Window Dressings, 2018 (Performance Still)

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^{Boy Messiah}

Throughout the past decade I have found myself examining what I know of the story of my father, from his childhood and renegade youth to his becoming a parent. Over the years it has been told to me in his voice, with a dream-like intensity and devastation. In its whole, the history has become, in my mind, symbolically representative of the pursuit of fame in America.

1. My dad and I, 2002

2. Saddle for Boy Messiah, 2024

Dad ran away from home at 12 years old and eventually lived in a combination of houselessness and squatting for nearly a decade in Hollywood. He’s charming, a great singer, has blonde hair down to his butt, and finds a community in the local punk/glam scene.

His name is Boy Messiah.

Post Party Daddy, 2022

4. Consummations, 2018 (Performance Still)

In the beginnings of my foray into dad’s life, I attempted to write a play about my parent’s coupling. I was trying to imagine what both of my parents went through as teenagers who had willingly left home to forge their own paths. What lessons did they learn? Who taught those lessons? For my father, a source of solace was his grandmother.

After running away he was intermittently cared for by her. I’ve learned of some lessons she taught him. How to make thin danish style pancakes. How to transplant a plum tree. The mundane wasn’t enough. He wanted to play and be seen. I remember the solitary “toy” in her house was a saddle-laden stool with a braided leather equestrian whip.

5. Sketches for a combustible rocking horse, 2020

When seated, my father rocks back and forth endlessly, probably a symptom of boredom or anxiety. Over the years I’ve developed this image of him as a rocking horse rider on the run -- or in the wild west, looking for freedom.

After discovering in my own life the ways desire and independence can spontaneously turn disastrous, I began associating freedom and fire. There is an emphasis on individual uniqueness and fame linked to the idea of freedom in this country. I saw my dad reaching for fire. I started having dreams of horses on fire, and the rider holding the match.

6. Highly Flammable Rocking Horse, 2023

My most recent work on this line of inquiry has been to realise this rocking horse in its physical form. Five Gallon Rocking Horse centers itself around a plastic gasoline tank and a megaphone filled with dried foliage from my father’s childhood home. The combustible materials, whose proximity to the gas tank indicate the immediacy of the probable explosion, are clogging the megaphone which may otherwise amplify a call for help or cry of independence. With carved details, welded bracings, sewn cushion, lace trim and leather saddle, the work puts delicacy and danger in tension.

7. Five Gallon Rocking Horse, 2023

7-1. Five Gallon Rocking Horse, (Detail) 2023

7-2. Five Gallon Rocking Horse, (Detail) 2023

Journal entries and drawings have become central to my practice and concentrate on stories told to me by friends and family, like this ongoing documentation of my father’s youth. These words and lines are refined into charcoal studies and vignettes assembled from found materials that are, in relation to these stories, laden with meaning. These studies inspire intricate, multi-media sculptures and furniture-adjacent works that paint idiosyncratic portraits of my subjects, though they are most often not figurative.

1. My dad and I, 2002. Inkjet photograph in studio.
2. Saddle for Boy Messiah, 2024. Charcoal on Paper. 52” x 64”.
3. Post-Party Daddy, 2022. Wood, Metal, Canvas, Paint, Dried Flowers, Southern Comfort. 24”x16”x18”.4. Consummations, Act III “Becoming” (Lesson 2), The Field House, 2018. Artist’s Hair, Ten bags, one cheeto, a television, The Lion King soundtrack on CD.
5. Sketches for a combustible rocking horse, 2020. Ink and Watercolor on paper. 7”x9”.
6. Highly Flammable Rocking Horse, 2023. Charcoal on Paper. 42”x42”.
7. Five Gallon Rocking Horse, 2023.Gasoline, Wood, Metal, Leather, Dried Foliage, and Ceramic Horse Heads. 64”x60”x24”.

Free Alexander Tripp is a furniture maker and sculptor working in Brooklyn. He operates the arts non-profit WORTHLESSSTUDIOS as Director of Fabrication, where he produces programs for emerging artists to create socially-engaged works that are primarily large-scale sculptural installations. With the support of the NEA, Mellon Foundation, LMCC, New York State Council on the Arts, and other foundations, Free has designed and produced programs for WORTHLESSSTUDIOS such as FREE FILM, Plywood Protection Project, and their annual fabrication-focused Residency. Free was the designer, engineer, and fabricator for 1-800 Happy Birthday (2022), an 8,000 square-foot exhibition that memorialized 12 Black and brown victims of police violence through the voices of their family members as collected by Mohammad Gorjestani. Outside of this community-centered practice he develops interdisciplinary works that have taken forms of furniture collections, guerrilla performances including Gotta Get Clean (2019) and Consummations (2018) at The Dollhouse*,* and group shows such as Funny Stuff (2023) at Andrew Logan Projects. Free graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2018 after transferring from Pasadena Community College as a Deans Scholar. Free was raised in Los Angeles, California.

Boy Messiah

****ART COMMISSIONS. PRINTS AND ORIGINALS. FURNITURE SALES. REPAIRS / RESTORATIONS. *for custom fabrication and production services contact me at free@worthlessstudios.org

^{Boy Messiah}

****ART COMMISSIONS.
PRINTS AND ORIGINALS.

FURNITURE SALES.
REPAIRS / RESTORATIONS.

*for custom fabrication and production services contact me at free@worthlessstudios.org