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

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.

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”

Now that Part One of the Tale of the Crippled Boy has closed at the Huntington in San Marino, we are officially in search of a venue for it to move on to.  Help in reaching out to locations outside of Southern California would be sincerely appreciated.  My hope is that we can find a museum somewhere on the eastern seaboard that will be interested in taking it on.  For the moment, the project is returning to my studio with no trips to other parts of the world planned.

In the meantime, I (and our tiny crew of Laura and Johnny) plan to get back to work on Part Two just as soon as we can regroup and scratch together enough resources  to upgrade our equipment and add some necessary components.  Several talented individuals have approached us to offer their services when we begin shooting again and we have kept a careful list of names and skills.  Our only current limitation is the usual one (money) and we are planning to start putting grant applications together very soon.  Should any real funding for the project materialize, we will definitely plan on putting a small crew together to move forward with additional set construction, animation and the general business of trying to bring something new into the world.

Anyone with specific skills relating to the production of Part II of the Tale who would interested in sharing our passion for invention and creative freedom, should drop us a line letting us know what you can do.

Again, we are adrift on the Sea of Uncertainty for the moment with no destination for either Part I or Part II  but, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I believe we will somehow be able to find our way to the goal of continuing to tell the Tale.

Additional Meet the Artist Dates.

Since we are getting rather close to the end of the exhibition at the Huntington, I wanted to let people know that I will be available in the gallery for casual conversationbetween 1:00 and 3:00 on Sunday the 12th, Sunday the 19th and Sunday the 26th. There are also several other days on which I will be there and would be happy to meet with anyone who has specific questions or thoughts about the work.  Please email me if you would like to get together.

The exhibition has officially been extended until June 27th.

This forty-five minute film was shot at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens on May 28th, 2011.  In it, the artist answers numerous questions posed by the audience on the subject of his exhibition Three Fragments of a Lost Tale. (See the Q and A here.)

There are dozens of working drawings for the Project.  Here are a few.  In most cases, the drawing serves as a starting point only.  Inevitably each object finds its own way into being.  More of the Working Drawings may be seen here.

• See the Working Drawing Page Here.

Born to Endless Night

Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by William Blake Selected by John Frame

March 12, 2011-June 20, 2011

Works on Paper Room, Huntington Art Gallery

One of the best things that happened as a direct result of the exhibition at the Huntington was being asked to guest curate an exhibition of the works of William Blake. As many of you know, the Huntington has one of the finest collections of Blake’s work in the country. For many of us working in the border areas of the art world, Blake stands in as one very striking example of what can be accomplished through diligence and devotion to one’s calling over a lifetime, regardless of how much or little one is recognized for their work. For me he is a true artist’s artist and one that is consistently satisfying to spend time with, whether he’s writing, engraving or painting.

Several of the works in the exhibition are watercolors whose pigments are considered to be fugitive in nature.  As a result these works are only rarely seen, perhaps as infrequently as once in a 10 year period. There are 20 pieces in the exhibition including several from the Book of Job, from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Also included is the rarely seen painting on canvas of Lot and His Daughters, a work that once belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  I hope you can catch the exhibition in the Huntington Art Gallery before it closes on June 20, 2011.