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figurative sculptor with a humanistic, expressionist bent. His work draws on a tradition of fragmented figuration that dates back to the
Renaissance and is visible in works of Rodin, Brancusi, and Giacometti. This focus represents a conscious departure from the abstract and conceptualist art that was popular when he attended graduate school and that has continued to dominate from an academic point of view. Instead, in addition to the Renaissance, Frame's work has drawn from older traditions, including Greek tragedy and medieval art and spiritual practice (altarpieces, reliquary, morality plays, Italian Commedia dell'arte, and hagiography). Critics have noted other diverse echoes and influences in Frame's work, including 19th century allegorical statuary, Black Forest Carvings, aboriginal fetish figures romanesque and gothic effigies, American Arts and Crafts, and cubism His work has been noted to have commonalities with that of Joseph Cornell, H.C. Westermann, Michael McMillen, and Stephen DeStaebler
181:, Eve Steele, and Lynn Roylance) leased a 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m) building in downtown Los Angeles, known as the Firestone building, and began converting it to artists' studios. Although this project was never completed, it became the first artist-in-residence complex to come under the Los Angeles live/work residency ordinance for artists. Frame’s studio was located there from 1980 until 1991. From 1992 until 2001 the artist's primary studio was located in the Santa Fe art colony in downtown Los Angeles. He also maintained a small working studio at his home in Wrightwood. During the years at the Santa Fe colony, his studio became a focal point for many of the figurative artists working in the Los Angeles area including Jim Doolan, Lauren Richardson, Jon Swihart, Peter Zokosky, Enjeong Noh, Brian Apthorp,
153:(born November 27, 1950) is an American sculptor, photographer, composer and filmmaker. He has been working as an artist in California since the early 1980s. Frame has been given Grants and Awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has participated in group exhibitions around the world and has had major solo exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. After five years of preparation, Part One of "The Tale of the Crippled Boy", a sweeping project incorporating sculpture, photography, installation, music and film, premiered at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California in March 2011.
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sculpted characters, most of whom are fully articulated, with moving fingers, bodies, and jaws. The exhibition also includes an 8-minute documentary on the artist's process, directed by filmmaker Johnny
Coffeen. This departure from Frame's past work was not totally unanticipated; David Pagel, in a review of the artist's 2005 retrospective, noted “If John Frame were in the movie business, he would be a costume designer, stylist, set decorator, prop master, lighting specialist, writer, director, editor, producer, agent and publicist all rolled into one do it yourself lover of every little detail of every little job.” And, in fact, Frame has completed this project (including music, lighting, and photography) with only the help of a few friends and family members.
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construction worker. From 1970 to 1971 he was employed by the state psychiatric hospital of New
Hampshire as a psychiatric aide for the criminally insane. He returned to Southern California in 1972 and completed an undergraduate degree in English at San Diego State University in 1975. In 1972 he met Laura Lynn Dierker and they were married in 1977. They have three children: Katherine Lynn (born 1981), Ashley Fayette (born 1985), and Lilian M. (born 1987).
242:). In addition to these explicitly referenced sources, Frame cites other artists among his influences, among them writers Emily Dickinson, Leo Tolstoy, Simone Weil, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and directors Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, and Fellini, and Bergman. (He credits the latter with helping him realize that he was to be an artist.) He has also been deeply influenced by classical music.
165:. His father, Rudolph Randolph Frame, had only a third-grade education and was a welder and sheet metal worker for the Santa Fe Railway. His mother, Mildred Louise Frame (née Jones) was a cook in a local middle school. He has two siblings, Robert Wayne Frame (born 1931) and Phyllis Louise Frame Runyon (born 1943). After his graduation from the Colton School District, he attended
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185:, Cecilia Miguez, Ken Jones, Wes Christensen, Luis Serrano, Stephen Douglas and Stephen Dean Moore, among many others. The Los Angeles drawing group met in his studio on a weekly basis between 1992 and 2001 to draw from live models. Frame also originated the Los Angeles collaborative group known as the Bastards.This group consisted of Frame, Jon Swihart, Steve Galloway,
177:, where he was an assistant in the printmaking department and foreman in the wood shop. He graduated with an MFA. In 1980, John and Laura Frame purchased their first home in Wrightwood, California where Laura had obtained a teaching position in the local elementary school. At the same time John, along with three fellow artists, (
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they deal with the human condition, spirituality, and nature, with transformation and sacrifice. His work has been criticized for its approach to gender (his figures are generally perceived as male, though the artist has said that he perceives them as “genderless”) and sexuality. In particular, his 1995 piece
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was exhibited at the
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens from March–June 2011.) The installation is unique in the artist's career in that it includes not only thirty-five pieces of sculpture but also sets, photography and animated vignettes, all based around an eclectic cast of
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Although Frame received an MFA, he had no formal training in sculpture. His sculptural works were initially roughly-hewn, somewhat coarse studies of the human form. Though the refinement of his technical skill is evident in the stylistic changes in his work over the years, he has remained primarily a
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John Frame has received grants and awards from the
National Endowment for the Arts (Visual Fellowship Grant, 1984, 1986), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New Talent Award, 1985), and the J. Paul Getty Museum (Individual Artists Fellowship, 1995). In 2009, he received an Honorary Doctor of Arts
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Frame's sculpture has been described as tragic, theatrical, enigmatic, fragmented, and formally inventive. Critics generally note that his work is concerned, in subject and content, with “the deepest dilemmas of life”. Combining “humanistic concerns with irony, intellect, and psychological insight”
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The work also shares thematic consistency with the artist's previous work, according to curators Kevin Murphy and
Jessica Todd Smith, who state, “In keeping with the work John Frame has created throughout his career, the tale and the art associated with it evoke universal human themes—the nature of
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has proved disturbing for many who feel that its implied narrative is one of sexual abuse. Critic Gerald
Ackerman has interpreted the piece thus: “ gives us an unwelcome and unsettling realization of the ambiguity of both sexuality and affection, and of the troubles their impulsive interweaving can
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His sculptural output increased between 1984 and 1990. In the mid-1990s, he began to incorporate found objects into his pieces, a practice he has continued into the present. Thus, he has been said to be a part of the
California assemblage tradition. In the late 1990s, Frame's interest in literature
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engender”. These criticisms aside, those who review Frame's work frequently cite that its appeal lies in his propensity to probe the deep questions of life without arriving at easy answers. One critic captures this tension thus: “ the meaning eludes us while the search for meaning captivates us.”
