Roy Fridge (1927-2007) was born in Beeville, Texas and lived and worked in Port Aransas, Texas. He was known for his symbolic assemblages. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Baylor University in Waco 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. He built boats, some functional but mostly allusive, mythic ships of wood and bone of intimate scale. He also constructed life-size “shrines” in the woods around Coleto Creek near Victoria that he made for his photographic narratives involving shamans. And he kept intense journals, which he sometimes exhibited. In the mid-80s, Fridge stopped “whittling” entirely but continued his rich life as an amateur hermit, writing and reading voraciously. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, the San Antonio Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (Text by Patricia Johnson, Published in the Houston Chronicle, July 18, 2007.)
