The Gallery Date: Episode 6 - Getting My Nerd On with Top Framing Tips + Nefertiti's NFTs?
Welcome to The Gallery Date, a weekly date with Jenn Singer to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life, all in bite sized, not-at-all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets!
Jenn's back from Covid and better than ever! On this week's Gallery Date, Jenn gets her nerd on with:
Possible book club? Floating the idea...Anyone? Bueller?
Top Artwork Framing Tips
A Crazy Art World News covering everything from Crypto news to the big Nefertiti cliffhanger
PLUS, the cutest special guest ever makes a brief appearance.
Be sure to catch the video podcast to see the framing examples Jenn mentioned on TheGalleryDate.com
Links to everything mentioned:
Book: Reductionism in Art and Brain Science
Artists mentioned:
Mandy Coppes-Martin
@rebordacao
Anne Austin Pearce
Crazy Art World News:
Brad Pitt Museum Show
ETH Merge News
Nefertiti's Tomb (TBD)
Enjoy the show? Please like, subscribe & share!
You can email your questions for Jenn to gallerydate@jennsingergallery.com.
Instagram/Facebook: @jennsingergallery
YouTube: The Gallery Date
Twitter: @jennsingernyc
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to The Gallery Date. I'm Jenn Singer founder of Jenn Singer Gallery. Thanks for joining me for our weekly date to chat about art and life and perhaps the art of life all in bite-sized not at all fancy, but definitely savory episode nuggets. Let's mingle my friends.
Don't forget to press record, Jenn.
Well, hey there. Thanks so much for joining me today for our Gallery Date.
So it's been a minute because Covid was a b**** to be honest, but I'm back and better than ever or at least not coughing my lungs up now, so everything's freaking great.
So today, class... No, I'm really thinking about getting my nerd on and having a book club. I mean, it'll be like the lamest book club ever because I'm really slow in reading books, but I found this book in my bookshelf the other day that I forgot I bought and it's called "Reductionism in Art and Brain Science" by the Nobel Prize winner Eric R Kandel. and I don't know I thought it'd be fun if I'm not the only person reading it so maybe somebody else out there would be as nerdy as me - glasses on - and want to read it too. So there we are. Let me know. DM me and we'll have a book club of one or something...or two.
Anyway, so today we're starting off the show with a viewer question. This question comes from Carla. Hey Carla. Thanks so much for sending in such a great question. And if anyone out there has anyquestions for me, please send them in. You can send them directly to me @jennsingergallery on Instagram and Facebook.
All right. So the question is what's your best advice on how to frame artwork?
Okay, so when it comes to framing artwork, there are definitely some do's and don'ts the most important thing is that you don't take away attention from the artwork itself. Do not distract from the artwork with the framing. You want the framing to finish and enhance.
Sort of like a good bra. Am I right ladies? Um, high and tight. Keep it high and tight.
The second most important thing to consider when framing is that sometimes the framing can actually cost more than that work itself. I know. So most artwork unless you're buying a standard poster will need custom archival framing. Be prepared for this by factoring archival framing into your budget when considering an artwork acquisition. You will thank me later.
Why is it so expensive? Because the sizes are custom and you want to make sure that the framing itself doesn't damage the artwork. Hence custom, archival framing.
Okay, some important Dos.
Do see if the gallery you're purchasing the artwork from offers Custom Framing services, or if they have a good framer. And also ask them for recommendations on how best to frame the artwork. They should know or they should be able to reach out to the artist directly get any kind of framing specifications that would be specific to that artwork. And when framing, keep it simple. A go-to for my gallery for works on paper and photography is the white or black shadow box frame. We like it because there's some depth off the wall and it has a nice clean contemporary look with a skinny face around the around the edge and spacers inside that keeps the artwork away from the glass. This is really really important. You never ever ever want an artwork to touch or be pushed up against the glass.
