Bernard Frazier was born in 1906 on a farm in western Kansas near the town of Athol. It was while living on the farm that he started experimenting with native stone and clay from which he carved and molded his earlier sculptures. He got formal training while attending The University of Kansas from 1925 to 1929. He received the nickname "Poco" while running for the University of Kansas track team.
After graduation in 1929, Poco Frazier served as an apprentice in the studios of nationally prominent sculptors, Loredo Taft and Fred Torrey. Then in 1935 he returned to the University of Kansas to sculpt twelve dioramas to be placed in the Dyche Natural History Museum. These dioramas have been asserted to be among the first to use perspective and molded background in creating the illusion of distance. He served as artist in residence at K.U. from 1938 to 1940 when he was offered a regular faculty position, during which he established the first regular sculpture class.
In 1944, Mr. Frazier accepted the directorship of the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He resigned this position in 1950 to devote more time to his professional sculpting. It was during this time that he created "Hands of God and Man." He returned to a position of artist in residence at K.U. in 1956. In 1974, he took a year’s sabbatical to serve as visiting professor and lecturer at universities in India and Nepal. Bernard "Poco" Frazier died on May 24, 1976.
Frazier was a man of his cultural environment who was able to vividly project this culture through his art works. Each of his finished sculptures possessed his unique blending of styles that combined a dominant single concept or subject, molded or carved with just enough generality or abstractness in detail to remind viewers of similar experiences or sightings in their own past.
The Grover Barn: A Proposal for Preservation.