Happy Halloween! We started looking through websites for any costumes people had done based on famous artists or paintings. If ya still need an idea this late in the game, maybe this’ll help. Trick or treat, Picasso.
Phone books? The yellow pages? Seriously, when was the last time you used one of those? We’re guessing that Kristiina Lahde used a bunch of ‘em a lot more recently than you & everyone you know put together. See, she’s found a use for these tomes of names & numbers – art! After some deft cutting skills, she entitled this piece, appropriately enough, “Hive.” We love this- wait, is that an ad for a 24-hour plumber?
In case you’ve given up on the internet as a wasteland of time-wasting memes and anti-social networks, take heart. Once in a while, one finds a gem that some talented individual has taken the time to share with anyone patient enough to find it. BoingBoing recently posted this work of art – and make no mistake, that is indeed what this contraption is – that some crafty fellow made as a gift for his girlfriend.
The box is composed of three 1/8″ layers. The inner layer is the basic shape, the intermediate layer houses every sliding/locking/rotating/puzzley component, and the outer layer is to make it look nice.
We really like how every time you think he’s reached the final step, there’s another trick to reveal. Curiouser and curiouser.
This painting that we recently finished is notable for a few reasons. One, it took two of us practically an entire day to stretch and frame the canvas. That’s mostly because of its size. But it’s also because it was going in a floater frame. You can see in this close-up how the 3/8″ gap between the painting and the frame make it appear to float.
So there’s no glass or edge of the frame, or any other design element to hold the canvas in from the front. That means we have to do all the work from behind and it has to be centered with just the 3/8 allowance all ’round. Ouch. In the end, everything came together the way it’s supposed to. We thought it looked great, but the customer is always the final judge. Well, not only did he like it, he emailed us to say how happy he was and included a photo of the piece in its new home. We almost never get to see this, and it was really gratifying. Now that we know where it ended up, we can tell that the design was done properly ’cause it looks amazing! Thanks so much to QC for his business and for sharing this photo with us!
Henry Hargreaves has played several roles in the design world, as well as being on both sides of a camera. He began as a pin-up boy model for fashion houses like Prada and Jil Sander, all the while working with some of the top photographers. About four years ago, Hargreaves began to produce work of his own out of a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He photographed fashion and still lifes for clients such as GQ, Ralph Lauren, and NY Magazine. Lately, he’s been putting a new spin on food. He designed a bacon alphabet in Blackletter type with prop stylist
Sarah Guido. But bacon is so summer 2011. Then we saw this brightly colored buffet and it really made us sit up and take notice. This is his Food of the Rainbow series and it was styled by Lisa Edsalv.
We’d like to tell you the occasion for framing this soccer team shadow box, but we don’t want to ruin a surprise for the lucky recipient. So let’s just look at the framing job. If you remember two posts ago, the design involved attaching the shoe to the background. This meant that you’d be looking down onto the shoe and it didn’t look very shoe-like. And while we could’ve made it secure, it would’ve been a real chore wrestling it into place. Instead, we decided to display it at the bottom so that it’s sitting on the floor of the box. Now it looks more shoe-like and it didn’t require every MacGyver trick in the book.
Two of our store managers happened to both be at NYCC this past weekend. Yes, they survived. Yes, it was a mob scene. And yes, there were giant chickens dressed as Boba Fett. Here’s the scoop…
Joe had a table in Artist Alley. He and his partner TJ Dort were promoting their small press comic book, The Underburbs. It’s about a gloomy little girl named Angela whose life changes when she finds herself up against Winifred, a vampire girl from another dimension. Between the engaging characters, great sight gags, and manga-style art, The Underburbs has started to get some notice, including praise from independent comic book icon, Dave Sim. If you’ve ever read his epic, Cerebus, you know that’s saying something!
Jake went simply as an attendee. “I’ve been to the San Diego Comic Con twice, but never NYCC. It was a huge production with plenty to shop and see. The crowds were so intense on Saturday, that I cut my 4 day pass short, but I’d already had my fill at Thursday’s sneak peek and on Friday. My favorite part is always the cosplayers (people who show up in costume), so I took plenty of photos. I found some books at good prices and scooped up a few toys that were exclusive to the convention. The real treasure I found was an original piece of art. It was a page from the first issue of the recently released Aquaman #1! I’d never bought an original before, but I love the character and I think this particular scene of him going into a restaurant is really unique. My mind is already reeling about how I’ll frame it!” Here’re some more pics of those cosplayers Jake mentioned – looks like everyone had a blast!
When a customer brought us this soccer team project, we weren’t worried in the least. We’ve done our share of multi-item shadow boxes before. When he took out the soccer shoe and asked if we could include it, we said, “We can frame that!” After he left, we said, “We can frame that?” Ah yes, even for the professionals some tasks can be daunting. But a big part of custom framing is problem solving and getting clever in the craft department. One of our full-time framers, Jamie, is a wizard with such challenges. We don’t wanna ruin the mystique of how she got it on there, but believe us – it ain’t comin’ off.
We’ll post the results after it’s completed. This last pic will give you an idea of what we have left to finish. That shadow box frame will have to be put together and made to look pretty before everything is fit. Whew!
One of our favorite photo, film, and design blogs is Booooooom. They post often and feature eclectic pieces, including clever music videos and installations. Booooooom is currently taking submissions for a project called Remake. Applicants are asked to recreate a famous work of art using only photography with no special effects. The challenge is in creating a 2 dimensional image in real space. The best submissions will be posted in a gallery on the site and one lucky artist will win an Adobe Creative Suite 5.5! The deadline is coming up soon, October 21st. You can get all the rules for entering here. They’ve already put up some of the ones that’ve come in. You can hover over each image for the title & artist. This last one is probably our favorite ’cause we love how Seth Johnson had to reproduce Van Gogh’s color palette using lighting rather than paint.
A family of regular customers brought in something that we can honestly say we’ve never framed before. Their son had some shoulder surgery done a while back and they wanted to frame his x-ray. They also wanted to include the metal pin that was used to hold the bones in place. Always up for a challenge, we jumped at the chance to make the items look terrific together. The customers did a great job choosing the perfect frame. We steered them to a mat design that would look great and allow us to display the pin properly. We advised them that a job like this really calls for Museum Glass. The darker colors and the depth both showcase the non-glare quality of the Museum
Glass. We can’t wait for them to see how it turned out!
