Student's Artworks on Display at Glencoe Museum

Radford University graduate student Jerry Frech is displaying artworks from his collection "First Americans: Native Series" this month at the Glencoe Museum in Radford.

The series opens tonight with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will continue through early November.

Frech creates powerful and evocative images of Native American culture. Ranging from realistic to abstract, his art captures the essence of Native Americans and their presence in both the past and the present. He works in water-based media, including marker pens, transparent layers and spontaneous drips of paint.

In some of Frech's works he uses a handprint or footprint to create a vision of where people once trod but are now lost. The focus of his current series is on the tribes of the East Coast, which he said are still a strong and flourishing culture.

Although not of Native American ancestry, Frech is descended from an indigenous tribe in the Philippines, which he said provides him with a sense of shared identity with Native Americans.

In 2006 Frech was deployed with the U.S. Air Force to Iraq, where he rediscovered his passion for art. With an undergraduate degree in art from Bluefield College, he decided to resume his studies and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Radford University, where he is a graduate teaching fellow. He also teaches at Pathway Christian Academy and is a private instructor.

Glencoe Museum is at 600 Unruh Drive in Radford. For more information, contact museum Director Scott Gardner at (540) 731-5031 or info@glencoemuseum.org.