Perspectives: Frances Makes Art

Some people were just born to create. Frances Rodriguez—an Alabama-born New Orleans transplant who moved here after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design—is one of them. Playing across multiple media that include watercolor, large-scale charcoal studies on paper, sewn textiles, cookbook illustration, and swimwear, Rodriguez is an artist whose creativity cannot be contained within a single medium. That’s part accident and part by design. “Something inside of me will be exhausted in one medium,” she observes, “but I’ll still need to create. It’s helpful because I’m usually exploring similar subject matters, and [the shifting mediums] give me the chance to have more people experience them.” Changing mediums doesn’t dilute her focus though. Rodriguez applies her playful, expressionistic, watercolor-y style to celebrating the breathtaking structural beauty of plants and animals—the kind that is all around us—which we tend to take for granted until something, or someone, compels us to really stop and look. Here are a few ways she does that:

On her Big Fish

“After I drew Louie Lipps [the huge study of a redfish that dominates the dining room at Pêche restaurant in New Orleans], I started looking at these creatures, how every fish is different from every other. I was exploring all the nuances of fish, and that underwater world we don’t really have access to. 

“Fishermen come to me and there is this wistfulness—a peace and an excitement and an exhilaration that coexist. Having that fish on their wall: it’s a reminder of the thing they’d rather be doing. One fellow hangs his fish on his office wall as a reminder of what he’s working for.”

On illustrating the cookbook and memoir Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel, by Chef Alon Shaya

“I had known Alon and [his wife] Emily for years. He had put together the cookbook and the whole journey was such a personal narrative for him; he felt it needed more of an imaginative sense. We’d sit down at his kitchen island and talk about each chapter. I would sketch the images his stories brought to mind. He would look, then we’d tweak things back and forth. I drew twenty-six images in six weeks.”

On working with textiles

“I think of it as painting with fabric. I’ll have an idea in my head, cut out a general shape and draw with a sharpie, then start cutting bits of fabric. I love mounting [the finished images] on banners—a bit like prayer flags, that can move with the breezes. It gives them an ephemerality. 

“And the great thing about textiles: if you hate the way something turns out you can cut it out, or sew over it!”

On designing patterns for swimwear and other non-traditional artistic media

“I love kind of sneaking art in in unassuming ways. I think that textiles in particular are good for that because people can relate to fabric; it’s a friendly, accessible material. 

“The swimwear came about as a result of a collaboration. A lot of times I’ll be inspired by animals and textures—the tiny little details we so often overlook that are all around us in nature. And if the pattern [on a piece of clothing] makes someone stop and think about those details a little bit, that’s great!”

On being an artist and a parent at the same time

“Definitely being a parent has shaped my artwork a lot because it makes you start paying more attention to nature as you see it through their eyes. Then there’s the part that involves negotiating the creativity required to be an artist, with the time required to be a parent. There are those incredibly frustrating experiences, like trying to put on your toddlers’ shoes while he’s holding onto your head, all while you have this great idea and just want to dive into the deeper part of your creativity without paying attention to anyone else, and just swim around for awhile.”  

By her own admission, Frances is “… kind of all over the place.” She shows prints at Claire Elizabeth Gallery in the French Quarter and offers home goods at Hazelnut, on Magazine Street, and at the Ogden Museum gift shop. Keep an eye out for her Big Fish in restaurants around town, and visit FrancesMakesArt.com for a fuller accounting.

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