Saturday, April 18 (4pm)
THE FILMS OF ROY FRIDGE
Special guest Betty Moody
Location: Aurora Picture Show – 5601 Navigation Blvd.
Free admission

Aurora is pleased to present a program of rarely-seen experimental films by Texas artist Roy Fridge, introduced by his friend and gallerist Betty Moody and Aurora’s Peter Lucas. Though he’s well known as a sculptor, Fridge’s fascinating film art made between the late-1950s and early-1970s has gone largely unseen for decades. This special presentation features eight short films–many of them incorporating elements of his sculptural works and extending themes of heroes/anti-heroes, voyages, and reflections seen in his visual art. The program also includes a number of his early animated television commercials. These films and related images are courtesy of the Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston.


Roy Fridge (1927-2007) was born in Beeville, Texas and lived and worked in Port Aransas, Texas.  He was known for his symbolic assemblages. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Baylor University in Waco with a degree in filmmaking. In the 1960s, he and his best friends, sculptors Jim Love and Dave McManaway, became known as the “unholy trio” of Texas Contemporary art. He built boats, some functional but mostly allusive, mythic ships of wood and bone of intimate scale. He also constructed life-size “shrines” in the woods around Coleto Creek near Victoria that he made for his photographic narratives involving shamans. And he kept intense journals, which he sometimes exhibited. In the mid-80s, Fridge stopped “whittling” entirely but continued his rich life as an amateur hermit, writing and reading voraciously. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, the San Antonio Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (Text by Patricia Johnson, Published in the Houston Chronicle, July 18, 2007.)