15 years ago Mr. Fruin started to collect almost 3,000 drug bags from around the city (NYC). They were plastic or glassine, some clear, others solid-colored or patterned, and they ranged from pinkie-nail-size crack bags to credit-card-size marijuana packets. He sewed them together into a quilt that sold for $20,000.
These days, collectors are snapping up Mr. Fruin’s works faster than he can make them. His first solo show, at the Stefan Stux Gallery in Chelsea, sold out. Almost all of the 19 quilts in his second solo exhibit, ”Cultural Narcotics: The Straight Dope”, were already sold when the show opened. The buyers included the actor Willem Dafoe, who paid $30,000 for a piece.
Asked about the Dafoe purchase, Mr. Fruin looked abashed: ”I guess these things are sort of prestigious,” he said. ”But that’s not an indicator of success for me.”
Mr. Fruin had a graphic design career in mind when he moved to New York in 1996, after receiving a degree in studio art from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Instead, he spends his days bicycling around parks and housing projects, storing his findings in Ziploc bags and scribbling notes (”extreme corner light blue bags 5”) for later reference.