Part II: Picture Framing
The devil’s in the bevel.
My nailing gun, aka, the frame joiner. Driven by an air compressor, not electricity. 2020, Hasselblad 500 C/M, 70mm.
At first, I looked upon picture framing as a necessity, an obstacle that had to be overcome in order to be able to present my photography to an audience. One might say this was familiar to the way I used to treat the act of climbing a mountain; it was the obstacle that stood in the way of acquiring the view. In the last few years, I have managed to flip this view on its head to realise that the mountain is not the obstacle, it is the enabler, the very thing that allows the view to unfold. From the bottom, the mountain is daunting, and actually blocks the view. And this is how it is with picture framing too. I no longer think that getting a picture framed is an annoying obstacle blocking my way; it is now an inherent part of my creative process.
The mighty mitering machine. A guillotine, of sorts, that cuts the frame mouldings. No sawdust generated. 2019, Pentax MX.
In order to take photos, we need a camera. In order to frame pictures, we need a workshop. And not just any workshop, but one that is set up specifically for picture framing, with specific tools that can minimise the amount of dust that is generated. This is how a picture framing studio differs from most workshops. Dust is the framer’s enemy. This is a wonderful limitation that has necessitated the invention of some tools that work without generating sawdust.
This means that to create a frame, two workshops are required. A machinery workshop where the timber is shaped into the frame mouldings, where all the big machinery like table saws, thicknessers, and spindle moulders live and operate, as these machines all generate a lot of sawdust. Once the frame mouldings have been machined however, they can be taken to the studio where the assembly of the pictures will take place. Here the mouldings can be cut and joined to create the final product.
Workshop Mk I. 2020, Hasselblad 500 C/M, 70mm.
The first step in the process is to acquire the timber.
Claiming that any timber is ‘ethically sourced’ is hazardous moral territory. Timber is simply the term for a tree that has been felled and cut into usable bits. If we treated the trees the same as we treat people, no timber would be labelled ethically sourced. Can we really call a product ethically sourced if the original living organism must be killed in order for us to utilise it?
Tasmania is perceived as the ‘natural state’, and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to its beautiful natural areas. Nevertheless, utilitarian views of exploitation are slow to change; the colonists’ attitude still linger: ‘this is all here for us to do with as we please’. Ancient ways of ‘we are all part of this, and we must look after the whole, not just ourselves’ is close to being forgotten. My belief is that any business that claims to be sustainable or to use ‘ethically sourced materials’ needs to demonstrate the possibility of transition from the attitude of the colonist to the custodian.
My interpretation of ethically sourced timber is this: it must be locally sourced, to minimise the amount of transport required; the timber must be salvaged or reclaimed; or if a tree must be cut down, that tree must be a quick growing species and be found in plentiful amounts in natural living systems (not plantations).
And so once these limitations are placed upon acquiring the timber, the viability of the business model shrinks by a significant factor. However, it still remains within the realm of possibility. Most of the timber that is in my workshop has been ‘salvaged’, which is still not the ideal solution, but definitely one step better in my book than using commercially available timber provided by ‘Sustainable Timbers Tasmania’ (Sus Timbers for short)’.
So how is salvaged timber different to recycled or reclaimed timber?
Salvaged timber is still ‘fresh’ timber, as in it hasn’t been used for a purpose before. When forestry goes in to clearfell a coupe, they only take a fraction of the felled timber. But before they set the wasteland that used to be a forest on fire to exterminate any residual seeds from the original eco-system, the salvaging contractors to go in and save any timber they wish. After the salvagers are done, the wood hookers go in, to collect fire wood. Then the whole coupe is fire bombed in order to make way for the seeds of the plantation that will replace the original forest.
This model is pathological on so many different levels, and I have reservations and internal conflict about using salvaged timber in the first place. Nevertheless, salvaged timber is a by product, it is not the reason these forests were felled in the first place. For me this is a clear distinction. One day, I hope to be able to source timber that has been generated through selective logging, where individual trees are selected for felling, rather than entire eco-systems wiped out in order to generate timber. And I want to work towards using more and more reclaimed and recycled timber that has been used before for a purpose (floorboards, benchtops, etc). Working with recycled timber has its hazards though, in that it usually contains bits of metal (nail heads, etc). When recycled timber is being machined up, if a blade spinning really really fast hits a nail in the wood, it can ruin the blades and create hot bits of steel flying at bullet speeds. Not an ideal scenario.
The other consideration with using timber that is ‘ethically sourced’ is to ask the question: how long did it take this tree to grow? Using a two thousand year old huon pine to make something out of, then planting a new one is not a sustainable business model. If the timber our business has used in a single lifetime is not replaceable in a single lifetime, then our business is not sustainable. For this reason I primarily work with silver wattle and blackwood, as these trees grow reasonably fast and are found plentifully around Tasmania.
One of the artworks from my first exhibition, A Journey to the Western Wilds. Pentax MX 50mm.
Once we have our artwork, and all of our framing materials, including backing boards, mat boards and glass, and a functional workshop, the rest is simply a matter of following a process. A process that is fraught with danger. Endless potential disasters await the framer. It’s a simple process, but there are a lot of ways in which things can go wrong, with irreversible results. I’ve joined frames, and knocked them apart again, I have cut glass too big, too small, I have wasted many matboards after not measuring artworks properly, and there always appears a bloody nosehair inside the frame just when I have sealed up the back of the frame with staples and tape. That’s how it goes, like any creative process. Two steps forward, one step back.
But every now and then, it all comes together, in fact, most pictures come together, at some point, after various amounts of labour. And when they do, the result is very satisfying. An artwork, correctly framed, will be preserved, and presentable, for generations to come. Unless the picture falls off the hook on the wall and the glass shatters into a hundred little pieces.