Kendra Frorup ’92 has spent decades shaping both her own artistic practice and the creative lives of students at the University of Tampa. Today, her work is reaching new heights, bridging personal history, global exploration and material experimentation.

She is globally recognized, an admired sculpture artist, an associate professor of art and design, and a recent Fulbright scholar with a long list of international installations and acclaimed exhibits.

David Gudelunas, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, puts it this way: “She is at the top of her game.”

Since her days as an undergraduate student, she has helped shape the growth of the arts on campus, Gudelunas said, but Frorup’s creative explorations started long before — on her mother’s bush farm in Nassau in the Bahamas.

In the 1970s, Frorup’s mother was granted land through a lease-to-own initiative that encouraged pothole farming. Bahamian land is composed of limestone, with pockets of soil in the rock. As a little girl, Kendra’s job was to move rocks out of voids to free the soil so her mother could plant crops. These excavations of hard rock and earth were part of their survival as a family, and in many ways, they were Frorup’s earliest acts of sculpture.

She tenderly recalls farm lunches with bush tea and sandwiches under a tree.

“My kindergarten teacher had a plot of land right next to ours. We’d all meet up at lunchtime. She knew a lot about bush tea. She would boil this pot on open fire and used love vine for tea.”

There was no way of her knowing then, but even those lunches would later prove foundational in her art. At UTampa, she discovered sculpture under the mentorship of Professor Gil DeMeza ’65, who recognized her instinct for collecting organic materials and building three-dimensional narratives.

Encouraged by his guidance, Frorup went on to earn an MFA in sculpture from Syracuse University. She then returned to the Bahamas to work alongside her father, a contractor and entrepreneur. His construction company provided interior finishes for what became the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island.

“The creation of Atlantis was big and booming and exciting,” Frorup recalls. She managed company operations and logistics for the resort projects, sharpening her eye for materials and developing the discipline required to execute large-scale work. “Occasionally, the site would have extra materials, and I lived for the contractor sale. We were always collecting.”

Collecting became central to her practice. She began incorporating found metals, industrial fragments, organic forms and construction remnants. Early works show up through wood carving and bronze casting, where weight, density and permanence are foregrounded. Her bronze pieces carry gravity, texture and memory.

She’s not the only creative in her family. Her sister is a fashion designer and educator, her brother and father interior designers, her mother a creative and entrepreneur. Then, while an undergraduate, Kendra met her sweetheart, Norman W. Frorup Jr. ’91. “He’s a banker, the sensible one,” she laughs.

They’ve been married 28 years and have a daughter, Alexis, who is completing a graduate degree in museum studies at George Washington University.

In 2000, the young Frorup family moved back to Tampa, and soon Kendra Frorup began what would become a decades-long tenure at the University, starting as an adjunct professor.

“I grew and grew and grew here,” she says.

She has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions and collaborated widely, organizing several residencies at STUDIO-f (now the Meridian Scholar Program), including with world-renowned artist Sam Gilliam. In those co-workings over the years, their friendship grew while she explored layering saturated color and texture across printmaking, painting and sculpture with an art master.

“I’m a real believer that you’ve gotta go for it. Work hard, apply for it, ask for it,” she insists. “I love the process of being in the studio. I love working, learning from what seems like failure, and discovering something new and unplanned.”

Now serving as an associate professor, her philosophy is grounded in persistence and process that declares “I’m here.”

While her classes are collaborative, the process of creating her own work remains a solitary excavation of experience. She draws from memory, grief and joy. Moments are held and transformed into form. What begins as experience moves through her as ritual, emerging as sculpture.

Over the years, Frorup has returned often to the Bahamas, including to support her mother through a rapid battle with breast cancer. “She was in a wheelchair, and I was pushing her through the doctor’s office, and I started to cry,” she recalls. “A lady tapped me on the shoulder and said softly, ‘Soursop. Drink the soursop leaves.’”

