I met Kimon Friar in 1968 at Keuka College where I was on the faculty and he was a visiting guest lecturer on the work of Nikos Kazantzakis. He had translated Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel from Greek into English, and had worked with Kazantzakis closely. I have been a fan of Kazantzakis ever since reading The Last Temptation of Christ and seeing the movie Zorba the Greek - earlier in the 1960s. I was thrilled to meet someone who knew him personally and was deeply acquainted with his work. Kimon Friar and I sort of "hit it off,"and when I moved in 1967 to join the faculty of Lawrence University, in Appleton, WI, I remembered him and arranged to have him come to Lawrence in 1970, to give his lectures on Kazantzakis. He was a big hit, and I remember being at a party wth him in the home of the Dean of Students (my boss - by 1970 I had become Dean of Men), where he taught us to do Greek dancing and we attempted to drink retsina (it tastes like turpentine!).
One of the Lawrence students who was inspired by Friar's lectures was an art student, Scott Frankenberger. Scott created two etchings based on The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. One consisted of 24 small panels which illustrated the chapters of the book; the other caught a central, sensuous, theme. Because I had arranged to bring Friar to Lawrence, Scott gave me copies of the etchings. I never had them framed because we had very little wall space. But I preserved them and over the years have taken them out now and then to enjoy them.
Fast forward fifty years. I have a full bucket of prints, paintings and posters, mostly in tubes. Time for that bucket to go! I got out Scott Frankenberger's etchings and once again admired them, and was loath to simply dispose of them. So just for fun, I went online and Googled "Scott Frankenberger." He came right up as a potter in W. Lafayette, IN. I soon confirmed he was the same "SF" of the etchings (his bio sketch mentioned Lawrence in 1970) and so I emailed him with photos of the etchings, reminded him of who I was, and asked if he would like me to mail him the originals. He replied right away! And yes, he said, my offer came at a good time - he would love to have originals of the etchings. He himself had discovered that copies of them which he had given Kimon Friar now resided in a Greek museum, but he did not have a set of originals himself. So I mailed them a couple of days ago.
Scott is obviously a very talented artist and accomplished potter. His work is fully catalogued online - some examples are below. Check him out! I am very happy to have reconnected with him and to be able to pass his etchings back to him. Maybe someday our travels will resume and we can go through W. Lafayette, IN. (Ellen and I were in Lafayette about 12 years ago with Kathy Leo and Tom Goldschmid conducting a Hallowell workshop. I didn't know about Scott then).
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