Summer in Full Swing! August Newsletter

Greetings!

Summer in Southern California is finally in full swing; school is out, the kids are home, families are planning vacations and art and fun and color abound!

Regardless of which new memories your family is making right now, they are all precious. Preserve and display them with care and great design by using the most trusted experts in the LA Metro area.

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!

Comic-Con 2010 Preserve Your Collectibles

Did you attend this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego? What are you waiting for then? Bring that signed lithograph, that special sketch and all the rest of your memorabilia, mementos and collectibles in to your local FrameStore and preserve and protect them while also getting SoCal's best designs.

Your memories and art deserve nothing less than the best, so don't trust anyone to frame or shadowbox your Comic-Con treasures except the experts! With over 35 years of museum-quality experience, we are the place to go for art people in the know.

SoCal Art Happenings -

LA Louver:

Tony Berlant July 7 - August 28, 2010 About

L.A. Louver is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by the Los Angeles-based artist, Tony Berlant.

In this new series, Berlant uses a broad spectrum of materials to create complex, richly colored works inspired by the vineyards and gardens of Château La Coste, located outside Aix-en-Provence, France.

My new work is about pacing and focused selection, both visually and psychologically.

- Tony Berlant

In Fall 2009, Berlant visited Château La Coste to assist in siting three large-scale architectural sculptures that he created in the mid-1960s, and which will be permanently exhibited in individual glass structures designed by Frank O. Gehry. The sculptures will be part of an open-air installation on the château's grounds, and joined by sculpture from internationally renowned artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra and James Turrell. The sculpture installation is just one element of an expansive new development project that includes an art center and music pavilion, and is overseen by architect Tadao Ando, with new buildings by Sir Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, in addition to Gehry.

Berlant did not visit Provence with the intention of creating work based on the landscape. However, he has held a long fascination for this area, where Neanderthals once lived, and which was the home and source of inspiration of Paul Cézanne. Following a visit to Cézanne's studio, Berlant and his wife, Helen Mendez Berlant, spent several hours exploring the vineyards and forest surrounding the château. During this time, they shot many photographs that Berlant hoped would assist in determining, with Gehry, a site for his sculptures. It was only after his return to Los Angeles that Berlant fully understood the richness of the photographic material, and its potential to help him convey worlds that existed beyond outward appearances.

In the course of developing this new series, Berlant also chose to evolve his technique: combining altered photographs, which he prints onto wood panel, with metal collage and painting. Berlant has used photography since the early 1960s, and has employed it in several ways: either as dominant printed imagery (such as in the series of works created in the early 1990s, including New York, No, 89, 1992 and L.A.X. No. 59, 1992), or in the manner of a drawing, to provide a framework over which he applies tin. In these new works, Berlant gives increased attention to his original photography and its manipulation. Recent printing techniques have also allowed him to apply the photographic images directly onto sanded and gessoed to cover with found and fabricated tin that itself bears preexisting images. Attached to the surface with steel brads, the metal collage has the effect of either bringing background passages. Berlant paints the sides of the panel to mirror the landscape image, and its effect is to extend the picture plane. He also creates this Rorschach effect within the "body" of the work, which serves to free the viewer's mind to conjure deep-seated imagery. In concert, these materials generate dimension and drama: the panels become three-dimensional, both visually and physically, and all elements merge into one animated vision. Out of the landscapes Berlant conjures psychological territories, which he has described as "mindscapes." As such, Berlant acknowledges landscape as a metaphor for the unconscious, and with that, follows in the tradition of artists such as Courbet and Monet, as well as Cézanne.

Tony Berlant was born in New York in 1941, and moved to Los Angeles when he was a young boy. He remained in Los Angeles to study at the University of California Los Angeles, where he earned both a MA and MFA, and went on to teach in the university's art department. In 1964, LACMA awarded Berlant the New Talent Purchase Grant. From this time onwards, he has exhibited widely throughout the United States.

The Getty:

Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties

June 29 - Novemver 14, 2010 About

In the decades following World War II, an independently minded and critically engaged form of photography began to gather momentum. Its practitioners have combined their skills as artists and reporters, creating extended photographic essays that delve deeply into topics of social concern and present distinct personal visions of the world. Engaged Observers looks in depth at projects by a selection of the most vital photographers who have contributed to the development of this approach. Passionately committed to their subjects, they have authored evocative bodies of work that are often published extensively as books and transcend the realm of traditional photojournalism.

