Natala la la la ... ... ...

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Monday, October 11, 2004

open studio 

i'm back in california for 10 days and the sunshine is wonderful.



Credit: Sidnea Damico

One of the highlights of a weekend spent in san francisco was traipsing around the Mission area with my friend Minnie and her mom. We shopped for shoes and visited open studios participating in the SF Open Studio weekend. It's always interesting to see the work of new emerging artists.

There were two artists that i really enjoyed -- Sidnea Damico (the artist of the painting above) and Rebecca Overmann. The work from Damica was exciting. She's a mixed-media painter who does some work with acrylics, collage and resin. The work that i really loved was a series of 5x5's titled Whimsey -- and that they were. They had a slight circus feel to them (cirque de soleil...) with flying figures and such. the beauty was really in the color and vibrancy of her pieces. She's working on a new series using the tops of plastic boxes that is also really interesting...i'll be curious to see how her work develops over time. I bought a necklace from rebecca - very simple but it updates the silver necklace i've been wearing for the last year while keeping me on my simple jewelry theme....

One thing that i did note is the importance of framing. I remember learning, when i studied art in Paris, that impressionist painters actually preferred simple frames or not to frame their work -- but that the Musee d'Orsay actually chose to frame their artwork in these huge overdone gilded frames - against the artist's wishes. Up until that point I had always believed that that was just the way you framed great art... but it isn't so. In actuallity the frame is an extension of the piece itself and bad framing or overzealous framing can be a distraction. Often times reproductions of the artists work will miss the importance of the framing. Which is why it is always so wonderful to see the actual art piece -- i remember the joy when i first saw Seurat's "Le Cirque" and found that the painting actually extended onto the frame itself. It added an element of rawness to the work that i really enjoyed. This weekend, there was a piece that we saw that was just a delight - but it was framed *horribly* - a frame that to me seemed to limit the possiblity of the painting itself. Although i loved the peice, the fact that it was so poorly framed by the artist herself made me wonder about the potential for the piece and the artist...

¤ posted by Natala : 10/11/2004 07:24:00 PM


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