Axially-Hung, Framed Art

A close friend of our eldest son, Rob, sent to me to frame a piece of art she had created on a hand-made, magenta sheet of paper. She gave me a free hand to design whatever I thought would show off her art to its best advantage. I decided to use a circular mat opening around the composition, since the shape of the image worked best with that mat opening shape. Further, I attempted to mimic the concentric rings of color that appeared in the composition by using three mat layers, with a black suede on the top to make it all pop, followed next by a layer of gold matting and then, on the bottom, a pale blue. In retrospect, the only thing I would change at this point would be to do the mats with reverse bevels so that  you could not see the middle color of each mat (i.e. the bevel). The black and white mat middles are a bit distracting. Top mat is Crescent 67114 Carbon Black Suede; Middle mat is Crescent 9947 Spanish Gold and the bottom mat is Artique 4941 Wedgewood Blue.

A detail photo of the artwork, itself. Note the rippling bands of color, like waves in a pond after a rock is tossed in.

The gold metallic mat has a black core that shows up on the 45 degree bevel. The white mat has a white core and you can see that on the bevel.

The wire is mounted axially or with the corner at the very top of the frame.

 


The frame I selected was one of the newer profiles from Nielsen, Profile 65 in a copper color called Spice. The frame echoes a copper band of dots that appears at intervals in the artist's composition. Frame size is 17 1/2 x 17 1/2. The composition was painted metallic acrylic dots in a pointillist fashion. The last little design tweak was to turn the square frame on its axis, so that the corners would be straight up and down, rather than parallel to the ceiling and floor. Glazing was accomplished with clear plexiglass to prevent breakage during shipping.

Note the axial hanging wire. When I shipped the frame back to the artist, I told her she could easily move the hangers if she wanted to hang it in a more traditional fashion. She loved it!

Framing designed and executed by Brian D. Flax, CPF

Photos shown by kind permission of Linda Alila.