Vietnam, Philip Jones Griffiths, 1967 © The Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation / Magnum Photos

Philip Jones Griffiths

Philip Jones Griffiths described the scene he photographed in this image: "Limits of friendship. A Marine introduces a peasant girl to king-sized filter-tips. Of all the U.S. forces in Vietnam, it was the Marines that approached 'Civic Action' with gusto. From their barrage of handouts, one discovers that, in the month of January 1967 alone, they gave away to the Vietnamese 101,535 pounds of food, 4,810 pounds of soap, 14,662 books and magazines, 106 pounds of candy, 1,215 toys, and 1 midwifery kit. In the same month they gave the Vietnamese 530 free haircuts." Vietnam Inc., Philip Jones Griffiths' 1971 critical account of America's armed intervention in Southeast Asia, is one of the most detailed photographic stories of a war published by a single photographer. The project's exploration of the war's failures and its focus on civilians made it a particularly engaging and ambitious work of advocacy journalism.

Griffiths put the conflict in the context of Vietnam's history and culture, showing how Capitalist values that America promoted in its efforts to contain the spread of Communism were out of sync with Vietnam's communal and agrarian way of life.

New Orleans, Leonard Freed, 1965 © Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos

Leonard Freed

While in Germany in 1962, Leonard Freed saw a black American soldier guarding the divide between East and West as the Berlin Wall was being erected. He was haunted by the idea of a man standing in defense of a country in which his own rights were in question. The experience ignited Freed's interest in the American civil rights movement. In June 1963 he embarked on a multiyear documentary project, published in about 1968 as Black in White America, which would become the signature work of his career. The series is a visual diary with a moralizing purpose. Freed quickly found that his interests lay in exploring the diverse, everyday lives of a community that had been marginalized for so long. Penetrating the fabric of daily existence, his work portrays the common humanity of a people persevering in unjust circumstances. This empathetic approach sought not to stimulate outrage but to foster understanding and bridge cultural divides as a way of transcending racial antipathy.

Industrial Waste from the Chisso Chemical Company, W. Eugene Smith, 1972 Collection of H. Christopher Luce. Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery. Minamata photographs by W. Eugene Smith & Aileen M. Smith - © Aileen Smith

W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith

In 1971 W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith were told of a controversy over industrial pollution in the Japanese fishing village of Minamata. Beginning in the 1950s, thousands of people were severely affected by mercury poisoning, brought about by eating fish contaminated with chemical waste dumped in the bay by the Chisso Corporation. The ailment, which became known as Minamata Disease, caused irreversible brain damage, paralysis, and convulsions.

The couple set out to document the progress of a lawsuit against the company, recording the course of the trial through the court's ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in 1973. Their essay relates the importance of the sea and fishing to the town's culture, reports on the company's drainage pipes into the sea, chronicles lives transformed by the disease, and depicts the demonstrations that took place in opposition to Chisso. The work resulted in numerous magazine publications, exhibitions, and a book, Minamata, published in 1975. The project gained traction within the political atmosphere of the 1970s, when the environmental movement was taking off.

First day of popular insurrection, August 26, 1978, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, Susan Meiselas, negative, August 26, 1978; print, 1980s © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

Susan Meiselas

In 1978 Susan Meiselas traveled to Nicaragua where she witnessed the eruption of a full-scale revolution against the country's repressive, hard-line government. Meiselas was taken by the bravery of those willing to risk their lives against the dictatorship for the promise of a better future. The record of her movements around the country formed a narrative about the insurrection's progress. Meiselas made a decision-at the time, unusual in serious war reportage-to record the revolution on color film, because it seemed appropriate for capturing the vibrancy and optimism of the resistance.

The pictures were picked up by newspapers and magazines around the world, giving individual images a public life, but without Meiselas's control with regard to captioning, and fragmented from her larger body of pictures. In her book, published in 1981 as Nicaragua, June 1978-July 1979, Meiselas reasserted the narrative of the revolution as she experienced it and gave greater permanence and coherence to her documentary endeavor.

"Rat" and Mike with a Gun, Seattle, Mary Ellen Mark, 1983 © Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark has reported on the state of our social environment for more than four decades. In 1983 she traveled to Seattle to do an article for Life magazine on runaway children. She built trust with the community of runaways living in the downtown area, and created pictures that show teenagers who survived on tough streets through petty crime, prostitution, foraging in dumpsters, and panhandling. Mark's compositions are striking and uncomfortable, emphasizing her subjects' youth while capturing them engaged in activities beyond their years.

After publishing the article in Life, Mark continued to develop the story as both a documentary film and still photography book with her husband, filmmaker Martin Bell, and reporter Cheryl McCall. The Streetwise project gave individuality and visibility to the problem of runaway children and called for greater social and political commitment to addressing America's epidemic of broken families.

