Connor Frew (they/them) is an artist, writer, educator, and publisher living and working in Mississippi, where they are the inaugural Windgate Foundation Visiting Artist at Millsaps College. They received their MFA in visual studies from the University of Missouri in 2024 and have been awarded the Robert G. Bragg Scholarship, the Brooke and Ben Cameron Art Scholarship, and University of Missouri Presidential Fellowship. Frew is the founder of Flatpack Publications, a publishing outfit engaged in experimental print, bookmaking, writing, programming, and pedagogy. Their work has been exhibited at venues including Plug Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri; Carnation Contemporary in Portland, Oregon; Oak Cliff Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas; Power and Light Press in Silver City, New Mexico; Mana Contemporary Chicago; and the 2016 Unnoticed Art Festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Their work has been published by the Syllabus Project, the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum, Fifth Wheel Press, Phonography Austin, Queer Archive Work’s Urgency Reader, Wasafiri Magazine, The Rib, the University of Texas’s Analecta Journal, and El Aleph Magazine.
Contributing writers were encouraged to pen texts using the style, voice, and format of their choice. The resulting suite of poetry, journalistic and critical prose, creative essays, and personal reflections offers diverse perspectives on the artists, their practices, and their lives.
A Note from the Curator
Recounting their intimate relationship through shared meals, Bucky Miller lists the ways in which he has come to understand multimedia artist Connor Frew, as an artist and thought partner. Miller is a writer, professor, and artist himself, offering a subtle and poignant read of Frew’s singular intellect and their lasting friendship. The 2025 Mississippi Invitational displays the dynamism of Frew’s expansive practice, featuring their printmaking, sculptural installations, and their guttural writing in which they explore the existential questions of life in prose and poetry.
Bucky Miller on Connor Frew
“THE ARTIST CONNOR FREW IN FIVE FOOD MEMORIES”
1.Connor Frew knows, intuitively, that I’m writing this from a Whole Foods, even though they don’t know which one. We’ve barely seen each other since the year I left Texas, but I’m convinced that this is the kind of knowledge that one retains about another person. Yes, I write at Whole Foods; yes, Connor digs close to the heart of everything they care about. This is the knowledge of friendship.
When Connor first told me they’d moved to Jackson, I probably said, “I’ve been to the Whole Foods there.”
2. At first, I was anxious about finding words for Connor’s work. They have their own specific routes through language, and I didn’t want to step on those. The worry eased for me when I realized they would never expect me to write something “regular” for the Invitational. We have simply gone out to eat too many times for that to be possible. Connor and I understand each other from opposite sides of a booth.
It sounds silly, but spending time with Connor Frew’s art is like grabbing lunch with the artist. They entice with happy informality (a risograph zine; a midday breakfast burrito), and then encompass you in a fine-tuned planetarium of ideas. Their thoughts seem to take on physical form and dance around the room as you look on, dabbing salsa from the corner of your mouth.
3. I would block off the entire afternoon. Sometimes we met at Cenoté, a cafe where one corner was inexplicably made up like a famous set from Twin Peaks. But Connor didn’t want to talk about David Lynch so much as share speculative stories about, as I recall, the dying inner monologues of tech billionaires as their rocket ships plowed into the sun. Connor was on that beat early, with steadfast humor and urgency.
4. As if I wasn’t already stretching this conceit: the violent steel-cut grass in Connor’s latest sculptures triggers a tortilla chip memory. The roof of your mouth, you know? The game was that we could go to Mi Madre’s and the server would just keep refilling the basket. Connor would get a Dr. Pepper, eat chips, and expound. I would look down at my enchiladas, and then across the table at my friend’s economic approach and wonder if I was using my energy wisely.
5. Connor loves Snarf’s. I never considered Snarf’s to have very good sandwiches, but Connor insisted. And damn, maybe I should try Snarf’s again. Connor already changed my mind about Daniel Buren. Damn.
