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Fall is in the Air October Newsletter |
| Greetings!
 The subtle signs of Autumn are in the air about southern California. The heat wave has broken finally, and the first real rain of the season has begun.
The kids are back in school, and Halloween is fast approaching. Before you know it, the holidays will be here again! Time now to avoid the rush and start thinking about those framing projects you have planned as gifts. School pictures, graduation memorabilia, all those beautiful family photos, and the fine art...don't forget those paintings you picked up while on vacation! The time to gather your projects up and bring them in is now, before the hectic holiday season starts and you lose track of precious time!
FrameStore has been helping southern Californians take care of their photos, artwork, and mementos correctly for over 35 years.
Stop by one of our stores this week to have one of our Art and Design experts help you to turn those precious memories that will only come once into lasting and lovely art that will bring joy for decades.
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Nostalgic Pastimes
Special Exhibit at the FrameStore
October 11th - December 11th, 2010
Artist Dr. Jeffery A. Clements, who surged on the scene a few years ago with his intricate fine arts drawings of alluring and attention-grabbing dilapidated houses that revealed a beauty like none other is back with new fascinating works. He is now exhibiting his newest series of acrylics and oils on canvas revealing nostalgic scenes to which we can all relate. To see his works will inspire reminiscences of our own younger days or those of others we watched, saw, heard or read about. This new art centers on games we used to play or watch others play; times we spent with others or wished we had. His art is rich with nostalgia-seeing kids on their paper routes; hearing the laughter of kids jumping Double Dutch; noticing that bunch boys darting in a game of flag football; watching old folk play checkers; sneaking a peek at the old guys shooting craps. His art sparks memories galore, fun memories galore.
Yes, Clements initial passion was dilapidated houses like many of the old homes of our parents or grandparents in the early communities that are disappearing. Many perceive that getting rid of the old and bringing in the new is what is best. Though Clements also sees this as necessary, he also understands the great loss to our visual heritage. He is an artist who has been making a valiant effort to capture the images of many old houses in his art creations before they vanish. See his 'Majestic Pride' from Atlanta. The house was demolished in 2008. See his "Backyard Panorama" which could be seen on a hill while driving north approaching the Pasadena Freeway. One could see it being slowly demolished over time. In 2009 it was completely demolished. There are few photographs lingering of report like for most homes...usually only accidentally photographed while taking a picture of the family next to the family car.
In 2008, Clements traveled with his wife, Jean, on a heritage journey where he collected ideas of dilapidated houses throughout the south in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi. He then probed into his father's experience with sharecropping while attending his family reunion in Tennessee that year. This triggered the expansion of Clements' when he decided to depict a scene from the life of his 87 year old father's early life of escaping with his family as a child from the harrowing experience of share cropping in the Mississippi Delta. In 1929 when Jeff's grandfather was unable to "settle up" from the unsolvable debt situation he gathered his family into a rickety old wagon with hitched mule and escaped into the night, never to return. Jeff's father was 6 years old at the time. Clements had depicted this scene in "Sharecropper Escape".
After this he decided to start painting with oils and acrylics and though his passion was the beauty of dilapidated houses, he decided that scenes from our collective past should be expressed in his art. He wanted to inculcate a reminder of what our life's eyes have seen as we moved thru the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. He decided to depict the things we may have seen or even been involved in that brought an emotion to our being.
Sneak Peak Cocktail Reception
Saturday October 9th, 2010 6pm - 8pm
The new Clements art series will be unveiled in a wonderful Exhibit at the Frame Store Gallery from October 11 to December 11, 2010.