Danielle, 13, gets measured as Michelle, 13, waits for the final weigh in on the last day of weight loss camp, Catskills, New York. From the series Girl Culture. Lauren Greenfield, negative, 2001; print, 2002 © Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE

Lauren Greenfield

Photographer and documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield has built her reputation as a chronicler of mainstream American culture. In 2002 she published Girl Culture, a photographic project that delves into the ways consumer society affects the lives of women in America. Of central concern to Greenfield was the exhibitionist tendencies of contemporary American femininity.

Visiting girls of all ages at home, in doctors' offices, and out with friends, Greenfield examined personal issues of public consequence, providing an intense and intimate exploration of girls' relationships to their bodies and the effects of popular culture on self-image. Many of her pictures and accompanying interviews focus on what she calls "body projects," the daily grooming rituals undertaken to express identity through appearance. Others look at the social and consumerist influences from which these young women take their cues, and the difficulty of living up to such expectations.

La Batea Colony, Zacatecas, Mexico, Larry Towell, negative, 1994; print, 1999 © Larry Towell / Magnum Photos

Larry Towell

In 1989 Larry Towell came into contact with members of a Mennonite community (a Protestant sect related to the Amish) near his home in Canada. The Mennonites Towell befriended had migrated to Canada from Mexico in search of seasonal work. Due to shrinking water tables in Mexico, the effects of international trade, and a rising population in the colonies, many Mennonites have found themselves landless and economically marginalized, forced to compromise their beliefs in order to survive. Towell eventually joined them in their treks back to Mexico for the winter and spent 10 years photographing their activities. He had unique access to capture their struggle to preserve a lifestyle incongruent with the world they depend upon.

Towell's work documented the Mennonites' way of life for the historical record and inspires greater understanding for a group who could be easily overlooked. In spending a decade on a subject of only passing interest to mainstream media, he asserts a form of visual reporting in which reflection takes precedence over profitability and immediacy.

Church Gate Station, Western Railroad Line, Bombay, India, Sebastião Salgado, negative, 1995; print, 2009© Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado

Trained in economics before taking up photography, Sebastião Salgado has used his camera to raise awareness of the world's economic disparities and provoke discussion about the state of our international social environment. Between 1994 and 1999 Salgado pursued an enormous project to document migrant populations around the world. Published in 2000 as Migrations: Humanity in Transition, this epic work documents people across 43 countries who have been uprooted by globalization, persecution, or war.

Salgado's work is marked by an aesthetic grace that endows his subjects with dignity even as it communicates the discomfort of their circumstances. His photographs are constructed with careful attention to dramatic lighting, elegant contours, and striking visual impact.

Ultimately, Salgado sees himself as a storyteller and a communicator, a bridge between the fortunate and the unfortunate, the developed and the undeveloped, the stable and the uprooted.

The Sacrifice (detail), James Nachtwey, negatives, 2006-7; print, 2010 Courtesy of and © James Nachtwey James Nachtwey

James Nachtwey has dedicated himself to delivering an antiwar message by documenting those around the world affected by conflict. In 2006 he traveled with emergency medical units in Iraq for a photo essay, The Sacrifice, that depicts helicopter transfers from battle sites to treatment centers, emergency rooms where lives hang in the balance, and the difficult process of recovery.

In anticipation of exhibiting the series, Nachtwey created a monumental installation print of 60 individual trauma-center images, tightly framed and digitally collaged into a grid. The object's sheer size-in which one picture gives way to the next in a seemingly endless stream of torn flesh, metal instruments, snaking tubes, and bloodied hands-conveys a sense of the controlled chaos that permeates these medical centers as well as the overwhelming volume of casualties flowing through the medics' hands on a daily basis.

Nachtwey's intentionally unsettling work demands that we reconcile the goals and achievements of armed conflict with its human costs, that we be prepared to acknowledge in particular visual terms the sacrifice it entails and the valiant work of those who do their best to mend its path of destruction.

MOCA:

Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever

July 18 - October 17, 2010 About

Any Ever is the American premiere of the artist Ryan Trecartin's (b. 1981, Webster, Tex.) 2007-10 body of work, produced in Miami with collaborator Lizzie Fitch and contributors ranging from friends and artists to working child actors. The entire exhibition space will be devoted to the non-sequential series of seven movies, which are structurally conceived as a diptych consisting of a trilogy, Trill-ogy Comp (2009), and a quartet, Re'Search Wait'S (2009-10). The movies are interconnected spatially via networked viewing rooms and an ambient soundscape, and materially by characters, semblances of plot, and formal, recurring motifs. Having emerged from the 2000s as an innovator of ecstatic new frontiers in art and cinema, the influence of Trecartin's practice has grown within the art world and among a broader, intergenerational set of thinkers and cultural consumers. Consistent with his work to date, this latest series mines emergent evolutions of identity, narrative, language, and visual culture for content and propels these matters forward as expressive mediums, through darkly jubilant and categorically frenetic formal experimentations. Any Ever at MOCA is the exhibition's first American presentation on an international tour that began at The Power Plant in Toronto, Canada (March 2010). It will continue to the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL, (2011) before traveling to further international venues. In 2011, Trecartin will also be the subject of solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, and the Musee d'Art modern de la Ville de Paris, France. Forthcoming print and digital catalogues will be the first publications uniquely dedicated to Trecartin's work and will reflect the entirety of his practice to date.

