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Spring in Coming...
March Newsletter

 

Greetings!

William Griffith's Barn with FlowersIt is time again for Spring, and daylight savings!

As the warmth slowly begins to show it's face in SoCal and the rains start to receed for another year, we all begin to shift gears out of our winter sluggishness and into that frantic springtime activity. 

And as the weather grows nicer and the days longer, spring cleaning, re-organizing and re-decorating can't be far behind for many of us.

So whether you are just cleaning the attic or totally re-decorating your home, don't forget the artwork that brings warmth, love and memories to any house! Regardless of whether your project is fine art, photography, or mementos long stored in dust or newly aquired, now is the time to act!

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.

Visit our website at www.customframestore.com for locations and contact information!

 

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Have you done work with FrameStore before? Did your artwork really wow you when you got it home? Did you love the design or the designer and wish you could let everyone know? Did you have a suggestion or criticism?

 

FrameStore wants to hear about your experiences with us!

 

Visit the Yelp! page of YOUR FrameStore today and let us know how we are doing and what you wish we would improve as well as what you loved about us! We truly want your honest and genuine feedback on our work and our design experts. So, check out the links below for each of our 10 stores in SoCal and leave us a review at Yelp! And thanks for taking the time to help us improve our services to you.

 

 

FrameStore Brentwood 

 

FrameStore Culver City 

 

FrameStore Long Beach 

 

FrameStore Manhattan Beach 

 

FrameStore Pasadena 

 

FrameStore Santa Monica 

 

FrameStore Studio City 

 

FrameStore Thousand Oaks 

 

FrameStore West Hollywood 

 

FrameStore West Los Angeles 

 

 

 

 

 Sebastian Kedlecik's Lizard Cham Homeless 

Pretty Monsters

Showing Now at FrameStore in Culver City

8692 Washington Blvd.

Culver City, CA 90232

(310) 837-4531 

 

 

Sebastian Kadlecik will be presenting his art exhibit "Pretty Monsters" at the FrameStore Gallery in Culver City on Saturday, March 19th from 7pm to 9pm. The show features a mixture of charcoal and spray paint artwork.

 

About the Artist: 

 

Sebastian is originally from the Bay Area and has been living in Los Angeles for about five years. He has provided illustrations for web comics, book covers, t-shirts, children's books and more. He primarily works in charcoals and has recently found a love for spray paint. Much of his spray paint work is done on cardboard in an attempt to recycle materials and be just a little bit more green. 

Self taught, Sebastian focuses on expressing emotions through his work and aspires to demand a visceral response from the viewer. He is constantly trying to tap into honest feelings in each piece he does, and requires that this be present in his work. 

Sebastian is honored to be showing his work at FrameStore in Culver City.

 

Visit with the artist March 19th, 7pm to 9pm 

 

www.sebastiank.net 

 

 

 

 

 

SoCal Art Happenings -

 

Santa Monica

Museum of Art:

 Al Taylor Pet Stains
 

Al Taylor:
Wire Instruments and Pet Stains

 

January 21, 2011 - April 16, 2011

 

About

 

Al Taylor: Wire Instruments and Pet Stains is the first American survey of work by this important and prolific artist. The exhibition features two major series in Taylor's vast oeuvre: Wire Instruments (1989-1990) and Pet Stains (1989-1992). These distinctive bodies of work will illustrate the importance of Taylor's process and creative breadth.

 

Taylor was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1948. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and moved to New York in 1970, where he lived and worked until his death at the age of 51 from lung cancer in 1999. Taylor worked for many years as studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg (where he met his future wife Debbie) and was acquainted with such burgeoning luminaries as James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, and Brice Marden. Although these relationships nourished Taylor's abundant talent, his future work was inspired but not defined by these friendships. Out of financial necessity, he scavenged art materials from the street. His connection with the commonplace--which remained unpredictable and deep--resulted in a body of work that is singular, inventive, and eloquent.

 

Taylor began his studio practice as a painter in the seventies and early eighties. By 1985, however, he had developed a unique approach to process that encompassed a synergistic relationship between two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional assemblages. Taylor's goal was to create a new way to experience and envision space; the works from this period helped him refine his investigations of visual perception across several dimensions. "Al felt that his work was research into vision," says Debbie Taylor. "His work is really about looking, but he used everything around him. Seeing something could lead him to making one of these pieces, that could combine with something that he'd read that morning, or with some music playing on the stereo, or with something on TV. Any of those things could inspire him."

