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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Frames by James Porter and Mother Nature

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 4:17 PM

bloody mary

In this week's paper, I review Marc Dombrosky's poignant new show Neverland at Platform Gallery, and I interviewed the artist at the gallery last week in a new podcast here.

Dombrosky hand-embroiders over notes he finds in the streets; he pokes holes first in the sometimes-delicate papers, then runs the stitches where he's already poked the holes, tracing over the handwriting in thread of the same color as the ink, fixing and memorializing what's been thrown away or lost.

Crooked Castle

Forrest

Often he pins the notes to the walls, but in this show they're framed—and the frames have a story of their own. James Porter, the preparator at Tacoma Art Museum, custom-made the frames for Dombrosky, and also placed the notes inside the frames (sometimes lining up the lines of the notes rather than the edges of the paper with the edges of the frames, or hiding a note in a corner, or centering it perfectly, which becomes a pointed act in the case of a drawing of a castle marked "crooked").

The other thing to know is that these frames are from a special tree: the 400-year-old cedar that Salish artist Shaun Peterson is using to carve a welcome figure for the Tacoma Art Museum, a project that has been underway for several years, since the museum held an exhibition that kicked off the idea. Peterson gave Porter his scraps for the frames—and they're gorgeous.

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Reminds me of part of an exhibit I offered Seattle in April 2008 titled "An Exhibit of Robert Storr's Autograph And Other Work". It was my last group show, and featured Storr's autograph, under a vitrine in it's own room.

Posted by Paul Pauper on January 15, 2010 at 3:59 PM

This is dumb. Formalism is dumb. Aesthetic choices are mute in the absence of a political stance. Do these antagonize or relate? This is the question of today. You are not answering it. You are not a critic you are a reporter.

Posted by Bishop vs Bourriaud on January 15, 2010 at 6:10 PM