Sabrina Frey

Sabrina Frey, born in 1970, grew up in the mountains of Colorado. Her work is centered around nature and the four seasons. She believes that nature is in her blood; her world “feels right” when she is surrounded by it. She says that she celebrates life in her work and acknowledges all aspects of the "good and bad seasons that make up our stories." As a student of interior design, she was greatly influenced by the Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements. Today she looks to artists and designers such as Antoni Gaudi and Ran Hwang for inspiration.

Sabrina’s bead work developed over many years of study, research, and experimentation with different artistic mediums. Today her pieces are inspired by nature and its elements. She creates immersive and tactile mosaic paintings that can be experienced by all the senses. Her works are representational of life in that we are all made up of tiny particles. Similarly, the beads break down a physical mass into different shapes, sizes, solids, translucencies, and directions, challenging the cohesiveness of “reality.” She sees life as rich with complexity and believes that all of us have a need to both resist and respond to it.

Going beyond the two-dimensional surface, she invites the viewer into her art to physically connect with it. The signs posted by her work read “Go ahead and touch me.” At first surprised that what they are seeing and touching is not a solid painting but a mosaic of beads, viewers are free to explore the texture, layers, and variety of hues and tones. This encourages them to experience emotion, movement, time, strength and fragility—the essence of life. Sabrina has come to believe that the function of art is beauty, which brings joy and improves well-being.

Another technique that makes her work unique is that she doesn’t usually try to control the beads. In the beginning, the work was much more structured, but today she combines various non-linear methods in order to explore more diverse subjects like animals. Laying the beads out with tweezers, then gluing them and letting them set however they please gives her pieces a sparkle that can’t be achieved if all the beads are lined up “like soldiers.” The resulting disorganization lends a life-like depth to her pieces.

Sabrina was an assistant professor of Interior Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and earned her MFA in Interior Design at Florida State University, with a focus on teaching.

Sabrina has been the featured artist in many national juried shows, including the Jackson Hole Art Show, WY, Asheville Fine Arts Show, NC and the Estero Fine Arts Show, FL in 2019. In 2018 she was a finalist in several national juried shows including Dimensions 2018, Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC, Craft Hilton Head 2018, Hilton Head, NC and many others. She was both finalist and Directors Choice winner of the national juried show at the Fine Arts League of Cary, NC as well a finalist in the 10th annual Northridge Country Club Gala in Raleigh, NC offered a solo exhibition and commission piece for the club after the gala.