Even a good piece of art gets a little better with a smile and a wink to the viewer. These “constructed photographs” by Zander Olsen make that impression. Zander is toying with a few ideas – there’s some “tree line” word play, there’s some blatant manipulation of the composition, etc. But his description sounds a lot more grand –
These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales, involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.
We like how the very last one actually looks like two separate photographs pieced together. But he uses no photo trickery other than his positioning of the camera.
Are you sitting down? Good – today’s post gets a little graphic. Here, let’s clean up a bit before we get started…
Alright, if you spend half as much time online as we do, you might recognize today’s artwork. It got shared quite a bit last December, and you’re about to see why. We didn’t get around to posting about it due to the anxiety attack that it brought on.
Artist Yayoi Kusama created a giant indoor environment for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art that was entirely white – a huge canvas, essentially. Over the course of two weeks, children who visited the gallery were given stickers – wait for it – and invited to fill the space with color. The horror… the horror. Such a simple idea, and yet so effective. Now grab that bottle of Goo-gone and let’s go!
The calm before the oncoming storm…
And so it begins…
Take note of the height challenges in this pic, because –
– this photos prompts us to wonder if there were ever ladders introduced, or were some adults brought in to cheat?
Oh, the humanity!
My gosh, it’s full of stars! stickers!
After Alice was in Wonderland, she went though the Looking Glass. Well RISD graduate Anna Mikhailovskaia took that idea and ran with it. She created “Mirror Mirror”, an interactive installation that invites the viewer to enter an enclosed chamber through a rotating, double-sided mirror. The chamber serves as a hidden link between two gallery spaces and is entirely upholstered on the inside.
We thought this would be a good way to remind you that our 40% Off Custom Framed Mirrors sale is almost over. While we can’t promise that your mirror will open into another dimension, it will appear to embiggen your own living space and add a beautiful, personal touch.
What do you see in the photo above? At first glance, it could be a pattern stitched into a sheet of fabric – there’s not much sense of scale to it. Ah, but then we find it’s much, much larger than that, but perhaps just as delicate. Sonja Hinrichsen created this snow drawing last month with the help of 5 volunteers at Rabbit Ears Pass in Colorado. The photos were taken by a local pilot during a flyover. But the lyrical, drifting video was captured with a camera mounted on a remote-control helicopter while the piece was being created. In fact, there’s a point in the video where you can see one of the volunteers at work. Being artists and designers ourselves, our minds go to the “hows?” of this lovely work of art – we wish the video had shown more of the making-of. How much planning was required? How long did it take? Were there mistakes?
Then again, not knowing the “before” and only the “after” makes the piece that much more magical.
We’ve featured some pretty incredible and unique stuff on here, but Lisa Nilsson’s “Tissue Series” made us cross-eyed in amazement. These cross sections are made entirely of paper using a process we’ve featured before called quilling – the art of tightly wrapping little strips of paper for structure and sculpture. Nilsson wraps the paper around items like drill bits, dowels, and *shudder* pins. She does other kind of art too, but in regards to all her work she says, “The common thread I see among them is my attraction to the intricate, multifaceted, complex, detailed and time-consuming. I tend to work on a small-scale.” Yeah, no kidding!
The paper: Japanese mulberry. The boxes containing each cross-section: hand-made by Nilsson. The result: awesome. Nilsson is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and she lives & works right here in MA.
Big Picture Framing is always growing and we could use some talented, fun-loving, creative people on our team.
Let me step out from behind my blogger’s desk and just say that I love being a framer. I’ve worked at Big Picture Framing for 7 years and I don’t intend to leave anytime soon. Why would I? My background is in art, retail, and middle management – you don’t have to have that same experience, but I’m guessing that your background involves one of those fields. I love that framing isn’t anything like other jobs. Every day is different because every frame design is different. It’s custom work, after all. That means that I’m constantly being challenged and the days go by very fast. I’m working with the public, but not all the time. I get to work with my hands and my mind gets exercised doing different kinds of problem solving. Parts of the job revolve around working as part of a team in order to finish production, but within that time, I have to accomplish tasks on my own. I know a lot of people who don’t like going to their job because it feels “like work.” I enjoy being at my job. There’s a sense of closure each time a piece of art is completed. When customers pick up their frame, they’re actually excited to see what we’ve done and grateful that we created something unique just for them.
So whadaya say? Contact us yourself or let a friend know that we’re building a bigger team. You can check out our post on Craig’s list or you can go to our site, fill out an application and bring it in to any of our stores. I think you’ll find out just how great a job framing is.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking only of the MFA or the ICA when you think of big museums in the greater Boston Metro area. The Peabody Essex Museum has a collection that might surprise you, as well as an impressive series of special exhibits. A few years back, they held what we thought was a world-class retrospective of Joseph Cornell’s assemblages and drawings. It was quite amazing to experience such a large and well executed show at an intimate venue in our own backyard.
