ArtBeat February 2024 – Al Farrow

By Ed Goldman

AL FARROW’S HALF-CENTURY RE-LINK TO INK

“When you love your work you don’t get old in the way other people get old,” Al Farrow is telling me a few days before his newest show opens. At 80 years old, the prolific Farrow’s enthusiastic voice complements the outright vigor he’s brought to an art career filled with accomplishment and accolades.

Primarily a sculptor, Farrow’s new show, “INK”—at Archival Gallery through February 24, with a Second Saturday celebration from 5-8 p.m. on February 10—marks his return to doing ink and brush works on paper “after a 50-year break from it.” But this isn’t any old India ink: it’s a handmade ink Farrow concocts from crushing oak galls. 

Galls are plant growths made by small wasps on vegetation and twigs. The galls turn tan and then—when the baby wasps reach adulthood and break through the growths to make their debut— brown. Farrow says he adds “a small amount of iron sulfate and a little gum Arabic for body” to begin to achieve the rich, dark color he’s seeking.

Farrow shares the new show with artists Craig Frazier and Drew Frazier.

Born in Brooklyn, Farrow lives in Marin. His wife is former ballerina (and Sacramento native) Leslie Crockett, whose mom Barbara was a regional legend as a ballet teacher and entreprenuer; she passed away in 2022 at the age of 101. Their two sons are David, who owns a computer technology firm, and Erik, who restores three-dimensional art, as does Farrow.

Farrow has a work on permanent display at the Crocker Art Museum, “Bombed Mosque,” which looks exactly like what its title suggests. His one-work show, “The White House,” depicted a small-scale, rusted replica of America’s most famous residence. He says his inspiration for both sculptures emerged from a 1995 visit to the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy. “They had these really ornate reliquaries on display in the church’s crypt, and some of them had human bones,” he says. He began introducing items such as the bones as well as real guns, helmets and bullets into his work. “None of the weaponry is usable,” he says, “but I wanted it to look scary and real.”

Somewhat simultaneous with Farrow’s show at Archival is “What’s at Stake,” a three-person exhibit in which he co-stars with artists Masami Teraoka and Zeina Barakeh. Up now, that show runs through March 23 at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon. Its theme is “the impact of war on the work of the artists,” all of whom come from three different parts of the planet. His next show will be in Miami at the new Visu Contemporary Gallery in May. 

Farrow’s work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at the de Young Museum, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum. It’s also included in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, CA; 21c, the museum/hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, and Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Los Angeles, among many other collections.

Born “on the last day of 1943,” Farrow says he’s “maybe at a transition point in my art.” He says the large and heavy sculptures he’s created “take too long to do and I have to acknowledge how much time there is to do everything.” Whatever he opts to do, I’m betting that this young artist has only just begun.

#