 

Taylor made no distinction between his three-dimensional constructions and his drawings. Dismissing the term "sculpture," he preferred to see the 3-D work as "drawing in space." Fashioned from such simple elements as wooden broomsticks, wire, carpentry remnants, and other ephemera, his constructions offer a multitude of distinct points of view. Taylor's drawings, in fact, often inspired the development of his three-dimensional works, which he created as an extension, in order to "see more." Taylor remarked that "[the work] isn't at all about sculptural concerns; it comes from a flatter set of traditions. What I am really after is finding a way to make a group of drawings that you can look around. Like a pool player, I want to have all the angles covered."

 

The drawings and constructions titled Wire Instruments show Taylor experimenting with the simplest variations of geometric form (especially the triangle). These fragile ink, pencil, and gouache drawings and wood and wire constructions have not been the focus of any previous exhibitions or scholarly investigation. Their simplicity and ephemeral beauty provide a poignant glimpse into Taylor's creative production.

 

The body of work called Pet Stains (which includes Pet Stains, Pet Names, Pet Stain Removal Devices, and the Peabody Group) portrays sensuous, abstract imagery of drop-like puddles, formulated with toner, paint, or ink on paper. The constructions in this series are made from wood and Plexiglas that is dribbled and dripped with paint of every viscosity. In this series, Taylor transformed patterns of dog urine on an urban sidewalk into art. The playful ease and subtle humor of these works is apparent: various pee-stains are often tagged with imaginary names of the dogs/artists who made them--Buddy, Norman, Getty, Goya, and Everready or, with a nod to Duchamp, given such titles as Puddle Descending a Staircase, and so on. Again, as in Wire Instruments, permutation and variation on the theme is integral to his process--how many pet names, how many puddles of pee can he transform into nuanced drawings or quirky constructions.

 

Wire Instruments and Pet Stains will include 47 works. Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, will contribute a major essay to accompany the exhibition.

 

Major support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation. Additional support is provided by Susan and Leonard Nimoy and David Zwirner, New York. In kind media support is provided by KCRW 89.9 FM. 

 

 

Copro Nason Gallery:

 Lulliby by TIN
 

"Lowbrow Life" 6 Artist Exhibit

 

February 19, 2011 - March 12, 2011

 

About

 

Lowbrow Life presents 6 Modern Low Brow style painters rendering their best work. 

TIN - Tin's 
earliest influences in childhood were comic books and fantasy cartoons like "Star blazers". Says Tin "I sketched from time to time and did ok in high school art class then I decided to became a fisherman. The dangerous kind like out of the movie "Perfect Storm". I almost died three times and should have lost my drawing hand at least a dozen times. After my last close call with death I decided to become an artist. I didn't look at art as a career though until I was 22". 

Tin began doing commercial work and soon burnt out on it. "I was just going through the motions and creating things that didn't challenge me anymore. One day I was finishing a pin-up girl and I remember saying out loud to myself "If I only had a heart" which reminded me of the Tin Man in "Wizard of Oz". That moment I decided to do more interesting works and call myself Tin. 

His main influences are Steam punk, a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used-usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England-but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.

KEITH WEESNER - Keith Weesner is a painter and illustrator whose work reflects his obsession with car culture, vampy women, cinematic settings and brooding characters. Keith studied automotive design at Art Center in Pasadena, but was pretty much born drawing. He is inspired by golden age illustrators like N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Loomis, and 20th century painters like Sargent and Hopper. His brush inking style sprang from Rex Burnett, Wally Wood, Ed Newton and Robert Williams' Inking styles. His ink designs for hot rod T shirts have become iconic in the hot rod community.

 

Keith worked in animation doing background designs for 13 years mostly at Warner Brothers on Bruce Timm's Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond and Justice League shows. He was also instrumental in the Batman Mask of the Phantasm and Return of the Joker features, as well as the Power Puff Girls feature for Cartoon Network, and Gary Baseman's Teacher's Pet at Disney. The last four years he has been dedicated to at least two solo gallery shows a year at Copro Gallery and Outre gallery in Australia.