Limited invitations to the opening exhibit cocktail reception on October 9, 2010 may be obtained by contacting:
The Frame Store Gallery
8692 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 837-4531 |
Houseguest: Frances Stark Selects from the Grunwald Collection
October 16 - January 26, 2011
About
Houseguest is a series of exhibitions at the Hammer Museum in which individual artists are invited to curate a show from the Museum's and UCLA's diverse collections. For this exhibition, Los Angeles-based artist Frances Stark chose to sift through the works in the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, a collection of more than 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs and artist books dating from the Renaissance to the present. Stark began her research without a specific theme in mind, a process she describes as "surrendering to taste and to the chance of discovery." She found herself instinctively drawn to figurative and metaphorical renditions of man and woman. Her exhibition takes the form of a visual essay on the sexes, transporting the viewer through a panoply of humanity with themes of creation, reproduction, pleasure, the essence of the body, relationships, identity, and death. Stark eliminated photography from the outset, and focused on the intuitive lines of prints and drawings in works by artists such as Jacques Callot, Francisco Goya, Edgar Degas, Egon Schiele, Isabel Bishop, Kenneth Price, Mike Kelley, and Agnes Martin.
Frances Stark was born in Newport Beach, CA in 1967 and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA in 1993, and also teaches at the University of Southern California. Her one-person exhibitions have been presented internationally at venues including the Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Scotland; greengrassi, London; Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, CA; CRG, New York, NY; Galerie Daniel Buccholz, Cologne, Germany; Secession, Vienna; Portikus, Frankfurt; van Abbe Museum, The Netherlands; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Stark's work has been included in thematic exhibitions including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Learn to Read, Tate Modern, London; Fit to Print: Printed Media in Recent Collage, Gagosian Gallery, New York; Romantic Conceptualism, Nurenberg Kunstverein & BAWAG Foundation, Vienna; The Space of Words, Museum of Contemporary Art (MUDAM), Luxembourg; Picturing the Studio, Sullivan Galleries at The School of the Art Institute Chicago; Poor.Old.Tired.Horse., Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and INDEX, conceptualism in California from the permanent collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA.
This exhibition is organized by Allegra Pesenti, curator, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer. |
The Brewery Artwalk: Fall 2010 October 9 - October 10, 2010
About
The Brewery ArtWalk is a twice annual open studio weekend at the worlds largest art complex. With over 100 participating resident artists, you will have the opportunity to see new works, discover new favorites, speak with the artists and purchase artwork directly from the artists at studio prices.
The ArtWalk takes place in the Spring and Fall, 11:00 am - 6:00 pm
Directions
The Brewery is located at 2100 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031, we are off the I-5 Freeway at Main Street.
Admission is free and so is parking. Come and support LA's finest artists, take home some great works and dine at the on-site restaurant. If you have questions or require more information, please contact us at:
Brewery Art Association c/o i5 Gallery
2100 North Main Street, Unit A10
Los Angeles, CA 90031
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Color Theory in Art
I - Introduction
For a long time, now, there has been a problem that fledgling designers have run into on a constant basis. This problem seems insignificant to most, but in actuality it is quite possibly the most important factor in a design or piece of artwork. Yes, you guessed it...I'm talking about the issue of COLOR.
Color can be a touchy subject. Sometimes artists use colors that evoke certain emotions. Other times artists use colors simply because they like the way they look. While any design instructor will tell you that the latter reason is completely wrong, I tend to disagree. In my personal opinion, color always has meaning. This meaning can be, as I mentioned, an emotional one or it can be a personal preference on the part of the artist himself, but it ALWAYS has purpose behind it.
There is nothing wrong with choosing a color because you like it because, after all, it is your work. However, when choosing a color you still want to make sure its use does not conflict with what you are trying to say with your work. Proper use of basic color theory can help you decide what colors match, as well as what each color makes people feel.
II - The Wheel
The color wheel has earned a place in the hearts of many artists and designers across the globe. Not because its the perfect tool, but because everybody, at some point, has had to make one of their own as part of a ridiculous art class project.
The wheel's construction is actually quite simple. You have your 6 basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Then, depending on which wheel you're looking at, you have extra, "in-between" colors that are mixes of the basic colors.
There are names for all of these colors, which are important to know. The following is a list of all of the names of colors and what they're good for.
Primary Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue. These 3 colors are the base colors for every other color on the color wheel. This is why they're called "primary." When you mix two primaries together, you get a secondary color.
Also note the triangular positioning of the primary colors on the color wheel, and how the secondary colors are next to them.
