Roy Fridge

"The Tree House" Mixed Media Collage 1982

1982

A native of Beeville in Texas, Roy Fridge was an only child who made his own toys. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, 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. In 1963, Fridge left a career in television advertising and “ran away to the beach.” He settled in the sleepy town of Port Aransas where raw materials for his lyrical works were plentiful. He built boats, some functional but mostly allusive, mythic ships of wood and bones of intimate scale. In the mid-1980s, Fridge stopped “whittling” entirely but continued his rich life as an amateur hermit, writing and reading voraciously. He passed away in his home in Port Aransas at the age of 79.