Frates creates caricatures for LHS grads

LACONIA — High school seniors have missed out on a lot this year, but thanks to The Belknap Mill and its artist-in-residence, Laconia’s graduates will have a unique memento to take with them.

The Mill, and artist Larry Frates, have created individual caricatures of each of the graduates, which will be matted and given to each of them as they set off on the next stage of their lives.

Tara Shore, director of operations at the Mill, said the idea for the caricatures spun out of a talk in a “completely different realm” that she, Frates and mill Executive Director Karen Prior were having earlier this spring.

“As ideas often go at the Belknap Mill, they progress and grow and sometimes shoot off in completely different areas,” Shore said. And before she and Prior knew it, Frates was talking about something he used to do when he was an art teacher in public schools – draw caricatures for each of the students of a particular class. Sometimes it was sixth graders going to middle school, or eighth graders going to high school.

“How about I do caricatures of the graduates?” Frates asked. He said got approval from the superintendent, then got a copy of the yearbook photos for the senior class, and paper on which to draw each of the 5-by-7-inch caricatures.

“There were 100 and something, I lost the number,” Frates said. He figured it took about 10 minutes for him to draw each one, for a total of about 17 hours of drawing.

“Some people go to the gym, I do caricatures,” he explained.

Frates, though, usually has his subject seated before him when he does a caricature. That allows him to interact with the person and measure their personality, as well as learn things about them to include in the drawing, such as a soccer ball, a saxophone, or a slice of pizza.

With the senior class, all he had to work with was their yearbook portrait.

“I had to look at the picture and figure it out, what is it about the kid. That’s why I didn’t add bodies and activities, because I didn’t know what their activities are,” Frates said. “I always believe that if you can see their eyes, you can figure out their personality. The first contact you make with your eyes, that tells you if that person is outward, inward, and then you have to figure out how far you want to go.” Frates said the goal of a caricaturist is to exaggerate without distorting. “A caricature is not a distortion of a person, it’s an exaggeration of their good parts, their characteristics. What makes you, you.”

He said that he enjoyed the experience of making the caricatures.

“When you get going, you start to realize that you’re doing something for people that they’re not probably going to get done again. I saw it as something positive, and if I can make them smile, that’s worth it right there,” Frates said.

After Frates finished the drawings, they were brought to the Belknap Mill, where a small group of volunteers matted and packaged them to be given to the graduates.

“We hope that it’s going to be a memory that the kids can bring with them. It comes from the city, it comes from an artist in our city, we hope that it reminds them of home,” Shore said.

Frates added, “I just hope that when they graduate, they don’t throw their caricature instead of their cap.”