Grosse Pointe News

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16980 Kercheval Pl. • Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48230 • 313.882.6900 • Monday-Friday 9am-4pm

Artist sends his biggest Christmas card yetFree Access


Jack Frakes and Bridget Clark worked together on the mural. Courtesy photo

Over the decades, Grosse Pointe Park artist Jack Frakes has developed a loyal following for his silk-screened Christmas cards featuring whimsical animals and pithy sayings. So many people on his mail list wanted to share his work with their family and friends that a few years ago he published a book illustrated with his cards. “Carol of the Animals” was a sellout.

Now the popular card maker has a holiday message he hopes reaches beyond his personal mail list. During the spring and summer, he worked on an 8-by-4-foot mosaic. Bridget Clark, a Grosse Pointe South High School alumna now at Marquette University in Milwaukee, helped him make and glaze the 400 tiles.

In the fall, Neal Gross, Mike Heenan and Frakes’s son, Eric, helped with mortaring and grouting. Jerome Patryjak, a retired exhibition designer, added his expertise. A couple of weeks ago, Ilya Snyder, with a crew of three others, moved the mosaic from Frakes’s backyard studio to the side of Snyder’s building at the southeast corner of the Alter-Kercheval intersection. It joins other murals in a public art project the Grosse Pointe Artists Association calls AlterCrossing.

“Public art can be much more than a way to beautify a place,” said Amira Hanafi, an artist on a University of Michigan team researching the effects of projects like AlterCrossing. “It can start conversations.”

“Having previously served with Jack on the board of the Grosse Pointe Artists Association, it is heartwarming to see his work positively impact so many in a public space, in our wonderfully diverse town of Grosse Pointe Park,” said Vikas Relan, Grosse Pointe Park councilman and chairman of the ad-hoc Diversity and Inclusion Committee.