Reframe III: "The Wild Thing in the Weeds"

    

This was my 2009 display at ConQuesT 40,
a science fiction convention held over Labor
Day weekend.  Clockwise from the upper left:
The White Dragon, A Nest in the Wildwood,
and The Wild Thing in the Weeds.

My small fantasy piece, The Wild Thing in the Weeds, is one of my most recent "reframes," although it was one of the earliest pieces of artwork I did.

I finished it in the spring of 2009.  I had just completed A Nest in the Wildwood, which had been in the works for nearly two years, following my first paper sculpture, The White Dragon.  All three were made in a similar way: each has a somewhat abstract, acrylic background, with a fantasy creature made of white paper nestled into it.

Wild Thing completed the "white on acrylic" phase, for me.  After I finished it, I felt I had explored that approach enough to feel satisfied.  New ideas and variations had begun to beckon, and I moved on to the "twig dragons" with Denizen of the Winter Trees and Treetop Primaries in 2009-2010.

Here's the original 2009 frame for
The Wild Thing in the Weeds.

I made Wild Thing small, in the hope that I could price it in an affordable range for the art buyers who would see it first at the Kansas City science fiction convention, ConQuesT 40.  In the interest of thrift, I also framed it in a small plastic box I had been able to adapt.  The box kept the price down, certainly, but I never really liked how it looked.

Apparently the potential buyers didn't like how it looked, either, because I didn't sell it.  I did not include it in the collection I gathered for the "Great Leawood Wall" that provided so much inspiration for the reframing work I've recently described in earlier posts, regarding Windblown and Through the Arch.

However, when I was preparing for the Westwood (KS) City Hall show in March 2011, I decided to reframe it using a similar strategy to the one I'd used on Through the Arch.

Here is the current reframing of The Wild Thing
in the Weeds, prepared for the 2011 Westwood
City Hall show.

I removed the plastic part, but kept the box I'd built the piece into. I cut a mat to fit the new, larger frame--as with Through the Arch, I used an 11X13-inch shadowbox--and attached the box to the underside of the mat's inner opening.  The mat is positioned next to the glass inside the frame, with the depth of the shadowbox accommodating the box in which the piece was made.

Reframed in this way, The Wild Thing in the Weeds became a strong new addition to the lineup in the Stiles Gallery at Westwood City Hall, in Westwood, KS.  But I'm afraid I did have to raise the price.

The Wild Thing in the Weeds started the north end of the lineup in the Stiles Gallery at Westwood City Hall in March 2011.

PHOTO CREDITS: All photos are by Jan S. Gephardt, of her own original artwork and displays.