It’s the plot of half of the flashing light dramas on television, the hero wrongly accused of some horrible crime has 49 minutes to find the guilty party, right the wrong, clear his name and work out a happy ending, unless it’s a bridged episode…tune in again next week.
He could, okay, okay, she could too, but you have to admit it’s awkward to say he/she could…so I’ll stick with the pronoun I grew up with and leave political correctness for younger bloggers. He could have saved himself forty-five of those minutes looking around for a guilty party by just visiting any museum or art venue. The guilt is there hung around the art like an albatross, frames, frames of the wrong size, wrong style, wrong finish and they got there through the willful disregard of the artist.
Del Smith Arch Docent and Imperial Omnipotent Stomper of the Coos Art Museum says all mats should be white or off white and the frames should be metal and black. Probably an impossibly austere view for color-crazed artists, but within reason this is a great place to start.
Remember the object here is to display your art, not put in a plug for the frame/molding maker. Now there are any number of ways you can go about focusing on this principal, discipline, good taste, recommendation or inspiration, but focus you must.
Why? Isn’t there enough to do to get your art out of your head and onto canvas, much less in a show or placed in a gallery or venue where people can come see it? There is plenty and I hear your pain, but art is hard work, if you wanted easy maybe you should have been independently wealthy.
Okay, first thing, you do know that the heavy, ornate gilt frames you see around the works of master artists in collections, museums and palaces got there years if not hundreds of years ago when oddly enough they didn’t have anything else to frame with or they were busy trying to impress the socks off the peasants or they were worried that the other Hapsburgs on the block would look down on them for having a simple frame. Keeping up with the Bourbons is a bitch, but if you are seventeenth century royalty what are you going to do?
Think about it, the masters of a more modern era, the Impressionists and later schools didn’t always frame their works at all. I’m not sure what the correct frame for a Picasso or a Pollack is and I’m pretty sure after staring at a Pollock for half a day at the Dallas Museum of Fine Art no frame would help a bit. It just doesn’t need it.
Some of the other artists of the modern ages, Mucha and Lautrec spent a large part of their careers painting posters and frankly if I had to use prints instead of originals I’d use Mucha and Lautrec, but as poster artists their works don’t have the body to fight off a heavy, gilt frame. They need the subtlety of a narrow metal frame to attract the eye, but stay out of the way.
So where do you fall on the art time line? Are you an old master from the sixteenth century or a modern master from the galleries and cafes of Paris?
I can’t answer that question. You are the one who will be doing the framing of your art work. Think about it before you saddle that delicate water color with a frame which would be more at home on the Titanic. You do remember what happened to the Titanic?
And there really is no excuse for putting the wrong frame on your art. Right here on the coast of Oregon we have two wonderful professional frame shops and that’s if you don’t travel to far Bandon or remote Coquille.
The nice folks at Easy Lane Frames and Select Gallery or The Art Connection can help you when it comes to selecting a frame. They do a wonderful job so long as you remember any time you use a commercial shop they will want to sell you something. Now I think buying local is not only the wise thing to do but it is the right thing to do, (See I managed to get a Politically Correct view in), and you should wherever possible, just don’t think you are getting a completely unbiased opinion.
You can do yourself a big favor by doing a little research on the Web before you take the ride to the frame shop.
and
both offer an online tool which will let you visualize the art in a frame and then through the magic of the Internet, you can change it in an instant. Not a bad way to take a look and see what sort of frame you might want for the next show.
If you have been out doing your proper networking chores you’ll have a Nuisance of Artists, actually that’s what you call a bunch of cats, but it seemed right for artists, all opinionated and philosophical, to ask questions about technical stuff like the right way to frame a picture.
If you haven’t been networking maybe you should start? There’s the BAAA and The Oregon Coast Photographer’s Assn and they are chock full of artists who will happily tell you what you should be doing.
So it isn’t a mission impossible to get your frame right, it takes time, effort and some help, but the rewards are worth every bit of it. Now get busy, the spring shows are just around the corner and you have to be ready!
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