
DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240262

SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 18   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: CREATIVE LICENSE 

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

THE WIDE, WILD WORLD OF FRANK SPARROW HIS COLLECTIONS BECOME CURIOUS WORKS OF ART

STOP IN The Frame Shop in Manteo this month for a glimpse into the curious world of Frank Sparrow.

The Roanoke Island artist is exhibiting 44 mostly black and white works that combine to create a wildly colorful retrospective.

Spanning 19 years of his art career, the exhibition includes fine art etchings and prints, clay masks and shadow boxes ranging from the obvious to the oblique.

Hand-sized cubes to 6-foot-tall 3-D rectangles are crowded with small objects and paper images - many cut from his own prints and etchings - forming environments teeming with curvaceous figures, religious symbols and autobiographical tidbits.

Sparrow, 50, is a passionate collector of memorabilia. As if peaking into his top drawer, the viewer spies things in the collage boxes that a child might hide in his secret space.

Trinkets are juxtaposed against cutout figures captured in a variety of poses and moods creating a fabulous roller-coaster ride though the artist's mind's eye.

He purposely leaves some of his environments sparse, concentrating on fine-tuning a composition. Others are congested, more like what one might find while roaming the unconscious mind or after leaping through the looking glass.

``I'm having fun is basically the way I'm looking at it,'' said Sparrow. ``I incorporate serious images and light-hearted and also confusing images that tell a story, and it's up to a person to interpret it.''

Figures of friends and family surface in his environments. A rusty can lid becomes a halo behind an image of Sparrow. In another work, he shows himself as a screaming mouth.

He produced a tongue-in-cheek ode to Adam and Eve filled with ample produce and a snake bite kit.

Another Sparrow invention is a petite box involving singer Elton John's recent redo of ``Candle in the Wind.'' Titled ``Hey, That's My Song,'' the art work questions the legitimacy of the song workover for the late Princess Diana Spencer. Hidden behind a lacy screen at the bottom of the box that's filled with multiple Marilyns peers the infamous rock 'n' roller.

For a journey beyond time, take in the Raku masks Sparrow has coupled with select found objects. Also boxed, these three works cast a timelessness over the show. Yielding power through their economy, the clay images offer stark contrast to the mania present in the shadowbox worlds. Unlike with authentic artifacts, links to the past are unnecessary to extract meaning from the 20th century creations.

Sparrow offers a guide map of sorts.

Flatten out his black boxes and tighten up the compositions and you unearth his printmaker's roots - black and white fine art etchings and prints.

By including the wide range of works, he allows us to follow his evolution - at least as much as possible considering the gyrating mind of this artist. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY ELLEN RIDDLE

Frank Sparrow's retrospective at The Frame Shop in Manteo offers a

mix of two-and three-dimensional work that spans 19 years.

Graphic

HOW TO SEE HIM

Who: Roanoke Island artist Frank Sparrow

What: A retrospective, including shadow boxes, clay masks, prints

and etchings.

Where: The Frame Shop, 100 Old Tom St., Manteo, 473-1929

When: Through October; open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m Monday through

Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.