Paper, Place, and Presence: Aidan Anne Frierson Threads Memory into Material
In a South Side beauty supply store, between shelves of synthetic lashes and shea butter, Aidan Anne Frierson (MFA 2025) found a quintessential piece of Black identity in America.
“Beauty supply store bamboo earrings are a radical form of identity within the context of America,” Frierson said. “They hold a lot of value in my life, but also within the Black community.” That object—a familiar accessory worn by generations—became a touchstone for LYTE AS A ROCK!, a 5-by-5-foot handmade paper work that honors lineage, memory, and material inheritance.
As a grad student studying in the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Frierson is many things: a storyteller, educator, artist, and daughter of Chicago. Her work is doused with intense levels of intention—centered on handmade papermaking, a method she’s cultivated for nearly a decade. “It allows me to spend time with fiber and material in a prolonged process,” she explained, “from harvesting, cooking and cleaning, and then hand-beating material. It’s a transformative experience.”
That transformation begins with a physical act—a “pull” of paper, where fibers suspended in water are shaped into sheets through a mold and deckle. “Once you start, you can’t stop,” Frierson said of the labor-intensive process. “You’re working against evaporation. Water is such a crucial material.”
For LYTE AS A ROCK!, Frierson created a deckle box large enough to form a five-foot square sheet, constructed in collaboration with SAIC alum Michael Torres Baja Anderson (BFA 2024) and papermaking mentor and Professor, Adj. Andrea Peterson. Denim jeans—including pairs belonging to her parents—were broken down and pulped, cotton was finely beaten and liquefied so it could be pulled through a syringe and colored with natural pigment. “I wanted to challenge myself to embed those materials—those bamboo earrings—into the cotton without using any glue or substrate,” she added. “The bonding that is happening is naturally occurring by way of the cotton … through the process of hydrogen bonding.”
The title nods to MC Lyte, one of the first female rappers Frierson encountered as a child—and one of the earliest pop culture figures to popularize bamboo earrings. The earrings embedded in the piece were sourced from Don’s No. 1 and No. 2 beauty supply stores on 87th and 47th streets, respectively. “It was really special to be like, ‘I can take a part of my reality, and I can kind of put it here, and hold it here,’” Frierson said. “I think the paper is holding the memory of that.”
Frierson’s relationship with cotton and place—what she call “a radical act of reclamation”—is as intellectual as it is intimate. “This material doesn’t have to feel like a trap,” she said. “We interact with it every day, in the same ways that I feel like I interact with my ancestors every day. It feels like a point of connection and understanding.”
Whether working with cotton or bamboo earrings, Frierson’s process is one of synthesis and spirit, of transforming memory into matter. As she graduates, her work remains grounded in the deeply personal and politically charged. “It gives me room to honor my existence, and the existence of those who have come before me, in a way that justifies an act of celebration and grief simultaneously.”
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