INK2011: Power of the Journey

John Frame: Sculpting visual poetry – December 8 – 11, 2011 in Jaipur, India

Think of INK as a curator of contemporary oral history. We do an extensive global search to find the best ideas to invite to our events. Our cornerstone event is the annual INK Conference in association with TED, which brings together the world’s movers and shakers who then share ideas. The exchange of stories, ideas and dreams does not start nor stop at the conference; it is merely one of the many methods that facilitate the open exchange. In addition to our annual conference, INK also hosts KIDSInk and INK salons, mini conferences, across the globe. If you are interested in hosting an INK salon in your community or campus, please contact us.

(Click here to See/Hear John Frame’s Ink in association with TED talk given in Jaipur, India on December 10, 2011)

Here are a few shots of the installation at the Portland Art Museum.  The exhibition runs to May 27.  We have been really pleased with reaction to the work in Portland and everyone at the museum has been superb to work with.  Hope to see you there!

Hi Everyone,

We have just launched Poor Tom Films (meaning we spent 20 Bucks to get the domain name!)   This will be what we call ourselves when we release our films from here on in.  Appropriately, “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale,” has been selected for inclusion in this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival and will launch under the Poor Tom Name.  The festival runs from January 26th through February 6th and has Honorees like Martin Scorcese, Viola Davis and Christopher Plummer this year.   Our film screens twice:

Friday January 27 at 10:30 PM in the Metro 4 Theatre III

Sunday January 29 at 1:00 PM in the Arlington Theatre

Johnny Coffeen and/or I will be there for the screenings and will plan on taking in some of the other events, many of which look really interesting.  Hope to see a few of you there.

Our poster for the Santa Barbara Film Festival was designed by Carey Haskell.

John

First, I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to everyone who helped us out with the Kickstarter Campaign.  We raised 126% of our goal and it will be enough to keep us moving into the New Year.  In the meantime, we are actively seeking a person or group to act as Producers of Part II of the Tale.  While it is possible for the project to move forward with just two of us working full time, having a real budget and some additional team members would be a great boost in creating our feature length group of shorts.  If anyone out there knows someone who would like to put some serious money into a project that is almost guaranteed not to make a dime, please let us know!  The plan remains to make each of the shorts available for free on the internet as they are completed.  The ultimate goal will be to find a museum or other institution that will give the entire project, including all of the figures, sets, stage and films, a permanent home.  Can’t hurt to have dreams.

I wanted to let everyone know that “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale,” is slated to travel to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.  The exhibition will open on February 18, 2012, and runs through May 27, 2012 along with exhibitions of the work of Mark Rothko and Joseph Beuys.  It will have a similar amount of space as the Boone Gallery presentation at the Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino in 2011 and the body of work will be about the same as what was seen there.  We are absolutely thrilled to have the exhibition going to Portland.  It’s a wonderful museum in a great town. More on this as we move along.  Hope to see you there.

On Tuesday of this week Johnny Coffeen and I had the good fortune to spend several hours on the DreamWorks campus in Burbank.  A few of the folks lucky enough to work there had seen the exhibition at the Huntington and were interested in having me give a talk, which I did in the Campanile Theater at noon.  After a PowerPoint presentation and screening of a portion of the animation I demonstrated how the figures (Mr. R, Argus and Pip had graciously agreed to join us) are constructed and how they move.  The audience was very attentive and asked really great questions.  Among them was one about whether or not the Cast would be interested in doing music videos.  Acting as the Tottentanzers (et al) agent I have learned from experience that they are rather picky about what they will and won’t do, having turned down two earlier invites to do music related videos.  So, rather than thinking on my feet, I more or less said no.  Later that day, I was roundly criticized on all sides.  D’Artand was especially angry and informed me that I was, “A thoughtless and incompetent DOLT!!” after which he lit my hair on fire.  The biggest, and certainly most reasonable complaint was that they are, in fact, VERY interested, as a working repertory company, in performing anything from the “legitimate” theater….their rendition of King Lear being a first choice.  Given a second opportunity I would enthusiastically pimp for the little beggars lest I find myself skewered in the night by tiny, but very sharp, kabob spears.

My thanks to everyone we met at DreamWorks, especially CS and VL-S, for making it a most enjoyable and memorable day.  We absolutely loved the Scotch selection in the Secret Room.

During our recent Northern swing to fish for venues, good hiking and perhaps a place to eventually relocate the studio to, I stumbled into a really wonderful exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle:

Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul

July 9, 2011 – October 30, 2011
One of the most discussed, and perhaps controversial, artists of the late nineteenth century, Gabriel von Max has not been the subject of a solo museum exhibition in America until now.

The exhibition was for me striking in every way.  Beautifully presented with plenty of room between the various works and handsomely lit.  It introduced me to the work of an artist in whom I felt I would have a lasting interest and respect.  Even though I had seen reproductions of some of the works before, I neither knew the artist’s name nor the range of his accomplishments.  The work is characterized by a deep melancholy and demonstrates a particular concern for the lives of the women of his time.  His use of animal life, particularly the monkeys with whom he apparently lived, is powerfully sympathetic and feels like some sort of prescient look at what the plight of animals would become in the 20th and 21st centuries.

There is an excellent catalog, unavailable during my visit, that I ordered and am very much looking forward to receiving.  Kudos to Frye Director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker for bringing this comprehensive and important exhibition to the lucky folks in or visiting Seattle during the run.

The artists out there may appreciate the painting at left, “Monkeys as Judges of Art”