FREYJA BARDELL & BRIAN HOWE
STUDIO PROFILE:
Since 2005, Freyja Bardell and Brian Howe have worked together as Greenmeme, creating public artworks that connect communities, celebrate shared spaces, and bring a touch of nature into urban environments. What started as a shared love for thoughtful, hands-on design has grown into a practice rooted in collaboration, curiosity, and a commitment to making art that resonates with people and place. Together, they combine their skills to design and build artworks that are deeply connected to the environments and communities they serve.
Working with materials like stone, metal, ceramic, glass, and salvaged or recycled elements, they craft each piece with care and intention.
Over nearly two decades, their studio has become a space for experimentation and growth. Through their work, Freyja and Brian hope to create moments of connection and reflection that leave a lasting, positive impact on the spaces and communities they touch.
CONTACT:
freya.greenmeme@gmail.com
BIO: FREYJA BARDELL
Freyja creates site specific and highly process driven sculptures that bring together communities through creative experiences. She researches project sites by immersing her physical and psychological self into the people and places. She often sets up playful events that bring people into the art making conversation and spark discovery. This concept building phase is documented through conversation,writing, hand sketches, photography and video. This visual catalogue is used to create connected, integrated and fantastical three dimensional pieces. Current work explores the use of performance and movement to intuitively discover and map the attributes of public spaces.
Freyja moved to Los Angeles in 2002 and has worked as a set designer and production designer on art films, music videos and experiential installation art. She has made pieces for David Bowie, Beyoncé and many more. Her studio work bridges these experiences in fine art, film making and environmental design with her current public practice, Greenmeme.
She lived in South and Central America, teaching English as a foreign language, making art and pursuing her curiosity to discover the world through other lenses. She continues to travel the world through art making, teaching and environmental advocacy.
BIO: BRIAN HOWE
For as long as I can remember, I have had a passion to create things and make my own environment. In my youth, it was making treehouses and forts where I would go do my drawing/sketching/painting.
Around 15, I also discovered a passion for music, played bass in a few bands and expanded on my passion for making things. Since that time, I have been on a lifelong pursuit of new and exciting collaborative opportunities, not just musically but visually, culturally and personally.
This pursuit led me to eventually study architecture at the Southern CA Institute of Architecture (Sci-Arc) from 2000-2005 in the BArch Program. While I thought I was going there to become an architect, the education revealed to me a myriad of other possibilities I never thought possible in Art, Film and Experiential Design. After SCI-Arc, I worked at a firm for a year, saw a project from start to completion and then decided to pursue my passions, setting up Greenmeme with my partner Freyja Bardell and working all manner of Art Department jobs in between to make things work. I eventually got into the ADG Local 800 as a Production Designer in 2022.
I enjoy being a part of projects that are quick bursts of creativity (like my work in film), as well as more engaged (like my public artworks, which can take years to complete).
Beyond my work as an Artist and Art Director, I am passionate about my work in Lone Pine,CA, where Greenmeme is in the process of setting up the Tuttle Creek Arts Club & Residency program. The first of its kind for the Owens Valley. Aside from permitting and restoration efforts needed for the Arts Club, I am also working with other artists, local politicians and community members to create a new Eastern Sierra Arts Festival, set to debut in 2026.
I am always learning new skills which keep me creatively on my toes. Recent obsessions have been analog synthesizers, learning Unreal Engine/UEFN as tools for developing my interests in Virtual Art Direction and Game Design..