CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

Fantastic Mr. Frame: Video Interview with Visionary Sculptor/Filmmaker John Frame

Editor’s Note: I’m reposting this video because John Frame is back in town on Saturday for his sixth sold out behind the scenes tour. His exhibition has proved so popular that the museum keeps bringing him back, and it’s well worth getting the tour first hand—there’s magic in watching him bring the puppets to life. If you lobby, they might just bring him back a seventh time. Or you can watch our video.  (Read on or watch the Interview Here.)

The California sculptor comes to town on Saturday to talk about creating his fantastical exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, which closes May 27.

Artlandia: A cultural getaway in Portland

By Michael Upchurch | Seattle Times arts writer

ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES

At the Portland Art Museum, the Mark Rothko exhibit includes 45 works of the highly regarded 20th-century painter who spent part of his life in Portland. Cultural life is singularly concentrated in Portland. Walk just 20 blocks and you can hit most of the city’s major museums, galleries and performance venues, plus scores of restaurants and cafes.

Sure, there’s arts activity happening elsewhere in the city. But for the out-of-town visitor, especially anyone arriving by train, it’s a great feeling to exit Portland’s Union Station and know so many attractions are in strolling distance.

Portland Art Museum: ”Mark Rothko” is the big-name draw here, but “John Frame: Three Fragments of a Lost Tale” is the unexpected knockout. Both exhibits are up through May 27.

The Rothko retrospective reveals that before Mark Rothko was “Mark Rothko,” he was Marcus Rothkowitz, and before he was an abstract expressionist he was a figurative painter. He came to Portland from Russia at age 10 in 1913 and spent about a decade in the city before heading for New York. In 1933, the Portland Art Museum gave him his first one-man museum show, and he had family ties to the city for most of his life (1903-1970).

“Mark Rothko” starts with a rather tame still-life from 1926 and ends with two black/gray abstract canvases from 1969 that all but spell “dead end” (Rothko killed himself the next year). In between, however, there’s an energizing evolution of visual ideas, gradually morphing from fanciful, distorted figures to ever-bolder abstractions. By 1950, he finds his signature style: huge pulsating lozenges of color that seem almost to vibrate off the canvas while pulling you into shadowy realms.

As illuminating as the Rothko exhibit is, the John Frame show is even better. Frame is a California artist who works with puppets, photography and stop-action animation. The show is theatrically spot-lit in the dim gallery. Oddball hybrid creatures made from found materials come to spooky life as a soundtrack scored by Frame plays in the background.

(Original article is here)

AIR DATE: Monday, April 16th 2012 | By: Dave Miller

John Frame has undergone some major artistic shifts. He initially wanted to be a writer, but decided he couldn’t cut it in literature. So, he turned to visual art. After two years digging into art history and critical theory, he dived into sculpture. For decades, that was his medium, but after experiencing a long artistic block between 2000 and 2005, he threw in the towel.

John Frame — The Unanswered Question
Not long after that, he had an artistic reawakening when he began an animation project. Once again, he delved into researching a new medium, and began to experiment with filmmaking and stop-motion techniques.

His exhibit at the Portland Art Museum showcases the current stage of that project. The show is a collection of photos, sculptures, and videos featuring fantastical characters that come alive in the animations.

Have you been to John Frame’s exhibit at the Portland Art Museum? What was your experience with the work? What questions do you have for the artist?

(Original Interview is here)

JOHN FRAME – THREE FRAGMENTS OF A LOST TALE

March 24, 2012, 1:45 pm

Our guest is California based sculptor John Frame who for the last five years has been working on his ambitious project, The Tale of the Crippled Boy. The end goal? A feature length collection of animated and live film vignettes.

Now on exhibit at the Portland Art Museum through May, Three fragments of a Lost Tale, presents the work on this project. It includes installations, stage sets, stills, music score and film. The self-taught Frame’s work isn’t conceptual, expressionist or crafts person per se, but rather a mix of all three led by the use of intuition.  ( original interview is here )

JOHN FRAME’S THREE FRAGMENTS OF A LOST TALE

TAYLOR DENT

Imagine a post-apocalyptic landscape as envisioned 16th century villagers: darkness envelops a once refined civilization as the townspeople lapse into superstition. Illiteracy rises as Shakespeare’s dramas disintegrate inside a mad scientist’s library. A troupe of actors, the Tottentanzers, performs a morality play where God and Satan depict themselves on an archaic stage set. A skeleton-like torch wielder frightens off rusted citizens from breaking into the tempting Gate of Desire. (Read the Review Here)

“Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart go together” – John Ruskin

On the opening day of “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame,” on view through June 20th at the Huntington Museum and Gardens, I emerged from the darkly lit Boone Gallery into the bookstore to find a nicely dressed older woman looking at me expectantly. “Are YOU the artist?” she asked.  (Read More Here.)

Artist John Frame Installing Characters from his "Lost Tale" at the Huntington Library Photo: Carey Haskell

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Artlandia: A cultural getaway in Portland

BY MICHAEL UPCHURCH

THE SEATTLE TIMES