All right, so this is a piece as you can see hanging on my wall from my collection by an artist we just started working with I'm so excited. We just started representing her. Her name is Mandy Coppes-Martin and as you can see the artwork is It really needs to be on its own. It doesn't need any distraction. So we chose a nice clean minimalistic white shadow box frame. And it really helps the artwork to shine. This is a silk drawing on paper. It's what the artist calls silk drawing. She uses and many many many kilometers of unspun silk to create this drawing. It's really important that this artwork can stand on its own within the frame. I think we've achieved this here. The paper is floating inside the frame with an archival mount leaving the edges of the paper exposed. And with this Frame, we are confident that it will not be exposed to damage from the air. It's UV protected protected from exposure to light and it's also protected from humidity.
The next important DO is that it's a good idea to use UV resistant Plexiglas and it keeps the artwork light on the wall. Artwork, especially large scale pieces can get really heavy and especially if they are framed with glass. So it's really good idea idea use UV resistance class and the UV resistance will protect the artwork from exposure to light over time.
So even if you know the artwork is not a delicate watercolor or something that's really vulnerable to fading over time and if it's not in direct sunlight, you still want to think about using UV resistant Plexiglass and
you might move you know to a new house or you might just want to move the piece to another room which
is a sunnier room. So either way wherever it goes it'll be protected increasing the artwork's longevity.
So sometimes framing can enhance a work when you play with different colors and options. And this is where you'll want to work with a really good framer to make sure your bold choices make sense and don't distract the artwork. Here's a really fun example of this. This is an artwork in my collection that I purchased from a Portuguese artist during the first covid lockdown. I'm going to link to this artist's Instagram and the show notes their names are... a it's a couple ... their names are Carla and Fabricio. and I can't pronounce the Portuguese Instagram handle so I'm just gonna link to it. So this piece of you can see is embroidered. It's on an embroidery loop and I wanted to figure out how to frame it with the loop suspended floating in a frame and but minimal frames were not making sense with this piece. It just didn't look right and it was just kind of getting washed out. So I thought I would go with a bolder choice and I held it up against a few colorful frame corners and then I suddenly saw it. The pink outer frame and the yellow inner frame helped it sing. But also I'm so happy we had the background of the work and the spacers painted to
match the outer frames pink color. It is the most photographed and talked about frame and our house and I love how it turned out. I'm really really happy with it. And I think it only enhances the artwork it definitely does not take away. So it was a bold choice for a frame, but I think it really really shines.
Alright. So another Do is if you can afford the upgrade, upgrade to museum plexi. It has an anti-reflective quality in addition to UV protection that makes a huge difference in how the artwork is viewed. It's like there's no glass at all which with some artworks especially very delicate light pieces, it makes a huge difference when you don't have to battle with the glare or reflection when seeing the work.
So that is a good one. Especially if it's a very very valuable piece definitely get the upgrade.
Now for some don'ts. Okay matting is not dead, but it does have a certain traditional framing look. There are more contemporary archival mounting styles like in the Mandy Coppes-Martin artwork that I showed you it that could be used instead. But if you do go ahead and use matting be sure that the mat is not the same size or smaller than the face of the frame. So for example, if you are using a frame that has a 1 inch, it's a one inch frame, right, and you do not want to then decide on a one inch mat. So that makes it two inches and width but the mat is gonna look even smaller than the one inch frame because you lose about a quarter of an inch and the framing process.
So what you want to do is make sure you use at least like a two inch mat with a one inch frame and if you go with a really thick frame like, you know a couple of inches three inches, I don't know.
Then you want to like make sure that that matte size again doesn't exactly match the frame size. And you also want to make sure that and it doesn't go smaller. You don't want like a three inch frame and then like one inch mat it will not look right. So always go with a larger mat width at least by an inch at least and not that's just too small looks like a mistake trustme. Um, okay and this is also a good idea just check with any framer that you're working with just have a look and see what it looks like.
So this is not the same case with floated artworks on paper. So if the artworks floating in the frame without using mat in archival float, and there's a border around floating Edge and that it shows the backing it's usually like an archival backing behind the artwork and that can be closer to the edge of the frame. As you can see in this commissioned painting by Anne Austin Pearce that we just framed for collector, the artwork edges are close to the frame. It's a massive piece and we were working with a final overall dimension for the
frame that needed to be a specific size. It couldn't go over that size. We couldn't add a massive order and it worked out beautifully. I cannot wait for this collector to see this piece in person. It's being prepared for shipping now and it is stunning.