Primary colors are useful for designs or art that needs to have a sense of urgency. Primary colors are the most vivid colors when placed next to eachother, which is why you'll notice that most fast food joints use primary colors in their logos, as it evokes speed.
Secondary Colors: Orange, Green, Purple. These 3 colors are what you get when you mix the primary colors together.
They're located in-between the primary colors to indicate what colors they're made from. Notice how green is in-between yellow and blue.
Secondary colors are usually more interesting than primary colors, but they do not evoke speed and urgency.
Tertiary Colors: These are those "in-between" colors like Yellow-Green and Red-Violet. They're made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color together. There can be endless combinations of tertiary colors, depending on how they're mixed.
Complementary Colors: Red and Green, Blue and Orange, Purple and Yellow. These are the colors directly across from eachother on the color wheel. Don't let the name fool you, they rarely look good when used together. They're called "complementary" because, when used together, they become extremely vibrant and have heavy contrast.
Complementary colors are useful when you want to make something stand out. For example, if you use a green background and have a red circle on it, the red will jump off the page and be almost blinding.
Analogous Colors: Red and Orange, Blue and Green, etc. These are colors right next to eachother on the color wheel. They usually match extremely well, but they also create almost no contrast. They're good for very serene-feeling designs and artwork where you want viewers to feel comfortable.
III - Other Terms There are plenty of other names and titles that refer to different aspects of color, but this is where it starts getting complex. If you want to know more about color, read on.
Warm Colors: Colors such as red, yellow, and orange. These colors evoke warmth because they remind us of things like the sun or fire.
Cool Colors: Colors like blue, green, and purple (violet). These colors evoke a cool feeling because they remind us of things like water or grass.
Neutral Colors: Gray, Brown. These aren't on most color wheels, but they're considered neutral because they don't contrast with much of anything. They're dull and uneventful.
Value: Usually refers to the amount of black in a color. The more black a color has, the darker its value.
Brightness: Refers to the amount of white in a color. The more white a color has, the brighter it is.
Saturation: Refers to the amount of a color used. When a color is at full saturation, it is extremely vibrant. When a color is "desaturated," a large amount of color has been removed. Desaturated colors tend to be close to being neutral because there is so much gray in them.
IV - Types of Color As you might suspect, there are different types of color. Now is when you can throw the color wheel out the window.
RGB Color: This is color based upon light. Your computer monitor and television use RGB. The name "RGB" stands for Red, Green, Blue, which are the 3 primaries (with green replacing yellow). By combining these 3 colors, any other color can be produced. Remember, this color method is only used with light sources; it does not apply to printing.
CMYK Color: This is the color method based upon pigments. "CMYK" stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (its what the K stands for). Using these 4 colors, most other colors can be achieved. Unfortunately, CMYK cannot reproduce the same amount of colors as RGB can, which is why yellow-greens sometimes look a bit muddy when printed.
This is the method used by printers the world over, and is also a clever way of mixing paints.
Pantone (PMS) Color: This is yet another printing color method. PMS stands for "Pantone Matching System," and is a large list of specially mixed colors made by the Pantone Corporation. Instead of using CMYK to create colors, the pigments are created individually for purity.
For example, if I wanted to use a Red-Violet color, I'd pick PMS 233M. The color would be made exclusively for my project and would always print exactly how I want.
The only drawback to using PMS colors is that they're only useful for projects with few colors. They're also expensive.
©2007 Ryan Ford. All Rights Reserved. |
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Wishing you all a colourful California autumn, full of memories, art and fun!
Sincerely,
Chuck Mitchell
FrameStore |
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We at FrameStore are proud to introduce our new EcoCare Collection from Nurre Caxton. This line of moulding is both
beautiful and kind to the planet. The wood to make these mouldings is harvested from managed forests that are carefully monitored. For every tree used one is replaced.
The rich colors are achieved with organic water-based stains. No oils or chemical solvents are used so that they have very low impact on our environment.
The new EcoCare gives you, our customer, and us a choice we can feel good about making.
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