Well, the PEM is currently showing “Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art.” And rather than just the standard fare that you might expect, this exhibit includes a variety of art, including modern media like photo & video.
Shapeshifting celebrates Native American ideas that have crossed time and space to be continuously refreshed with new concepts and expressions. Experience this vitality through sculpture, paintings, ceramics, textiles, photographs, videos and monumental installations drawn from collections in the United States, Canada and Europe. Rarely seen historic pieces, shown alongside some of the finest contemporary works, demonstrate the diversity and continuity of Native American art and culture from 200 B.C.E. to the present.
The advantage to publishing a blog is that once in a while, one gets to toot their own horn. Well, Toot-Toot! We’ve been doing framing for the Smithsonian’s Astrophysical Observatory for the past 6 years. The observatory is located right here in MA, down the street from Harvard University in Cambridge. It’s most notable for hosting the X-ray center which operates the Chandra satellite. The observatory’s scientists process the data and distribute it to others around the world for analysis. Many of the items that we’ve framed for them are photos taken by Chandra. Last week, we paid a visit to see the results in their native environment – a double-whammy if you’re a framer and a science nerd!Chandra is a telescope specially designed to detect X-ray emissions from very hot regions of the Universe such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes. Because X-rays are absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, Chandra must orbit above it, up to an altitude of 86,500 miles in space. The wall pictured below is dedicated to X-ray astronomy pioneer Leon van Speybroeck. It includes his favorite images that resulted from the Chandra project.
Some of our favorite pieces were these old-timey illustrations of some Chandra precursors. They weren’t in the best looking shape when the posters were first brought to us, but now they fit right in. Our liaison at the observatory makes sure that everything they bring us gets museum glass. That’s a big part of why these snapshots we took show little-to-no glare on the framed items. Thanks to the staff for taking the time to show us around and give us the inside scoop on the before & after of the work we’ve done for them.
If you’re a science nerd like some of us, you should know that on the third Thursday of every month they host “Observatory Nights.” The free event includes a nontechnical lecture and telescopic observing from the observatory roof if weather permits. The lectures are intended for high-school age and older audiences but children are also welcome. This Thursday the 16th focuses on “The Life of Super-Earths.” Check it out and let us know what you thought.
Have you ever wondered what the world’s first mirror looked like? Well, wayyyyy back in the day you had to stare into a still body of water. Yeah, just try fixing your hair at a 90 degree angle over a puddle. After that got old, someone was clever enough to invent the iMirror by polishing volcanic rock. The earliest known samples were pieces of obsidian found in modern-day Turkey, dated May 27th, 6000 BC (we’re guessing about the date.)
When folks figured out that polishing metal was the way to go, the whole mirror thing really took off. Mesopotamia’s chain of “Here’s Looking at You” stores released a line of polished copper mirrors in 4000 BC while similar products were catching on in Egypt. In 2000 BC, China was very into bronze mirrors. And bamboo. And pottery.
To kick off the first century properly, the people in modern-day Lebanon came up with the first metal-coated glass mirrors, using stuff like gold leaf and molten lead. Thank goodness! Because that gets us to 1835 when German chemist Justus von Liebig invented the silvered-glass mirror. That’s pretty much the great granddaddy of yer contemporary mirror. Altho’ rather than silver nitrate (cause that stuff is icky!), today’s mirrors are made with aluminum backing. Yay!
“How exactly is it done?” Funny you should ask…
Okay, that’s all well and good, but the real take away here is the fact that custom framed mirrors are 40% off at all of our stores through the month of February.
See what we did there?
Alright, so last Sunday’s Super Bowl may not have gone the way that those of us here in New England would’ve liked, but at least the commercials kept us entertained, right? Right?
The Chevy commercial for their new car, Sonic, had a true work of art buried in it. The tv ad featured only short clips from the new music video by the band OK Go. Strangely enough, even if you can’t name any of their songs, chances are that you’ve seen some of OK Go’s past music videos. They involve Rube Goldberg-esque set-ups and other complicated arrangements done in one take. For their song “Needing/Getting” the band conceived a video that took four months of preparation and four days of filming. They used over 1000 instruments set up along a two mile-stretch in the desert on the outskirts of L.A. – 288 guitars, 55 pianos, and 1,157 homemade ones including the car itself, outfitted with pneumatically run retractable arms. The audio was recorded live, including the vocals. Yes, the lead singer is doing his own driving throughout. It occurred to us as we were watching that he had to keep the car going at just the right speed without slowing down or speeding up while the “instruments” were being played.
For a little bit of perspective, here’s OK Go’s first music video from 2006.
Even a good piece of art gets a little better with a smile and a wink to the viewer. These “constructed photographs” by Zander Olsen make that impression. Zander is toying with a few ideas – there’s some “tree line” word play, there’s some blatant manipulation of the composition, etc. But his description sounds a lot more grand – 
Hang with Big Picture Framing 