Written by DCist contributor Adrian Parsons.

Chawky Frenn tells me to look up. I do so, and I see nothing. Chawky tells me to get on his bed. Hmmm. I lay on his bed and look up. Nothing. He jumps on the bed and points up. A poster of Pieter Bruegel’s hell looms above us. Seeing I’m sufficiently weirded out, Frenn explains, “I wake up to this painting every day to remind me of the despair. This is for everyone, there is no escaping it.”

This is to a 20-something who’s scared to floss in the mornings.

My studio visit last Friday was with Chawky Frenn, a painter who has authored a compelling solo show at Bethesda’s Fraser Gallery full of meat, plastinated heads, Catholic mythology, and unmistakable skill. After seeing the show a couple of weeks ago I was left with heavy questions that I hoped the George Mason University professor could answer. Like, what is a plastinated head?

Before the thorough tour of his Rosslyn studio, I saw the dolls. He pointed them out to me.

“These are my babies,” he said.

Two hundred (his own estimate) baby doll heads stacked on a crowded bookshelf. They are sexless, hairless, and, for Frenn, their BakeLite to Barbie plastic variations transcend race and gender. “They are beautiful and anonymous. My earliest work was only heads. People gave me baby doll heads from Italy, some heirlooms.”