I was a Summer 2024 Artist-in-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center. This interview was filmed at the Joan Mitchell Center in July 2024 by Cfreedom Photography.

Thomas Friel is a multimedia artist based in New Orleans. His work explores the intersections of Capitalist power and domesticity through abstraction, absurdity, abjection, ambivalence, and other words that start with letters of the alphabet that are not necessarily “a”. He received a BFA in Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. He has exhibited his work in non-profit galleries in several U.S. cities. In 2013, his work was included in Conan O'Brian's crowd-sourced “Occupy Conan” episode, for which he received a Team Coco coffee mug, T-shirt, and bumper sticker. He has written art criticism for websites, including badatsports.com, and print publications, including EXPO Chicago. He was a member of the New Orleans artist collective The Front from 2018 through 2020. In 2024 he was an artist in residence at Wildacres in Little Switzerland, NC and an artist in residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, LA.