Fred Stonehouse

by Kyle Jacobson

We all have the power to deny the world around us by holding it hostage to our own strict definitions. But those certainties can be weakened by perspective—that which gives each of us the power to build understanding. Bluntly speaking, many of us hold our truths to be self-evident because our egos can’t take a hit.

Fred Stonehouse, instead, chooses to listen to reality knowing full well there’s a good chance the lines of communication get crossed. His pieces disregard time, breathing new life into past fine and folk art traditions, often with a sense of humor. Before he knew he was an artist, before he even knew there was something trying to speak to him, Fred still felt the energy of that voice and followed the impulses it gave him.

Spartan-Atlantic, circa...a long time ago. This was the Walmart of the age, complete with tools, towels, and slacks. Also, cheap toys. “I was so young that my shorts didn’t have pockets,” says Fred. “There was a little stegosaurus. Something about the color of it was very vivid. It just hit me like a hammer between the eyes. Damn, this is a thing of beauty.”

Without a thought, Fred stuck the dinosaur in his mouth and left the store with his mother. From Fred’s perspective, the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Fred’s mother soon found out why her son was so quiet in the backseat and made him return the dinosaur. “I recognized years later that the compulsion to possess an image somehow was stronger than my sense of right or wrong.”

The result of taking in the world with a compulsory feeling of connection to the point of fated ownership results in pieces that have high degrees of familiarity to the viewer, yet are distinctly from Fred’s imaginings. In other words, Fred steals some really cool ideas and then puts a lot of himself in them to make each one his own. And there’s something really involved about his work. You can’t walk away without appreciating the time spent creating each piece, as though a necessity of pronounced humanity exists with each stroke of his brush and each cut of his knife.

Working with his hands is something Fred appreciated since his younger days. Before he even knew art was a legitimate career choice, Fred thought he’d grow up to be an auto mechanic. At Milwaukee Tech, he participated in the credit toward his degree.

“I realized that when you’re working on cars at the shop at school, if things don’t go that well that day, you’re just like, ‘Let’s go get some beer, forget about it, come back tomorrow.’ When Mr. Johnson is waiting for his car, you don’t have that luxury. ... It’s a shitty, hard job. We don’t work on hotrods. I was fixing old men’s Buicks all day.”

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Saturday 9am–5pm and Sunday 9am–4pm Downtown Spring Green West of Madison on Hwys 14 and 23 an ever-shifting perspective guided by unveiled memories and relationships

So Fred went to the guidance counselor to tell them that the whole auto mechanic thing wasn’t going to work out. The counselor asked what Fred liked to do. Since he was in kindergarten, Fred had been receiving compliments on his drawings and artistic works. He casually mentioned that he wanted to draw, and the counselor said an art degree might be what Fred was looking for. This was news to Fred, and his perspective shattered. You can go to college for art? Exciting as it was, he still told his parents he was going to school to be an architect.

When Fred finished his bachelor’s degree and the time came to pursue his master’s, he instead had the opportunity to display his art at a show in Chicago with a dealer he regularly visited. It seemed like a one-off thing but would

Check lead to doing shows across the United States and Europe for much of his career. Years later, another opportunity presented itself. Though Fred only had his BA, a friend reached out to see if he was interested in becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin−Madison, and Fred took the position. shoes as much as possible. It helps you understand how they make work and where they come from. It’s way more interesting for me is to try to get inside their processes and to think like them. If I approach their work thinking like I think, that’s not much use to them. If I can think like they’re thinking, but with everything I know brought into it, I can maybe give them some good advice.”

Through teaching, Fred had found the piece of his life that was missing. Sure, he’s had discussions on art with other artists, but those conversations always grew redundant because they all share the same general knowledge to a large degree. Now he was doing something that enhanced the lives of people who were just starting to see the art world at large.

The side effect of teaching has led to growth in Fred’s work as well. He says that art isn’t an upward trajectory of evolution. “I think it’s more like a wheel, where you’re constantly moving around. As you’re traveling, sometimes shit rolls off and you pick up other stuff. You’ll pick up a nail. A tire gets dirty; it starts wearing out. Suddenly, you’ll come back around and say, ‘Oh yeah. I forgot about that.’ You’ll pick it back up again, and it gets back on the wheel. You’ll discover missed avenues you haven’t picked up on in the past.”

With an intricate understanding of the chaos life in art can bring, Fred works through an ever-shifting perspective guided by unveiled memories and relationships. His creations compel many different audiences for just as many different reasons. Some find it moving. Others pick up on the humor. Some just respond to the image in a way akin to Fred and his stegosaurus. With so many points of entry into Fred’s work, he’s just as excited to hear his audience’s interpretations as he is to share each piece with them.

Kyle Jacobson is a writer who believes George Harrison was the Paul McCartney of the Traveling Wilburys.

Photographs provided by Fred Stonehouse

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