The Fish Hunter

Greetings!

We are pleased to announce that David Freda will serve as one of the esteemed presenters at our 2025 Fall Gathering.

There are many artists who seek the inspiration of a tranquil, Walden-like connection to nature. This is not David Freda. David’s inspiration from the natural world is at the closest anatomical level, feeling its wild pulse. In one hand he gently cradles the delicate petals of a flower and in the other he grabs the violent talons of a raptor.

This began at an early age, collecting and labeling butterflies as a grade school kid, and the clandestine learning of taxidermy as a young teenager. In high school, he took up falconry, the historic hunting sport that teams hunter and bird of prey against small game. Among his early endeavors in art were making the decorated falconry hoods used to keep the birds calm before the hunt and painting naturalistic watercolors of both falcon and prey.

Study of Newborn White-crowned Sparrows, Eggs, and Adults, necklace

Studying fine art at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, David took classes in jewelry and found both casting and enameling to be tedious, though he found some success in die-formed silver sculptures. Enticed by its proximity to great rock-climbing walls, David ended up at SUNY New Paltz in the Hudson Valley for graduate school. With a thesis on combining taxidermy and metal smithing, he created pieces that were studies on the local invertebrates and reptiles, including a piece molded directly from a five-foot-long road-killed snake. These studies of insects and animals brought David back to enamel, which he used to mimic the colors and textures of the real living thing to great effect. David took his techniques from fauna to flora, developing a process of taking direct molds from the flowers to make the waxes for casting. David has since replicated dozens of unique species of orchids in enameled gold, eternally freshly picked from across the world.

Top and left: gold, enameled broaches of various orchid species

Right: Stag Beetles, Grubs and Raspberries

Grand Prize winner of the 2002 Saul Bell Design

Award for beads.

Study of Northern Black Rat Snake, necklace

David’s work also captures dynamism and transformation, whimsy and wonder. Two beetles are locked in an immortal combat; a forever hatchling snake smells the world with its tongue; the petals of an orchid remain slightly curled, perpetually on the verge of full bloom. Fantastical pieces like The Magic Lamp, which presents a yellow orchid as an all-seeing genie climbing out of a lamp on a stem of smoke, emphasize how David’s work reframes his naturalistic representations in the uncanny by removing their original context. Grubs become beads on necklaces, snake eggs are pearls, falcons wear fancy feathered hoods, and deer calmly stare back from the wall. David continues to create these wonderful artifacts of the natural world at his home studio in San Clemente, California between raising honey bees and ripping through the hills on a mountain bike.

The Magic Lamp, see the full sculpture on YouTube.

The Plumier Fall Gathering will be held October 17-19 in Saltsburg, PA.

The program will begin Friday morning at 9 and conclude Sunday at noon.

Tickets for the weekend are $650. Plus-one tickets are $150. This will include lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday.

To register, please email jackie@plumier.org.

Space is extremely limited, so if you are interested, register ASAP. 

For accommodations, we will have a limited block of discounted rooms from October 16-21 at the Hampton Inn and Suites Blairsville, which is about 20 minutes from the shop. These rooms must be booked by September 20th, but they probably won’t last that long. Use this link to book online or call and ask for the Plumier Foundation block at (724) 459-5920.

If you are interested in helping to sponsor a young craftsperson to attend, please consider contributing to our scholarship fund. Our Fall Gathering is a unique opportunity for both education and networking with established professionals that could greatly benefit a determined and eager artist early in their career. We can see the fruits of these connections made at our past events being cultivated within our community. This is a central mission of the Plumier Foundation, and we greatly appreciate any direct support to this end. 

Sincerely,

David Lindow

Support Ornamental Turning, Support Plumier. You can donate through the Join Us! page on our website, Donate Here.

We have also set up a Go Fund Me page which accepts donations of any size with more flexibility. It can be found here, Donate Through Go Fund Me.

A check sent to the address below is also a welcomed form of donation.