Two respected sources affiliated with two Connecticut art galleries have suggested that I present my work differently by using something called a floating frame. I'd never heard of a floating frame, but the folks at Jerry's Artarama showed me a couple of kinds. I think I found what the ladies had in mind. So I took one of my seascapes, which had been mounted on stretcher bars covered with burlap which had been handpainted blue (to give it a weatherbeaten nautical effect), took it off the burlap, and mounted it in a floating frame. Here are before and after shots:
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| Eastham Low Tide, mounted on handpainted burlap fastened to stretcher bars. |
The woman at the gallery where I presented this piece had a visceral aversion to the burlap and said that it wouldn't be acceptable in her gallery. Who knew? Well, I do, now.
So I took the burlap off the stretcher bars, took the piece off the burlap, and took the binding off the piece. Once I had it down to its unbound self, I straightened the edges and sewed borders of black canvas on the horizontal and then the vertical sides. The canvas border was then fastened around a purchased canvas and the whole encased in a floater frame. Thus:
The next one, Low Tide First Encounter Beach II, was juried into a show at a Connecticut gallery in the summer of 2016, but when the gallery manager saw it, she sent me back to the drawing board, pointing out that the natural-color canvas on which the piece was mounted was dirty, and that the binding around parts of the quilt was crooked.
I took it off the canvas, took the binding off it, straightened the edges, added borders of black canvas around the edges, and mounted it in a floater frame.
What do you think? Has the presentation improved? You would have had to see it in person, I suppose, to appreciate the difference, but I understand what the gallery manager was saying, and I think it's an improvement.
But I'd be happy to hear from my quilting friends out there about this procedure as applied to your own work.