Anyway. Okay so those are a few framing tips off the top of my head. But also my best pro tip ever is to use masking tape to map out exactly the size of the artwork with framing you will have on your wall. So get some old newspaper and some painters tape and tape it out. Measure it out on the wall to the exact size in the exact space that you want our work to go and then step away from it. Is it too small? Is it too large for the space and also be mindful of how high you're hanging this artwork. There is a chronic epidemic throughout
the world, but for some reason especially here in the UK, it is the epidemic of hanging art way too high on the wall. Why does this happen? I do not know but it's just like way too high or just random paintings floating above people's heads. I don't know why. Um, so actually my husband did the other day. He knew, he knew who high after he installed it but our stone walls are complete pain in our house. So I know it's gonna be fixed eventually, but until then it'll probably annoy me but that's married life. Be patient and be grateful anyway. So heren you are. Free love lessons as well. Okay, so that's what you get here on the gallery date - a full service situation people.
What are you doing mummy? What am I doing? Come here. You little monkey. Oh don't put that in your mouth. Don't touch that. Okay. Where are you going? You're going out with Daddy. Yeah, did you come to see me. Can you see can you say hello to everyone?
Where's Brooklyn? Can you say hello? Are you measuring? What are you measuring? Mummy's work. You're measuring Mummy's work? Well, there's a lot of it. I can tell you that. Miles of work. Oh go on. Oh, I got lots of kisses. Thank you. Thank you for all those kisses. I love you. See you later alligator. Back to work
Now because I vowed to keep this week's show brief, we're cutting straight to our crazy art world news and it's gonna be a quick round up of what's happening out there. Now that we're somehow already through most of September. Like tomorrow's almost Christmas people. I don't even understand how this happens.
But let's get to it.
So this month brings us some more celebrity art, which is like so much celebrity art shows lately like Brad Pitt has his first Museum show and Finland. And you know, how many amazing artists are there out there that actually get a museum show, but now Brad Pitt's a sculptor and he gets the museum show, which I actually think would be a lot cooler if you was exhibiting with Nick Cave the sculpture rather than Nick Cave the musician. Maybe that's just me?
Anyway, so this month also brings us the much talked about ethereum merge, which is probably whereI lose some of y'all am I right? Mm-hmm. Don't go anywhere. Ethereum is the cryptocurrency that most nft artwork is bought and sold with and it received a lot of criticism because it was so very bad for the environment a real energy guzzler. So this merge updated the currency from a "proof of work" system which sucked vast amounts of computational energy to mine it to a "proof of stake" system which allows users to validate new blocks on the chain and earn new ethereum tokens by providing preexisting ethereum tokens
as collateral in a process called staking. So it's better for the environment like way better. In fact, Bloomberg News says it will save an amount of energy almost equivalent the annual energy consumption of all of New Zealand.
Um, but also it may invite more regulatory scrutiny as the SEC in the US may consider these token Securities now rather than assets…or currency, so all that to say that despite the merger the value of ethereum continues to drop recently. It's still early days, but I'm super curious to see how this will affect the nft market.
Also this month, Washington State, speaking of nfts became the first State to tax NFTs which seems tricky to enforce. So watch the space I guess.
Finally, according to artnet a renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass believes he's discovered Nefertiti's tomb in a massive cliffhanger of a story. Hawass states that he won't be able to announce the discovery of Nefertiti's tomb until October.
So again, watch the space. You never know what else will happen in 2022. Who knows? Maybe Queen Nefertiti herself will be dropping nfts from her tomb?! It could happen. It could happen people. 2022 has been weird. So, let's see what happens.
Okay, that's a wrap. I should say before we go. If you would like to see the framing examples that I gave earlier on you're listening to the podcast, which I very much appreciate, definitely go check out the video for the images on TheGalleryDate.com. All right, so, thank you so much again for joining me. Thank you for tuning into The Gallery Date. Join me for our date every Wednesday for a bite-sized episode on thegallerydate.com, Please subscribe, follow, rate and review The Gallery Date on YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you soon.
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