Last weekend, I had to frame my artwork. The Leslie Grove Gallery has particular specifications and this being my first ever indoor gallery exhibit, I wanted to make sure I did it right.

Artists are procurement people

Queue yet another trek out to DeSerres art supply store. The thing people may not think about being an artist is that there’s a whole procurement aspect to it.

You visit shops, check out how much things cost, compare vendors, research about materials, and more. The costs must be reasonable. They add up quickly.

Material delivery has to be timed properly for use. There’s the unforeseen logistics issue of getting those materials to your “studio” (i.e. living room…!). Unless you have a truck or minivan (or a very good friend with one!), everything has to fit into your 4-door sedan. Hopefully your living room has enough storage space for the piles of artwork that doesn’t get sold.

The painting frame mission

The frame is a huge expense so I had to do this after being accepted into the exhibit.

So there I am at the DeSerres art store, thankfully indoors from the -20 degree winter weather, and re-reviewing my selections on painting frames, imagining of the following:

Crackle, Pop and Snap

1. Crackle Situation: KJ drilling through the frame, and then…”CRACK!”. That’s not good.
   • Fear: I have drilled and caused a fault line across the frame.
   • What I actually did: I asked the framing staff and they advised not to buy a plastic frame for this same reason if I was drilling into it.
2. Pop Situation: KJ drilling through the frame, and then… “POP!” Uh oh.
   • Fear: I have drilled through the other side of the frame.
   • Fear of Past experience: This actually has happened before with a frame of a painting of another artist that’s hanging on my living room wall. Fortunately, the mistake is not that visible.
3. Snappy voice: The immigrant inner voice part of me is vying for my attention. She’s snapping that I’m going to lose ALL of my money. End up on the street destitute. The frame is expensive and this whole art “thing” is a way for me to be poor. This leads down this rabbit hole of how I’ve made poor decisions in life, etc.

Embracing the weirdness

It’s important to deal with fears and acknowledge them. On reflection, they were useful to me since I could take steps to avoid those bad things from happening.

1. I bought a wooden frame rather than a plastic one to avoid it splitting. This ended up increasing the price of the frame and the dimensions, and had to inform the gallery about adjustments.
2. Using a piece of tape, I put a marker on my drill bit to mark somewhere lesser than the depth of the frame. I did not drill through the other side thankfully.
3. I had to talk back to that inner voice about how obviously I wasn’t going to end up on the streets because the amount I was spending on the frame was a limited amount. I would not need to buy multiple frames because I was also doing steps #1 and #2.

I read in one of the many art books that finding your art voice is about embracing your weirdness. This whole process of selling my art is an even larger embrace of my own eccentricities. It’s a big learning curve.