How To Frame Art

American art exhibition at SAM is 'O Beautiful'

With the Fourth of July right around the corner, perhaps you're feeling philosophical about what it means to be American or maybe you're downright patriotic. Sure, you could wave a flag or reread the Declaration of Independence, but with Seattle Art Museum's terrific new exhibition "Beauty and Bounty: American Art in an Age of Exploration," you can contemplate American-ness by looking at sublime paintings and photographs of the countryside.

A landscape, after all, is a view of the land and these 19th-century artists were almost obsessed with how they could craft views of the American wilderness, framing its pristine potential and heaven-touched glory. In this show, you can immerse yourself in calm waters, sweeping valleys and ancient forests, gleaning concepts that range from proud individualism to sweet nostalgia for pastoral simplicity. The big guys are all represented here, with handsome paintings from Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Church, Thomas Cole, Thomas Moran and Winslow Homer, and stunning photographs by William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan and Carleton Watkins.

Patricia Junker, SAM's curator of American art and the creative force behind this exhibition, points out that these works of art reveal 19th-century attitudes and events through what is included within the frame and through omission. You will see stunning views that proclaimed the necessity for preservation (or at least conservation). You won't see much evidence of industrialization, class or racial strife, or the ravages of the civil war.

The obsession with how the American landscape could touch the minds and emotions of viewers led some artists, on occasion, to make things up. One of the museum's most popular paintings is "Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast," a large (almost 7 feet long), dramatic oil painting by the Prussian-born Bierstadt, who regularly traversed the line between fact and fiction. Unlike many of the popular landscape painters of the time, Bierstadt had indeed visited the West Coast, traveling along parts of the Columbia River and up the coast to Vancouver Island, but Bierstadt never actually went deeper into the Washington Territory to visit Puget Sound.

This has created a kind of one-liner interpretation of the grand painting, allowing some viewers (then and now) to dismiss the work as a fantasized vision by a master showman. There is truth to this, but Junker says that the entire exhibition was born out of her desire to more fully understand Bierstadt's unusual choice of subject matter. She wanted to "stop thinking about fantasy and start thinking about narrative and historical elements." In the exhibition and in the smart, focused catalog, the curator establishes the historical foundations for Bierstadt's approach and includes source material like the Northwest Coast Native American basket and model boats that may have been directly depicted in the painting.

How to frame art on the cheap, part 2 « School Daze

My f irst big framing project involved vintage postcards and photographs and I was pretty  darn proud of the sources I discovered and of how cheaply I got everything framed.

But for my paint by numbers gallery , I wanted to go even cheaper. As in, free.

And guess what? It’s not actually that hard to make your own picture frames.

You will need a power saw that can cut a good 45 degree angle – a chop saw is easiest.

You’ll also need something to cut (whatever you want to make your frame out of), wood glue, and eye hooks (in a pinch small brads will do) and wire for hanging.

For the cockatoos, I used old frames I had kicking around and just cut them down.

Now, I know this kind of thing is not for everyone – if you’re a design sophisticate who wants everything to be perfect, you should probably stop reading now. But if you like what you see, or the idea of what you see, and want to try it yourself, here’s what you do.

Measure your picture. From each measurement (length and width) subtract a half inch. That is the INSIDE measurement of your frame – the short side. (The long side doesn’t matter – it will happen naturally when you cut the 45 degree angle.)

Measure your framing material short to short and cut. For each frame, you’ll have two long sides and two short sides, with 45 degree angles at all the ends.

If you want to add a coat or two of clear polyurethane, now’s the time. I did on the wine stickers and the sticks, but not on the trellises, which were already kind of a cool silvered color. Put the frame over your picture and attach the picture to the frame from the back using little wire nails (bent to hold the picture in) or flat thumbtacks, attach the picture wire, and hang.

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