David Froetschel Courtesy Photo

David Froetschel's artwork titled "Interstice" on display at the Lyndon House Arts Center where it will remain through Oct. 15. 

Every year, the Lyndon House Arts Center selects an emerging artist from its Juried Exhibition, an annual competition in which a juror reviews and selects an Athens artist to feature in an exhibit. This year, David Froetschel, University of Georgia and Lamar Dodd School of Art alumni, won a solo exhibition in Lyndon House Arts Center’s North Gallery. His artwork will be on display through Oct. 15.

Walking through Froetschel’s exhibit in the North Gallery is a peek into his imagination. The collection is complete with topographical maps, 3D pieces that invite spectators into a new universe and a floor-to-ceiling painting entitled “The Prince of Ruins.”

For about eight years, Froetschel has entered a piece in the Juried Exhibition — and according to exhibitions program specialist Beth Sale, his work has not gone unnoticed.

“I’ve just really been entranced by [Froetschel’s] submissions,” Sale said. “His work is varied — different media, different approaches, but always very peculiar and interesting.”

Froetschel’s solo exhibition is unlike any collection in the museum. “A Lot More Than It Seems” is an apt title for his work.

The exhibit contains four main collections. One collection, called the Dream Series, depicts Froetschel’s dreams. If a particular dream sticks out in Froetschel’s mind, he sketches it out on paper and eventually colors it into a completed work, Froetschel said. For example, “Dreamscapes: The Night Mare” shows a horse shouting over a sleeping figure in charcoal and pastel. In all of his pieces, he embraces the fantastical and mythological.

Another collection includes four multimedia works, which Sale finds herself drawn to.

“He takes found canvases and cuts through them, adds sculptural pieces and changes mundane landscapes into an illogical, wonderful world,” Sale said.

Froetschel graduated from Lamar Dodd School of Art with a degree in fine arts and an emphasis in ArtX. The ArtX program gives students experience in multimedia disciplines like digital video and robotics, a background that can be seen in his multimedia pieces such as “The Airspace between Problems” and “Liminal Cabinet,” both of which are on display.

Froetschel said he enjoys working with multimedia because there’s a wide range of effects he can work with. He described the process of creating one of his multimedia projects in which he manipulated space, colored tiles, paper and mirrors to create an actual room.

Chaos and order play an important role in Froetschel’s work. The duality between the right and left hemisphere of the brain, between the creative and rational processes, is one inspiration behind his work, he said.

In Froetschel’s artist statement, he described the way in which his neurodivergence contributes to the themes of chaos and order in his art.

“I have a certain neurodivergence that has given me a fresh perspective on life and the nature of reality,” the statement read. “I would refer to it as a disorder, if not for the fact that I don’t feel all that disordered. Oftentimes, I feel the rest of the world is disordered.”

Seeing the world in shades of gray instead of black and white is hard for many people, Froetschel said, but his artwork strives to explore the spectrum of gray.

As Froetschel’s career progresses, he hopes people will continue to recognize and purchase his artwork, and he hopes to create more commissions. Froetschel will give a closing statement at the Lyndon House Arts Center on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m.