LESLIE DITTO - 
As far back as she can remember, Leslie has always been drawn to self expression through visual arts. "As a young girl, growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I was not exposed to any classical surreal artist until I attended Overton High School for the performing and Visual Arts. Before that I was raised around an "old school" Harley Davidson shop that my father and his brother owned.I spent many summers helping my father there at the shop and watching him build Harley motorcycles from the ground up and then painted the gas tanks ( and anything else he could find on the motorcycle) with fantasy images that were inspired by such artist as Franzetta and Boris Valleo. I then became fascinated with the beautiful, powerful and sexy women that these artist created."

 I was accepted into Otis Parsons in Los Angeles. After only two month of training my father had become terminally ill and I was forced to return home to Memphis. I was never able to return to school but could not deny the artist in me the opportunity for expression just because I had never been formally trained.
           
Over the years I researched techniques of the "Old Masters" such as Leonardo DA Vinci, Rubens, Raphael, and Rembrandt .I fell in love with the technique of glazing transparent oil color over a neutral colored under painting. With strong influences from fantasy artist, surreal artist, and the "Old Masters", I create disturbingly beautiful oil paintings that interpret to the viewer my deep emotions that are conceived from my views of current social, political, and religious dynamics. My ideas come to me in an organic fashion. Starting with a seed of a simple idea and growing into many complex symbols and images. My main goal is to capture my audience and bring them to my emotional state in the hopes that my test for an echo will be a success.

BOB DOUCETTE - CLICK FOR BIO

P-JAY FIDLER - P-Jay Fidlers 
art is a non linear narrative unfolding onto canvas. The viewer is as important to the story as the painting itself. Because his audience brings with them a major part of the story, the results are often surreal, ambiguous, and yet very much familiar. His work reflects a mixture of adolescent archetypes with dark psychological aspects of the human condition. These images, 
juxtaposed against a silent landscapes, combine to create a piece of art work that is truly awe inspiring and thought provoking, while leaving the audience with more insight and questions about
the work as well as themselves.

Studying illustration at Art Center College of Design, Fidler learned to tell stories effectively through imagery. Raised in a small farm community in central California, he was very influenced by his 
childhood surroundings. With animal imagery, landscapes, religious iconography, combined with his love of Flemish paintings, vintage children's books and contemporary graphic design, he creates a non-linear storyline of Life, Love, Sex and Death that is disturbing yet beautiful.

Fidler lives and works in Los Angeles and his work can be seen in galleries and national publications

CHRYSTAL CHAN - Chrystal Y Chan was born in November 1984 and raised in the Bay Area, California. Being fascinated by the spiritual world since the age of seventeen, most of her works present subjects in metaphorical situations that are derived from visions, supernatural experiences, and beings. Other works are reflective of feelings and situations placed in the everyday life. Each piece states facts of the physical or the supernatural. 
 

 

LACMA:

 Larry Fink Hollywood
 

Larry Fink: Hollywood, 2000-2009

 

February 13, 2011 - April 3, 2011

 

About

 

From blue collar to black tie, Larry Fink has photographed gatherings of every sort during his 40-year career. Keenly attuned to the emotional vibrations that animate social events, he deploys basic capacities of photography-framing, flash, depth of field-to show us gestures, textures, and fleeting expressions we would otherwise miss.

Fink is, among other things, a society photographer, but he doesn't flatter the elite. From 2000 to 2009, Fink documented Vanity Fair's annual Oscar-night party. The very presence of Fink-who is neither paparazzo nor photojournalist-indicates how the parties, and Hollywood culture, have evolved. Mainstream media coverage gives everyone a glimpse of glamour, but Fink provides a different kind of access. The revelation of Fink's society photographs is not that celebrities are superficial, but that their humanity is profound and complex.

 

All prints are lent by the artist and were made in 2010. Larry Fink thanks Vanity Fair for allowing him to participate in their annual elegant salute to the Academy Awards and the Oscar recipients. This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and was supported in part by a generous grant from The Alix Brotman Foundation of California. Image: © Larry Fink, Natalia Vodianova, 2007.

 

 

 

 

In the Studio -

 

Art Theory 101: 

Elements of Art :  
Form, Shape and Space
  

Form and shape are areas or masses which define objects in space. Form and shape imply space; indeed they cannot exist without space.


