On View in Meatpacking: Tom Fruin’s Bombora House

Visitors in Meatpacking can now view Tom Fruin’s Bombora House now on display in Gansevoort Plaza, located between Ninth Avenue and Gansevoort Street. 

Photo: Jim Fryer / BrakeThrough Media | brakethroughmedia.com

Tom Fruin is a Brooklyn-based, internationally known sculptor whose work has been featured across NYC. His work can be seen as a celebration of human behavior and everyday life.  “If you really want to understand what makes up the fabric of people and places, you often learn all you need to by looking at the floor,” says Fruin of his approach. Reusing collected fragments of street and retail signage, disposed theater props, plastics and metals, Fruin creates something beautiful from nothing. Fruin refers to this process as “quilting,” whereby discarded items are brought together to create a map of life. With “Bombora House,” Fruin conveys messages of hope, stability and joy in the sculptural interpretation of a home and a suggestion to look at our surroundings with a fresh perspective.

Photo: Jim Fryer / BrakeThrough Media | brakethroughmedia.com

The installation “Bombora House,” takes its name from an open expression by Fruin’s fellow artist, friend and inspiration, Melinda Brown. She dubbed the building she lived in on the corner of 13th Street and Ninth Avenue in the heart of the neighborhood, Bombora House. The house was a place where artists would gather to collaborate and create, and its name is a reference to the “outsider wave” prized by surfers. From her native Australia, Ms. Brown states “Bombora refers to a large wave with its own frequency. Surfers will wait for the bombora to roll in. It’s a large wave at the end of a set of waves, same rhythm, different frequency or same frequency, different rhythm. It brings the fish in!” 

Today, Fruin’s “Bombora House” symbolizes the wave that spurred the ongoing cultural artistic and architectural evolution for the Meatpacking District. 

Photo: Jim Fryer / BrakeThrough Media | brakethroughmedia.com

Open to the public for observation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the exhibit will look different as the daylight shifts into the evening at which point the sculptures will be lit from within projecting the multi-color nature of the piece onto Gansevoort Plaza. At night the installation will be illuminated by LEDs with a design created by Ryan Holsopple allowing people to interact with the lighting by texting 347-328-2636. The installation is on display through April 30, 2021.

This program is made possible through the NYC Department of Transportation’s Public Art Program.

Photo: Jim Fryer / BrakeThrough Media | brakethroughmedia.com