Profile: Caroline Freese

Artists are often unsure where the next idea will come from or where their work will take them. This can be both an unsettling and an energizing feeling. When Indianola artist Caroline Freese was an Iowa State student facing a color theory assignment, a daily Skittles habit led her to an unexpected source of color. This inspired her to apply for and receive a $600 Focus Grant that she used to purchase glue and the 20,000 Skittles it took to create a self-portrait that was later displayed at the Iowa State Memorial Union, covered by the Ames Tribune, and acknowledged by the Skittles corporation who used Freese’s idea in a 2016 Superbowl commercial comically featuring a Skittles Portrait of Aerosmith singer Stephen Tyler.

While not quite as sugar infused, Freese’s journey is a similar story of unexpected yet connected events that have led to her being the artist she is today. Caroline Freese is a multi-media artist focusing on acrylic painting, digital designs, and ceramics. Her art is frequently connected by animal designs. She creates folk animal paintings on wood. These images are then applied to her handmade pottery using black iron oxide printed decals. Her pottery is functional, made up of goblets, pitchers, tumblers, bowls, mugs, and other miscellaneous forms.

Born and raised on a small farm in Indianola, Iowa, Freese was active in 4-H youth programs and formed an early attachment to nature. At Iowa State, this meant trying to convince her professors that every project had to incorporate pigs. Looking back on it now, Freese realizes she was grieving the loss of the 4-H experience and creating artwork around animals was therapeutic. Today, her work continues to be a celebration of the human connection to animals.

Freese went to Iowa State undecided on her major and what seemed like small decisions at the time gradually led her to ceramics. As an incoming freshman, a comment to her advisor about her work on the high school yearbook led to a first semester drawing class. At the end of the first year, in a rush to get home for her brother’s wedding, she needed a specific program within the college of design and quickly chose Integrated Studio Arts. Freese describes how this program led her to ceramics: “I thought I was going to focus on jewelry and painting, but I ended up being really attracted to ceramics and woodworking. It's a credit to the program for making the students take classes in all of the different media, that I was able to figure out what my true passion was going to be.”

At Iowa State, Freese dual focused on woodworking and ceramics but was drawn more to ceramics due to less intimidating tools to work with and more affordable and accessible entry points. Graduating cum laude from Iowa State in the spring of 2016, she set her sights on eventually becoming a full-time professional. This originally meant waiting tables to support start-up costs of an art business. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and temporarily shut down much of the restaurant business, Freese used unemployment support as an opportunity to accelerate start-up investments and today is able to work full time as a professional artist.

In October of 2023, Freese married Garrett Warren and while she took the Warren name, her business continued as Caroline Freese Designs. Life as a professional artist may have added the need to pay the bills, but it still involves the same passion for the art. Freese’s favorite part of the process happens at the potter’s wheel, when she’s creating new product. The thing that originally drew her to pottery still brings joy. Nothing beats the accomplishment of throwing 30 new mugs, building new inventory for an upcoming show, transforming the clay in her hands from raw earth to aesthetic utility, delivering one of society’s original gifts.   

Freese hopes for future opportunities such as opening a co-op ceramics studio or a space for teaching pottery classes. Other business dreams include running a ceramics supply store. All great things to work for as she continues to accumulate small business experience.

Idea by idea, project by project, the artist has to put their head down, not knowing where their art will take them, but trusting it will be worth the effort. What better testimony than the Skittles self-portrait? From assignment to vision, Freese happening to notice the vivid sugar-coated colors. To an unlikely grant. To her mother chipping in, helping sort 20,000 little Skittles into color organized piles. To the big corporation taking notice. To the work hanging in the lobby of her father’s veterinary clinic where art appreciating dogs worked eager tongues over colored candy gems. To the artist and her father ultimately taking down the work, encapsulating the Skittles in four gallons of epoxy resin. To Skittles art, slightly saliva faded, yet strongly preserved as an effective argument of how far the creative mind can take us.  

More about her work can be found at https://www.carolinefreesedesigns.com.