Fradella had been cutting hair as an independent contractor at downtown Napa’s Executive Room when the county’s first stay-home directive, passed in March 2020, put the shop, and him, out of work for more than two months. After a second shutdown that summer and a frustrating search for an outdoor space where he could work, he found a lifeline in the Gordon Huether Studio, where the host invited him to serve customers on a covered patio of the Monticello Road property.
The studio remained Fradella’s workplace for two months, until county COVID-19 rules eased enough to allow his return to downtown in September. For payment, Huether accepted from his new friend only gratitude and a lasagna dinner sent by the barber’s wife, Fradella told the Napa Valley Register in December.
After nearly a decade in the trade — and during yet another COVID-triggered shutdown in December — Fradella began acting on long-held plans to go into business for himself.
“Giancarlo already was thinking, as many entrepreneurs do, about what it would be like to have his own shop,” Huether said last week. “We’d talked a bit of the possibility of having his barbershop at our studio — ‘art at the barber,’ we called it — but as it turned out, Food City made more sense. Instead of having a barbershop in a gallery, now we’re going to have a gallery in a barbershop.”
Small enough to adorn the walls of a small storefront, the works Huether plans to display at Olde Town may be a sharp departure from the outdoor, often commandingly large pieces like downtown Napa’s 9/11 Memorial on which he has largely built his fame.
