In Conversation
with Frode Bolhuis
Words by Livia Casati
Visuals by Frode Bolhuis
I saw that art runs in your family. This didn’t start with you, but you all went through it in your own way and created your own styles. Can you tell us about the origin story? How did you become an artist and the sculptor that you are today?
Let’s go back to the real beginning. It started with my grandad, who wanted to get into art but was restricted by his own father because he thought he wouldn’t make any money. This was during the 50s and he was quite frustrated about that. When my own dad expressed an interest in art, grandad supported him and even joined him at college. Following that, art college became a tradition in the family; my granddad, his brother, my dad and my two sisters went to art school. My grandad’s frustration fuelled all this, and even during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s when it was not so common to collect art, his house was always full of it.
Although it seemed only logical for me to follow in his footsteps, it wasn’t until I was 16 that I took it up seriously, after a summer helping out at my dad’s friend’s studio. When I talked to my dad about it afterwards, he suggested I take it up. So at 16, I stopped school and went to England for an apprenticeship, as an assistant to a sculptor.
But, what happened in that studio? What changed your mind about your future?
Yeah. What is that? I think it was some feeling of freedom and the joy of being good at something. I wasn’t a good artist yet, but I enjoyed the act of making art so much. Something just flipped in my head and then it just was there. It was almost like I never had to learn the technical side. It just was there. It took me another 25 years to become a good sculptor. But the technical aspect was always there, funnily enough.
Almost in the DNA, right?
I wonder if it’s DNA or just being around art so much. My father, even when he was struggling, made a living out of it and was full of joy through the process, so I think I absorbed it to an extent that it became normal for me.
It wasn’t so stressful. I find that for many, art is something quite difficult to do and live off of, but this was not the case for me, and that comes from the benefit of being born into a family of artists.
One of the hardest things for artists is finding their style. You need to find your voice and your tone. How did you develop this style? Can you tell us a bit about the journey? How did you land on this style?
That is a long story! During my apprenticeship, I became interested in monumental art, the complete opposite of my current work. The man and woman I studied with in England made works for huge public areas, squares and so on, and I followed this trail when I joined art college. But this work can be quite frustrating because for each project, you have to meet so many people and follow a strict process, especially when working for governments, and this took a lot away from my creative freedom. While the results were satisfying, I didn’t love the process.
It took me 10 years to really understand that.
After that I gradually started making smaller work for galleries, working from my studio and really feeling the creative moments. Gradually, creative process got shorter and faster, and this developed into where I am now. What I’m interested in is that moment of creation, that newness, that “doing it now and doing it in a day” – which by the way isn’t really true, I do it in three days most of the time, but still three days of making a sculpture, means you have to be there all the time.
It’s so refreshing to hear a professional, someone who does it for their job, saying something like: “You need to find the thing that you really love and keep reducing all the extra stuff until you’re just mostly doing the art you love.”
It seems with these daily sculptures and the method you have, you’ve followed your passion as much as you can.
Yeah, that has been the process and it’s a great joy. And I still have that feeling after 25 years now, since I was that 16-year-old boy. I found what I love.
That’s awesome. And I hope it acts as inspiration to anyone who reads this article. Let’s talk a bit about your daily sculptures. They’re not all perfectly human, but they resemble the human form. They are suspended in the air. Is there a reason why? Or is it just a good way to display them? And why are they all humanoids?
Well, I love, I just love the human figure, because it so easily expresses what’s inside. We’re so used to looking at human figures, and their expressivity is so subtle. With their set of expressions, you could go on forever. With this project, I thought I needed to have a basic thing that I could always start with, otherwise, a day or a couple of days is too short an amount of time. If you have to think of everything and make up the whole completely new sculpture, it would be tricky to be so productive.
Why are they suspended now? That evolved from one idea in particular. I observed that people tend to place small sculptures on places like cupboards, next to all their other little things, while with paintings, people assign them their own space. I wanted my sculptures to occupy their own space too.
I can’t say I consciously wanted to have them hanged, but it evolved and it’s quite handy when sending work all over the world, to not have to send a base that can easily damage the sculpture itself. I’m also planning to do some standing ones, but I’m still getting around technical issues on that.
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