastical colored-glass sculptures on top of two buildings along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and two others in North Brooklyn add whimsy to the cityscape by day and cast a kaleidoscopic glow at night.

All four are part of Fruin’s “Icons Series,” in which the artist recreates architectural figures in different cities. In New York, that means water tanks.

“I’ve always been drawn to [them] because they’re kind of round and they’re usually made of wood, so they’re kind of organic,” said the DUMBO-based artist.

“They seem like a stand in for humanity within this very urban and hard-edged environment with brick and steel and glass.”

Right now, Fruin is building his latest piece, a 15-foot-tall house sculpture that will soon head to South Korea to be part of the Jeju LED Art Festa.

The steel framework covered with multi-colored Plexiglas will rest on a platform in a lake and will be illuminated at night.

The sculpture follows the style of Kolonihavehus (2010), a stained glass “house” that has toured the world and now rests in the North Brooklyn Farms inside the under-construction Domino development in Williamsburg. Another water tank is atop a beer hall in Greenpoint.

Fruin, originally from Los Angeles, settled in DUMBO in 1996 and has been making art in many media: neon, quilts, architectural sculptures and more.

“I like to think that I’m using buildings as pedestals, so it’s kind of an architectural scale, but they’re sculptural works,” Fruin said.

He declined to characterize his work.

“It’s trying to overlook infrastructural shapes and then start making them fantastic in a way that forces people when they see them to reconsider these objects that are around you all the time and appreciate your surroundings and keep looking,” he said.

 

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