JOHN FRAME’S EERIE, BEAUTIFUL DREAM WORLD
by LESLEY KINZEL | original article here
On a trip to Los Angeles last June, I visited The Huntington Library, because museums are my favorite places to be and because this particular museum promised to satisfy all three of my most obsessive fixations: books, art and history. I did not expect to run across a contemporary exhibition by John Frame, showing his work-in-progress “The Tale of the Crippled Boy,” nor did I expect it to affect me so thoroughly.
Frame is building an imaginative, almost hallucinatory world populated by his remarkable moving sculptures, which are constructed of found objects and an abundance of vivid textures. These characters are animated in both senses of the word: They can be moved, but they also seem independently alive.
It all comes together in a beautiful stop-motion film. I recommend you watch his work so far in full-screen high-definition, if possible.
I saw Frame’s short, incomplete film a couple of days after seeing the Tim Burton exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which had left me feeling a little let down — not just because of the inexcuseable void of “Ed Wood” paraphernaila, but also because it was incredibly crowded and lacking in introspection, plus I found the physical exhibition design to be confusing.
Frame’s work, however, has all the humanity that I didn’t know I was missing, or that I needed. You can help him finish it by donating to the project or purchasing still photographs from the filmmaking process. I mean really, don’t you want to see how it all ends? Watch this short film, and then help make art happen.