Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Framing Hell

Alright! I have to frame a bunch of work. This is not my favorite thing about being an artist. I don't do the whole job, but I do the nasty part, which is fitting the pastels into the mattes and closing up the back of the pieces. Needless to say, with pastels and white mattes, this is a major pain. I haven't chosen to make my life easy either, as I'm very fond of wide white mattes and a clean, gallery style look. I won't go to the matte-less framing method that some pastelists have gone for, simply because I think this framing method tries to make a pastel look like an oil and I just don't want to do that. It's a work on paper and for me, that's just one of the charms of a pastel, not a detriment. I'm a little bit of a purest on this.

So, that being said, I have a whole stack of pastels to fit into frames and a whole stack of frames. This will take about 10 hours of work, I estimate. So do I break that up into two or three days or do I power out and get the whole ugly job over in a day? Haven't decided yet.

Once I decide to actually start, I have to make sure I have all the tools gathered. This is key!  I also clean the working space very thoroughly. Even more key! When I figured out that I can't possibly procrastinate any longer, I'll start.

Gotta make check to make sure every piece is photographed, inventoried, (given a number and title), and signed.

After all the pieces are framed, I'll pack them into cases to load into the Sprinter for Belleville!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a pastelist, I agree with you on the framing.
Such a pain, but love looking at them when finished. And chalk (ha!) up a day or two lost to complete the process.
Love your postings!