The moment stayed with her though she didn’t have time to research the plant. Within weeks, her mother passed, following the tragic loss of Frorup’s brother in a traffic accident.

Years later, when Frorup faced her own breast cancer diagnosis, that whispered advice resurfaced.

“I became interested in the soursop plant and explored the remedies of the fruit and leaves,” she said. The plant, referred to in the Bahamas as “nature’s chemo,” fascinated Frorup as she dove into its lore and healing properties in addition to seeking oncology treatment.

Now in remission, Frorup shares, “Every day, I drink the leaves. It is a part of my regimen.”

This return to plant knowledge, memory and land became personal practice and formal inquiry, forming the foundation for her Fulbright work.

As a 2024-2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar, Frorup collaborated with the University of the Bahamas to explore medicinal plant properties on her family’s bush farm, including guava leaves, banana blossoms, papaya and vine teas.

The work expanded into exploring the concept of “home” as something that is carried, built and rebuilt over time.

Two Tampa Bay-area exhibitions have since emerged from her study, and her newest work will be featured in the ECCHO museum in the Bahamas this summer.

In Healing Properties, which was at Hillsborough College until early June, Frorup explored memory, healing and identity through prints and sculptures developed during her Fulbright research. Using collected and natural materials, she transformed making into healing. The installation, grounded in Bahamian pastels, was balanced with bronze castings and wood carvings that felt substantial and resolved.

In At Home Anywhere at Arts Center Sarasota, which ran through April, she invited viewers to recognize potential in what surrounds them. Home is not fixed. It is something we re-create. The works exhibited layer in practices learned while Frorup was in residency in Tanzania in 2010, incorporating beadwork, fibers, natural elements and technology, becoming more atmospheric and sensory while remaining grounded.

Frorup inherited her family’s farm and has for over a decade been shaping the homestead into a living sculpture, with a studio below and the living space above. “It’s special. I am placing art and details, coupled with my brother’s footprint. There are things I won’t touch. They are his stamp.”

Her work lovingly holds her people. “Usually when someone dies, a piece comes from it. It can’t be forced. I make it, and I know it’s them.”

Describing a piece connected to her brother, she continued. “While in the Turks and Caicos with my family, there were clothes on the line, moving in the wind. I took video and included it as augmented reality in a show. It’s my brother.”

On display in Healing Properties was a piece entitled “You Left the Light On.” This simple diptych lit from above paid homage to her long-divorced parents, side by side, still in dialogue.

Balancing the grief and challenges, there is also lightness in Frorup’s work.

“I’m grateful to be in remission,” she said. “I have power through my art, and it’s important to share that.”

In recent exhibitions, a single painted brown chicken appears on a wall, like a stamp. It is a reference to herself, a playful declaration of presence: “I’m in this room.”

That same commitment extends into her teaching. Drawing from her mentor DeMeza’s pedagogy, Frorup emphasizes hands-on experimentation and discovery. She collects from her surroundings with her students and guides them through the rigorous and collaborative art of bronze casting. “It’s such a process-oriented practice. It requires teamwork and a class that’s fully engaged.”

This approach to making art leaves a lasting effect on her students. “Kendra is an incredible artist to work with as a student because her classes are built around open-ended prompts that encourage limitless creativity,” said Cortney McNamara ’24, a Tampa-based emerging artist who specializes in photography and sculpture. “She is deeply invested in each student’s work, supporting even the craziest of ideas and embracing experimentation with any  materials we could imagine.

“What stands out most is how collaborative the experience felt. She would work alongside us, bouncing ideas back and forth while helping build confidence. She often dedicated her own time to helping source materials, bringing me to salvage yards and antique shops to realize unconventional ideas. At the same time, she is committed to her own practice, which is incredibly motivating. She is willing to learn from her students and grow alongside us, making her an exceptional mentor.”

Frorup has always felt drawn to teaching. “I have a true connection with this age group. Teaching informs my own work and allows real relationships to develop over time."