Tasty Sausages for Breakfast!

No, this isn't a post on the wrong blog; for your dining pleasure today, I'll be serving up a variety of hot links to recognize the folks that have made our February and March busier than normal!

March is always a decent month for us, because the second full week of March is always Art Week in Great Falls.  Art Week is anchored by the events hosted by the C.M. Russell Museum, the cornerstone of Western Art and Montana history in Great Falls.  For decades, the Museum has hosted an art auction and sale, taking over the Best Western Heritage Inn Hotel, where artists exhibit their work in individual guest rooms.  The event at the Heritage was in jeopardy a few years ago, when the art world was at a low because of the Great Recession, and was at risk of ceasing to exist.  Fortunately, last year it was taken over and renamed the Western Masters Art Show and Sale, with management undertaken by Steve Cawdrey and Pat Hagan, husbands of Montana artists Nancy Dunlop Cawdrey and Carol Hagan, respectively.  Last year's event was widely regarded as the best ever, exceptionally well run and well attended, and this year's event should be even better.  The public is welcome, and this is unquestionably the best venue for Western art in the U.S.  Kudos to Pat and Steve for carrying the ball over the proverbial goal line!

The Western Masters Art Show and Sale:
http://www.westernmastersartshow.com/

The C.M. Russell Museum:
http://www.cmrussell.org/

So, March is always a decent month for the winter because Nancy Cawdrey has a LOT of framing done to take to the show!  Nancy always stretches herself to try new and different things for this event, and this year is no different.  She has done some spectacular paintings of a pickup truck named Oliver, and another of a tractor - these are new and different for her, and I don't think she's ever shown a vehicle before.  Here's "Oliver Gets Gassed" - the tow truck on silk:

It's a very cool painting, but it's not my favorite of the show.  My favorite painting is actually one of Nancy's iconic tipi images, and I must confess that while it's a stunning painting in its own right, it is my favorite because of the framing.  Since Nancy pushes herself to paint new things, we strive to create newer and better framing packages to present her work.  A few years back we developed a new way of stacking frames that we'd never seen before, conceived by Christine and refined through various versions and experimentation on my part.  This deserves a blog post all to itself, and I was actually slated to teach this technique to other framers at the West Coast Art and Frame Show in Las Vegas back in January, but the scheduling didn't work out.  I'll expound upon it later in detail, but suffice it to say this is a complex process that involves modifying the shape of some of the mouldings, adding structural components from other lumber, and a healthy dose of Christine's insisting that, "Yes, it can be done, you just have to figure out how."  The finished product is perfect in that it looks like one complex frame, rather than three frames stacked together.  It's tough to explain, but I promise to revisit that at some point...

This piece, "Night of the Horse" is just over 6' x 4' framed, and the construction took nearly six hours, a huge amount of time for a single painting.  Of course, it took Nancy much longer to paint it!  The picture simply doesn't do it justice:

Next up is another tasty link, to our friend and emerging artist Kenneth Yarus, exhibiting at the Western Masters for the first time this year.  Ken is the youngest artist ever to have been juried into the live auction, and his paintings and drawings are incredible.  From ballerinas to Western portraits to classical landscapes, Ken's composition and brushwork are decades beyond his tender young age, which I think is about 22...  Rather than post one or two photos, I'll simply send you to his website:

http://www.kennethyarusfineart.com/

Christine, once again, created a unique look for Ken's paintings, giving them all a cohesive look by using the same moulding on each one, done in a variety of sizes and colors.  The frames are rustic pine with rusted tin corner ornamentation, many with an overwash of color.  They were done by our friend Doug Cox just outside of Bozeman; Doug's Facebook page catalogs his work nicely.  Thanks for the great work, Doug!  We will post photos of Ken's completed display in Great Falls in a later post, but here's the link to Doug for now:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frames-By-Doug-Cox/188551747825608

And there you have it - tasty art links to enjoy with your morning coffee.  Cheers!

Tabby Ivy in the Whitefish Art Walk

Wow - that's a terrible picture!  What's it even doing in our blog?  Well, that's a shot of the display window at the Bozeman Watch Company's Whitefish showroom, located at the corner of Central and 2nd Avenues, smack in the heart of downtown Whitefish.  And, if you strain your eyes and look closely, you can just make out two paintings on easels in that window.  Go ahead, work at it a bit - we'll wait...

Here's the story: for 25 years now, Whitefish has done an Art Walk in conjunction with the Winter Carnival, stemming from the days when the town didn't have many art galleries and there were few venues to see the creative talents of local artists.  Artists are allotted space in the display windows of businesses downtown, and the result is three blocks of self-guided art tour, visible in all hours of the day and night.  The Whitefish Winter Carnival was just ranked by National Geographic Traveler magazine as one of the top ten winter carnivals in the world, and it's a really big deal, lasting two weeks and packing the town.  Needless to say, the exposure for artists, particularly those not represented in Whitefish galleries, is really quite exceptional.

