Above: Artist Dwora Fried – inside one of her boxes – Photo: Jack Burke
Dwora Fried had created an amazing body of work – wonderfully detailed collages and miniature tableaux that create entire worlds peopled with tiny figures and photographs inside glass-topped wood boxes.
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At her solo show at the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825, Fried offers viewers a look at an entirely different kind of box as well as her miniatures – this show isn’t called BIG BOX/Little Box without reason. Yes, there is a box big enough for visitors to sit down inside, and experience an Alice-in-Wonderland-like sensation of being a part of Fried’s art. “People kept saying ‘I want to be in your world, so I decided to create something large enough in which they could literally be in it,” Fried says.
Fried’s “Little Box” works continue to rivet and engage. “With the exception of one piece, they were all made in 2015,” she notes. “I was very inspired.”
Stunningly intricate, each box not only evokes a story but a visceral response in the viewer, who is drawn into the small, intricate world that each box contains.
“When I decided to do the big box piece, I didn’t want to start buying large objects, so I only used what I had around. I had large Legos, an easel, the photos – those were the elements I decided to use. I started with the small box, and matched the big box to it,” Fried says.
The most wonderful thing about Fried’s boxes is the feeling that one is looking not just inside a box or an artwork, but into an alternate universe. Mini worlds, mini planets. 
And below, the writer has a seat inside the Big Box. And yes, it’s delightful. The illusion is perfect – the viewer becomes the viewed, fits in the box, and enters a different world.
The Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825 is located at 825 N La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069; the show runs through February 19th.
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- Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke and (little boxes) Dwora Fried