Photo by Sharon Lee
Old Main Frame Shop
Last week I found out that three pieces of mine (Big Gulp, 7 Rays and Blah, Blah, Blah) were accepted into the Artists in Our Midsts show at the Southern Alleghenies Art Museum in Altoona, PA. This is nice regional show to do as the museum, though small, is a good space that is climate controlled and has good lighting. Of the three pieces, two needed to be framed so today amidst the reconstruction of downtown State College after an event that brought 125, 000 into a town that houses only 40,000 I headed to "my" frame show.
Old Main Frame Shop is in downtown State College. The retail part of the business is a rather tiny affair-generally only one or two people are working "out-front". The walls are lined with fat strips of velcro to which corners of frames are attached. The frames are about 1 foot in length from the corner to each side.
Today we had three people (a clerk, the gallery manager and myself) working on choosing the correct frame for my paintings. It is a delicate balance of texture and color-some frames work only if they're smooth and some need texture to duplicate the indication of texture in a painting. Depending on the depth of the stretchers, only certain frames visually work. One of the paintings took us over an hour to figure out because we were looking at black frames and the color that worked was gold with red hues and black scratches.
I like going to get my work framed. It visually brings the painting into the fore front. It can add or take away emphasis. It make the painting feel complete.