There are various ways to categorize form and shape. Form and shape can be thought of as either two dimensional or three dimensional. Two dimensional form has width and height. It can also create the illusion of three dimension objects. Three dimensional shape has depth as well as width and height.

  
Form and shape can also be described as either organic or geometric. Organic forms such as these snow-covered boulders typically are irregular in outline, and often asymmetrical. Organic forms are most often thought of as naturally occurring.

Geometric forms are those which correspond to named regular shapes, such as squares, rectangles, circles, cubes, spheres, cones, and other regular forms. Architecture, such as this example by Frank Lloyd Wright, is usually composed of geometric forms. These forms are most often thought of as constructed or made.

However, not all made objects are geometric; many designed forms have irregular contours. Although this kimono is geometric in its construction, the surface design is organic in form.

Nor are all naturally occurring objects organic; snowflakes and soap bubbles are among many geometric forms found in nature.

There are some other terms commonly used to describe form and shape in composition; these have to do with what kind of representations the forms have. If we can recognize every day objects and environments, we refer to the images as being realistic, or naturalistic. However, if the images are difficult or impossible to identify in terms of our normal, daily visual experience, we may refer to the images as abstract.

There are several kinds of abstract images. Generally, abstractions are "abstracted" or derived from realistic images - perhaps even distorted--, but perhaps in such a way that the source is not immediately apparent. An example of this would be one of Georgia O'keefe's paintings of a detail from a flower. This kind of abstraction in art is sometimes referred to as an objective image -- that is, it is derived from an actual object. On the other hand, some abstract art images are based on a pure study of form, line, and color, and do not refer to any real-world object or scene. such art works are sometimes referred to as non-objective images.


 

Charicature is a special instance of abstraction, in which realistic images are distorted to make a statement about the people, places, or objects portrayed. This is probably the kind of abstraction we are most familiar with, as it is constantly presented to us via all sorts of popular media. However, it is important to remember that had not the more difficult-to-understand conventions of abstraction in the fine arts not broken ground with experiments in distortion, we would not be able to make sense out of some charicature images. A century ago, there was really nothing equivalent to our modern cartoons.


 

Our perception of shape and form are affected by several factors. The position or viewpoint from which we see an object will emphasize or obscure certain features, and therefore affect the impression it makes. As you can see in this series of photographs, all featuring the same wooden artist's mannequin, the character of the space around the object can distract, focus, or alter our impression. A cluttered background tends to diminish the importance of the object, while a plain background draws attention to it.

The character and source of light also changes the perceived character of the object. Lighting in a photographic portrait, for example, can make the subject look older, younger, dramatic, or rather abstract.
   
Two Dimensional Form


 

Two dimensional form is the foundation of pictorial organization or composition in painting, photography, and many other media. It is created in a number of ways.

It can be defined by line, in all the ways described above. Line, either explicit or implied, provides the contour of forms.
Value (the relative lightness or darkness of a color) can also define form. Strong contrasts in value within a composition may define the boundaries of forms. Gradations of value, or shading, can also create the illusion of contour and volume.
 
In the same way, hue contrasts and gradations can also define forms. Form may also be defined by change in texture, even when hue and value remain essentially consistent. However, most typically, form is defined by a combination of these factors.


 

Form in relation to positive and negative space


 

Forms and shapes can be thought of as positive or negative. In a two dimensional composition, the objects constitute the positive forms, while the background is the negative space. For beginning art and design students, effective use of negative space is often an especially important concept to be mastered.


 

Some artists play with the reversal of positive and negative space to create complex illusions. The prints of M. C. Escher often feature interlocking images that play with our perception of what is foreground and what is background. Other artists take these illusions of positive and negative images to even greater lengths, hiding images within images. Perception of form and shape are conditioned by our ingrained "instinct" to impute meaning and order to visual data. When we look at an image and initially form an impression, there is a tendency to latch on to that conclusion about its meaning, and then ignore other possible solutions. This may make it hard to see the other images. Training the eye to keep on looking beyond first impressions is a crucial step in developing true visual literacy.


 

 

  

Copyright © 1995 by Charlotte Jirousek

 

As the warmth finally arrives in southern California and the days again grow longer, we here at FrameStore wish you all a very happy spring, filled with beautiful days and lots of lovely art!

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 new EcoCare gives you, our customer, and us a choice we can feel good about making.

 

 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.


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