As you may know from previous blog posts, we have somewhat of a strategic alliance with the Bozeman Watch Company; Derek is a bit of a watch geek, and at the behest of our friend John Lang, we started with a small display case of the limited edition timepieces here in Bigfork back in June of 2011.  In October, Derek started actually working for BWC, spending a few hours each week in their Whitefish showroom, helping with sales, but also handling systems integration, advertising and some graphic design tasks.  When BWC was approached to host an artist this year, it only seemed natural that we ask to be allowed to choose one from Frame of Reference!

So, we chose Tabby Ivy, one of our (rapidly) emerging artists, whose work we've shown for about two years now.  Tabby is a Bigfork resident who was a serious black-and-white photographer prior to picking up a paintbrush - her ability to see in monochrome allows her to create stunning ethereal landscapes in a very limited color palette.  Tabby's paintings have sold exceptionally well this past year, so she was the natural choice for the Art Walk; our goal is to gain her some additional exposure in the hopes of earning her some additional gallery representation out of the area.  Tabby created four new pieces specifically for this event, and since you can't see them in that rotten photo above, I'm putting them below.  And, I'll get a photo of the windows at night posted here in the next several days, because the one above doesn't do the pieces justice.

"Touching the Clouds"

"In A Quiet Moment"

"Napa Afternoon"

"Interlude"



It's a Brand New Day

It's also a brand new year, and things have been crazy around here.  The pre-Christmas rush was insane -- we were finishing up last minute pieces right up until we closed on Christmas Eve.  The week after Christmas was a fairly relaxing week, with Derek on vacation and Christine and Roxie working part-time.  Then January hit.

Whoa.

We are up to our eyeballs in work.  Apparently everyone is redecorating their homes this year, and they are all getting an early start.  Here is a sneak peek at one project that came in today.

This is going to be wicked cool.  Everything we have ever framed for Shelley has been wicked cool, and we hope to take some pictures in her house this spring for a future blog post.  In the meantime, back to work.  There is a lot to do!

Trophy Home

A big trend here in Montana is to decorate your home with trophies - not attractive younger spouses, but dead animals that have been preserved by a taxidermist and mounted on a wall.  There was actually a picture framer/taxidermist in Montana at one point - I envision the customer consultation going something like this:  "Wow, that's a really lovely painting!  Here, let me move this carcass off the design table."  But hey, I digress...

Not every frame has to be for a picture, and not every trophy is a real animal.  Case in point - what better way to dress up a big stone fireplace than with a cardboard rhinoceros in a blingy silver frame?  This little project we did in early November was put together for someone with her tongue thoroughly in cheek!  Word has it that the purple scarf has given way to a red one and some lights are adorning the frame for the holidays.

All kidding aside, empty frames are a great design element!  From flea market finds to the pink glitter moulding you've always wanted to use, why not just pick a frame and hang it up sans artwork?  Food for thought...

Holiday Art Walk

We re-hung the gallery for the holiday art walk and somehow managed to squeeze about 118 pieces in the gallery.  This is probably a record.  In fact, we ran out of hooks for our hanging system.  Most of the Christmas decorations still need to go up, but here is a photo montage of how we look today.

It's all fun and games....

Time flies, eh?  Lots of crazy things have been happening here at Frame of Reference since our last blog post, and I promise we will document every last one of them (maybe) here in the coming days.  First, a quick one.  Here is a fun framing package we put together for a client's mom.  The client asked for something "wild and crazy" and this is what she is getting:

This is wicked in real life, and uses one of my favorite mouldings.  We blew through about eight or nine matboards getting the cut right, and broke three blades on our mat cutter, but the end result was totally worth it!

Reception and Festival Recap

Wow - what a crazy week last week turned out to be.  The Artists' Reception for Tabby, Jeanette and Lisa was insane - the gallery was packed from just before 5p until almost 9p, nearly an hour after we normally shut things down.  We sold three paintings the night of the event, something that's always a pleasant surprise - people usually look during the opening, then purchase later.  Friday night saw the three of us (Roxie, too) exhausted and ready for a break, but no such luck, as Christine had a booth in the Festival of the Arts this year. Back at 6a to finish framing her last few pieces, then out on the street at 7:30 to help with setup.  Christine had a good show - she sold a handful of paintings and took a couple of commissions, and she had a great time.  The gallery was quite busy, and the new layout on the street was fantastic.  I'll write a more extensive post with more photos in a couple of days, but now I have to return to framing; we're behind on the work, and frantically trying to catch up.