Deep calls to deep

When it comes to art, I'm not I'm not overly critical--I tend to think most things are ok even if they aren't really my style.  (I say this because I've had conversations with a number of artists who seem so jaded that they can't enjoy much of anything.  This is not true of me).

Nevertheless, it's not often when I find myself stunned to such stillness in front of a work of art that I forget to breathe.  And yet, this was my state of being when I visited the Huntington Library exhibition "Three Fragments of a Lost Tale" by the sculptor and filmmaker John Frame.  Over the past five years, Frame has  hand-crafted dozens of small sculptures ranging in size from 3.5 to 32 inches tall, with most of them measuring in the 8 to 12-inch range.  Not simply inanimate objects, these sculptures are a complex cast of characters for Frame's yet-to-be-completed stop-motion animation film "The Tale of the Crippled Boy."  A twelve-minute montage of scenes is at the artist's website--I highly recommend that you check it out. 

 I can't exactly say what makes me drawn so strongly to these tiny friends (for so it is that I have begun to think of them).  It's deeper than the fact that Frame's work incorporates so many of the media and materials I love:  craft, theater, puppetry, found objects, wood, stop-motion animation, miniatures, etc.  It seems as if I have known them all my life yet have never met them, as if they will reveal things about me that I've been wanting to know.  They exude longing and melancholy; these are emotions that have been my close companions, and perhaps that's why I feel such kinship with Frame's creations.

 
More funds are needed in order to complete the film.  The scenes that have been assembled for presentation as of this time barely hint at the larger story, which, from what I understand, will not be told using standard, linear narrative techniques.  All the better, for the soul is not linear--it follows circular orbits, overlaps itself, is in more than one place at the same time.

I need this story.  I don't know why, but I know I do.

"Three Fragments of a Lost Tale" is on view at the Huntington Library's Boone Gallery through June 20.


All photos were taken by John Frame; I borrowed them from the Huntington Library website.