Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Frey Wise. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Frey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

One of art’s finest facets is it does the talking for you. I don’t have to explain with words why I find something fascinating, I just have to figure out how to show it. If I want to get an idea across, I can just make it–no talking required. I have a speech impediment that effects my brain’s ability form sentences and organize speech. I’ve found many ways around it, but it still severely limits how well I’m able to verbally express myself. This naturally inclines me to art with its no words required.
Imagine my surprise when I began art school and immediately how much talking I had to do about my art. I create to express things I can’t say and yet I’m still required to explain in verbal detail exactly what my work means. It’s exhausting, frustrating, and frankly embarrassing at times. When you spend days perfecting a piece, trying to make sure it gets across exactly how you want it to feel and speak for you, it’s like whiplash being asked to speak for the piece. All that careful crafting means nothing if what you say cannot line up with what the piece actually means. My peers and professors seem to put far more faith in my spoken word to understand a piece than they do looking at it themself and finding meaning within it. I have to speak as well or better than I can craft; that’s never going to happen.
It would be really nice to say I have the perfect solution to this–that I have found a way to overcome my disability and am stronger for it. That would be really nice and distinctly false. There are walls in life you can’t knock down–you have to walk around them instead.
Most my work now avoids deep meanings. I don’t present work that explores the complex philosophical inner-workings of whatever I’m fascinated by at the moment. It’s a shame, certainly, but not a tragedy. It’s led me to find much greater success and joy in just creating for the sake of “Oh hey, that looks cool!” I really love finding compositions in the wild, moments of the world I get to frame with my camera. That kind of photography–for me–rarely means I have a deep meaning in mind before I find a composition. There’s a sort of guilt in that. If I don’t set out to create something with deep meaning and I’m not going out of my way to find it within the work I’ve already created, what kind of artist am I?
By intentionally deciding I don’t want to create work with layers to explain, I can shuck off that guilt and focus on my technical craft. I have since become so much more satisfied with my work and what I’ve accomplished. Maybe one day I’ll find a space where I can happily create with far reaching ideas in mind, but for now, I am perfectly content being a bit of a Dada-ist.

Frey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Frey! A photographer by day (and by night and by those wee hours in between I spend desperately trying to make deadlines). Photography snuck up on me as a passion. I never even bothered with the photograph until highschool when I became obsessed with taking photos that’d make lovely screensavers. This didn’t go anywhere but my phone’s unlooked at storage. Not until I started art school with a plan for graphic design did I discover my one true love. I was taking my first graphic design class and my first photography class at the same time and was shocked to discover two things:
1) Wow, I find graphic design boring
2) Wow, photography is amazing! This is the first class I’ve ever taken where the homework doesn’t feel like work! It’s such a same I have to be a graphic designer instead
It was then I remembered that I do posses freewill and then decided to exercise it.
Since then, I’ve been swiftly figuring out what draws me into photography. I’m an easy person to fascinate. Ceilings, rocks, soda cans–you name it and I will find my way to adoring it. I truly believe anything and everything that causes no harm can be something absolutely spectacular to study and look at. You just have to find the right angle. I love finding that angle for people.
When I graduate, the dream is to become a travel and/or street photographer, finding all the angles few others bother to look at and bringing the under-loved to a new light. I get excited whenever I think about it. There’s so many dang good ceilings out there in a world where not enough people look up. I’ll happily do it for them.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I wanted to answer this question because I don’t know if I had an answer and figured we can find out together. It’s one I think about a lot, mostly because I get asked about it a lot. It’s either the blessing or the curse of an artist, depending on how good of a response you have prepared for it. When I’m asked, I usually say something about how I have a speech impediment and it gives me a voice where I otherwise wouldn’t have one, but while not untrue, it’s also not WHY I do this. I’ve loved art far longer than I’ve been aware of how much my speech impediment quiets me. Art just clicks for me. It makes me happy, it’s fun, and it’s mine. That’s a simple, basic answer, but I don’t think it has to be anymore. There’s something I find really wonderful in dedicating your life to something for no reason other than it makes you happier than anything else. If I had to name a mission beyond that, it wouldn’t be a complex one. Every time I show someone my work, my deepest desire is that they get excited about it as I do. That’s all I feel the need to ask for. Life excites me, fascinates me, and I love to capture that. If that exuberance I feel creating the art finds its way even by one percent to my viewer, I’ve done something right. It’s a very simple answer, but it’s mine and it makes me happy. That’s all there is to it.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I was in preschool, I decided it was my life’s destiny to work as a veterinarian at a zoo. It proceeded to become my life. From kindergarten to 12th grade, I took regular classes at the zoo. 900 hours of volunteer hours at said zoo defined my highschool experience. I genuinely never considered a single other career since that fateful preschool day. I met my life long best friend at the zoo, I learned how to be my own person there, and I developed a deep passion for wildlife that nothing could kill. The zoo was my home and, honestly, my entire personhood.

Then I started college. This was a giant life change as I had previously been homeschooled my entire life. Quickly I discovered one very important fact about myself: I hated every single science class I took. I did academically well in them all, but they dragged me down to horrible depths I did not enjoy my time in. On paper, I still volunteered at the zoo, but as the months went on and I entered my second semester at college, I realized I hadn’t been there once since I started college. Such a realization felt drastic and bizarre. The zoo was everything I knew and loved, but yet for some unknown reason I simply could not convince myself to sign up for another volunteer shift. That second semester was when I took my first biology class. It was a nightmare. I hated it. Working with wildlife was supposed to be my one true calling, my purpose in life, my dream. Yet, horrifically, I despised even its introductory class.

I had to come to terms with the fact that, perhaps, what I decided for myself when I was 6 wasn’t a morally obligated destiny I could never step away from. After a tearful talk with my parents, I decided to change the major I had been dead set on for the past twelve years of my life. There were two other passions I had in life: Art and writing. I couldn’t imagine making a living off of writing, and so I decided to become an art major instead (the irony isn’t lost on me). Specifically, I decided to become a graphic designer. After two semesters of art classes, I finally began my first graphic design class.

I hated it.

At the same time I was taking that class, I was also taking a photography class. I remember walking across campus one day and thinking to myself, “Wow, photography is the first and only class I’ve ever taken where none of the work feels like homework. This is really fulfilling and fun to me! It’s such a shame I have to be a graphic designer instead.”
It was at that moment I remembered free will is a really cool thing I have and I could, in fact exercise it. The rest is history.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://freyphotography.com/
• Instagram: freytography

Image Credits

Frey Wise