Any Ever is made possible by endowment support from The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists. In-kind support is provided by Dwell. Generous support for MOCA Pacific Design Center is provided by Charles S. Cohen.

In the Studio -

Art Theory 101:

Elements of Art : Principles of Design

Composition

An orderly arrangement of elements using the principles of design. The principles of design help you to carefully plan and organize the elements of art so that you will hold interest and command attention. This is sometimes referred to as visual impact.

In any work of art there is a thought process for the arrangement and use of the elements of design. The artist who works with the principles of good composition will create a more interesting piece of art it will be arranged to show a pleasing rhythm and movement. The center of interest will be strong and the viewers will not look away, instead, they will be drawn into the work. A good knowledge of composition is essential in producing good artwork. Some artists today like to bend or ignore these rules and therefore are experimenting with different forms of expression. We think that composition is very important. The following will assist you in understanding the basics of a good composition:

Elements Of Design

Line - is a mark on a surface that describes a shape or outline. It can create texture and can be thick and thin. Types of line can include actual, implied, vertical, horizontal, diagonal and contour lines. (note: Ken does not list "psychic line" - that was "new term" to me)

Color - refers to specific hues and has 3 properties, Chroma, Intensity and Value. The color wheel is a way of showing the chromatic scale in a circle using all the colors made with the primary triad. Complimentary pairs can produce dull and neutral color. Black and white can be added to produce tints (add white), shades (add black) and tones (add gray).

Texture - is about surface quality either tactile or visual. Texture can be real or implied by different uses of media. It is the degree of roughness or smoothness in objects.

Shape - is a 2-dimensional line with no form or thickness. Shapes are flat and can be grouped into two categories, geometric and organic.

Form - is a 3-dimensional object having volume and thickness. It is the illusion of a 3-D effect that can be implied with the use of light and shading techniques. Form can be viewed from many angles.

Value - is the degree of light and dark in a design. It is the contrast between black and white and all the tones in between. Value can be used with color as well as black and white. Contrast is the extreme changes between values.

Size - refers to variations in the proportions of objects, lines or shapes. There is a variation of sizes in objects either real or imagined. (some sources list Proportion/Scale as a Principle of Design)

These elements are used to create the Principles of Design. Principles are the results of using the Elements. When you are working in a particular format (size and shape of the work surface) the principles are used to create interest, harmony and unity to the elements that you are using. You can use the Principles of design to check your composition to see if it has good structure.

Elements of Compositional Design

The principles of design are the recipe for a good work of art. The principles combine the elements to create an aesthetic placement of things that will produce a good design.

Center of interest - is an area that first attracts attention in a composition. This area is more important when compared to the other objects or elements in a composition. This can be by contrast of values, more colors, and placement in the format.

Balance - is a feeling of visual equality in shape, form, value, color, etc. Balance can be symmetrical or evenly balanced or asymmetrical and un-evenly balanced. Objects, values, colors, textures, shapes, forms, etc., can be used in creating a balance in a composition.

Harmony - brings together a composition with similar units. If your composition was using wavy lines and organic shapes you would stay with those types of lines and not put in just one geometric shape. (Notice how similar Harmony is to Unity - some sources list both terms)

Contrast - offers some change in value creating a visual discord in a composition. Contrast shows the difference between shapes and can be used as a background to bring objects out and forward in a design. It can also be used to create an area of emphasis.

Directional Movement - is a visual flow through the composition. It can be the suggestion of motion in a design as you move from object to object by way of placement and position. Directional movement can be created with a value pattern. It is with the placement of dark and light areas that you can move your attention through the format.

Rhythm - is a movement in which some elements recurs regularly. Like a dance it will have a flow of objects that will seem to be like the beat of music.

The Principles of design are the results of your working with the elements of art. Use them in every piece of art you do and you will be happy with the results.

Copyright @ Ken Schwab

Wishing you all a happy, wonderful California summer, full of memories, art, color and fun!

Sincerely,

Chuck Mitchell FrameStore