Karen Freidt smiles as she holds her blueberry pie outside her home in Newport News, Va., Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. Freidt's pies, which she began baking during quarantine, garnered national recognition when a top fashion designer, Anna Sui who was pulling together her Spring 2021 collection, requested to use one during a virtual show. (Kaitlin McKeown/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

By DENISE M. WATSON

The Virginian-Pilot

AP Member Exchange

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Karen Freidt wasn’t thinking about couture or kudos in late May when she dug out a mixing bowl, spoons, milk and blueberries and started to bake.

She wanted comfort.

Freidt had spent weeks weakened by pneumonia and at times couldn’t walk through her Newport News home without losing her breath. While she wasn’t sick with COVID-19, she was certainly sick of it, and had to turn away from the news while being stuck at home.

On this day, her search for comfort got her thinking of pie. Of course, Freidt being Freidt, she created something more.

It was a dessert — delicious, fruit-filled, tender crust — but different in Freidt’s hands. Freidt learned to art about the time she learned to tie her shoes. Creativity has always been her secret ingredient. She has been able to visualize beauty in the most benign items, at the most necessary times.

Her pie emerged hot and syrupy from the oven covered with a flaky garden of golden-brown flower petals, twisting stems and leaves. She took a photo and shared it with friends on Facebook and Instagram. It made her happy. It made them happy. She made more.

By the end of the summer, Freidt was having to think about kudos, couture and so much more.

Freidt’s first bakes got passed around on social media like her pies did among her family and neighbors.

The images caught the eye of internationally renowned fashion designer Anna Sui who was pulling together her Spring 2021 collection in the sequestered confines of a pandemic. Sui was also in need of comforting inspiration.

Sui printed out pictures of the pie and tacked it on her inspiration board and developed a clothing line called “Heartland.” Sui tracked Freidt down and asked if she could use one of her desserts as part of her fashion show. On Sept. 15, Sui’s virtual New York Fashion Week debuted, and one of Freidt’s pies made a grand appearance within the opening seconds.

Critics were talking about “the pie” as much as Sui’s homespun line that included pastels, flowing dresses and comfy sweatshirts. “The pie” got a mention on Vogue.com. Designerzcentral.com effused, “Turns out, not all pie crusts are visual equals, and Sui couldn’t resist working one of the exquisite desserts into her narrative. You can’t wear Freidt’s blueberry miracle, but boy is it photogenic.”

The Daily Beast was just as enamored: “Probably nothing could stop Anna Sui, a NYFW perennial, from showing her eighty-forth collection at the event….It opened with a close-up shot not of a floral embellishment or embroidery detail, but a damn delicious-looking pie.”

The invite for the online show describes why Sui selected Freidt. She compared her work to artist Charles Burchfield, who was known for his genius with watercolor.

“To complete the mood, I discovered the artist Karen Long Freidt on Instagram, who made the most incredible pies you have ever seen! She is baking one just for us, with a crust that brings me back to Burchfield, with stylized daffodils and daisies, budding hope for a better future.”

A week later, Freidt is still in disbelief at how and why her baking spree has landed the NASA retiree in the same glossy pages with haute couture and celebrity gossip.

She is using the attention, though, to add to another delectable she’s baked up: Raffling off one of her pies and handmade dish towels for charity through a fundraiser with the Virginia Peninsula Foodbank. People who donated $25 for the fundraiser, which ended on Tuesday night, got their names entered into a raffle. Every dollar raised equaled four meals, according to the foodbank.

The winner, whose name was drawn Wednesday, got a blueberry pie, towel and ice cream. Freidt said the foodbank also got donations from outside of the area from people who have bitten into what she’s selling and want to help. She raised more than $3,200, which was another one of Freidt’s plans.

“I’ve always wanted to use my art to help people,” she said.

Freidt grew up in Hampton and Newport News, the daughter of a father engineer and mom, Ethel Long, a popular local painter. Freidt often trotted beside her mother to art shows. Freidt studied art in college, worked at an ad agency, and then spent more than three decades at NASA as a print and web designer, communications specialist and a team facilitator, specializing in helping people be more creative in their work.

Freidt said she learned years ago that fear can kill motivation like bad apples can ruin a pie. Getting people to chase their fears instead of running from them became her mantra. It was a necessary part of being an artist, too.

In the middle of her career, raising two daughters, divorcing and remarrying, she painted and modeled odd and whimsical figures out of cardboard, resin and found objects.

Her husband, Wade Mickley, is also an artist and works at NASA. Freidt’s work has been in more than 70 exhibitions throughout the state, including solo shows. Freidt even found time to produce a coloring book.