Rick Freeman is a Westchester resident and Greenwich small business owner, musician, and lover of art. On July 4, 2011, very much on impulse, he pointed his camera skyward to capture the fireworks as they exploded. While they launched and painted the sky with vibrant sparks and splashed, so too did Rick dance with his camera beneath the exciting display. When he got home and saw the pictures blown up on a larger screen for the first time, he was stunned by the ethereal, energetic images he’d created in collaboration with the fireworks display. This began a chronicle of 10 years of July skies, moments of time frozen in all of their unexpected, chromatic beauty.
In recent years, “watching the fireworks” has come to mean a great deal more to me than it did earlier in my life. When I was younger, the local football stadium rested below a sky filled with noise and color, and I waited excitedly each summer for the experience. These days, I look forward with increasing anticipation to “firework season” from July to September, a creative time to connect to my loved ones, and become overwhelmed by the excitement of unpredictability.
Fireworks are stunning displays to sit back and watch on their own, but a new way to appreciate them emerges from my interaction. I’m drawn to the craft because it’s my motion in collaboration with the expanse of light painting the sky that creates something new – something frozen in time and unanticipated. People often tell me that my works look like underwater scenes, like neurons, dreamscapes, or simply like nothing they have ever seen before. I can only agree with each and every one of them.
My foremost goal is to add some beauty to the world, and to remind myself and others that even in the most ephemeral, dazzling moments, there are always ways to capture that feeling and make it your own to keep.’
