Frank's Kitchens

Franks Kitchens is a Philadelphia based artistic design and fabrication collaborative. Founded in 2007 inside a small warehouse on North Hancock Street in Kensington, FK got its start primarily as a place to build massive human-powered kinetic sculptures for the annual sculpture derby during the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival. Today, now in a much la... rger space off N. 5th Street, Franks Kitchens is a fiery collective of passionate creativity hosting artists who breathe to think and dream, and live to collaborate and build. Keeping its membership to a strict number of 12, including an ambiguously fictitious figure-head in Frank R. Rosen himself, FK is comprised of a myriad of personal backgrounds from engineers, to designers, to metal smiths, to sculptors, to pyro-technicians, to electricians, to carpenters to filmmakers. Who is Frank R Rosen? Officially chartered in the winter of 2007, Frank's KItchens is a concept that dates back to the beginning of time. But it wasn't until a young italian immigrant by the name of Francisco Archemedes De La Rosanelli took that transcendental concept and made it a Kensington/Fishtown reality. During a brief stint as a cook in Philadelphia's legendary Eastern State Penitentiary, Francisco discovered the monotonous nature of not just the prison kitchen, but of all kitchens. Why can't a stove look like a dishwasher, he asked. Why can't a refrigerator look like an oven? Why can't the sink be a toaster. These were the burning questions that had perplexed man since the days of Lucy and T Rexes. Upon his release in 1965, after being adjudicated from mistaken identity, Francisco vowed to bring his new-found kitchen visions to his beloved neighborhood, Port Northern Fishington. He immediately shortened his name to Frank Rosen, because it worked out so good for Richie Valens of "La Bamba" fame. He also liked Jewish girls. During the following 42 years, Frank Rosen did a lot of shit. But in 2007, at a vegan pig roast, he fortuitously met those whom he believed to be his legacy. John ...Read More