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Frame’s work can also be found in more than three hundred public and private collections, including those of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, the University of Southern California, and The Renwick Gallery of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Frame has been artist-in-residence,
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from 1968 to 1969 and then left
Southern California. During the following four years, he traveled through Europe and North America. He held multiple jobs including assistant manager of a discount department store, gas station attendant, bookstore employee, dishwasher, library assistant, and
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visiting artist or guest lecturer at more than fifty museums, universities and art-related institutions around the United States. He has also taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and the
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Frame spent much of the 1970s studying a variety of art forms, including dance, theater, and literature. After college, he began creating his own work, experimenting with drawing, painting, and printmaking before coming to sculpture.
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and Peter Zokosky. The Bastards completed more than 60 collaborative works and had two exhibitions, one at Hunsaker/Schlesinger gallery in Los Angeles and one at the Davidson gallery in Seattle, Washington.
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In 2005, Frame began to take his work in a new direction. That year, he conceived and began to execute the work that would form his largest exhibition to date. (The work, entitled
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1995, “Burning Lights: Spirituality, Tradition, and Craft in Recent Art From the City of Angels,” Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA, Catalog, Illus.
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1991, “Individual Realities in the California ArtScene,” Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo Japan. Seibu Tsukashin Hall, Amagasaki, Japan, Catalog, Illus.
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good and evil, the inevitability of death, and the struggle to find meaning in life—but always in a connotative rather than denotative manner.”
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1994, “beyond appearance,” The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, and California College of Arts and crafts, Oakland, CA, Catalog, Illus
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began to be reflected directly in his work as he juxtaposed image and text in relief carving. Relief carvings reference, among others, Keats (
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In 2001, Frame closed his studio in the Santa Fe art gallery and moved full-time to Wrightwood, where he continues to live and work.
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296:, which ran from March 3 - March 31. The production was in tandem with the Portland Opera where Faust opened on June 8, 2018.
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1984, “Three Sculptors: John Frame, Sam Hernandez, Gary Martin,” ARCO Center for Visual Art, Los Angeles, CA, Catalog, Illus.
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1994, “The Fifth International Shoe Box Sculpture Exhibition,” Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, Taiwan, Catalog, Illus.
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1990, “Fourth International Shoe Box Sculpture Exhibition,” University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, Catalog, Illus.
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226:). Literary allusions have also appeared frequently in his titles, whose referents include Shakespeare (
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1987, “Avant-garde in the Eighties,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Catalog, Illus.
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1984, “Return of the Narrative,” Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA, Catalog, Illus.
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1997, “Bastards: Individual and Collaborative Works, “Hunsaker/Schlesinger, Santa Monica, CA
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In 2018, Frame served as the Production Designer for the Chicago Lyric Opera production of
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2011 The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California
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Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo Japan. Seibu Tsukashin Hall, Amagasaki, Japan, Catalog, Illus.
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The artist anticipates continuing the project, eventually producing a full-length film.
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Frame has participated in at least 62 group exhibitions. A partial list appears below:
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210:, the earliest work appearing in his 2005 retrospective show, was created in 1980.)
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1985, “Spektrum Los Angeles,” Galerie Hartje, Berlin, Germany. Catalog, Illus.
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1981, “Newcomers 1981,” Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
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from "The Tale of the Crippled Boy: Three Fragments of a Lost Tale," 2011
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731:"FAUST: A New Vision for a Timeless Opera | Lyric Opera of Chicago"
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Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame.
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1997, “Blessings and Beginnings,” Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, CA
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2011, Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
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The Prize: $ 3,000 and a place in LACMA’s Permanent Collection,
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1992 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
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Some are born to sweet delight; some are born to endless night
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from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially
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1989, “Art From Los Angeles,” Nakazawa Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
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The Tale of the Crippled Boy: Three Fragments of a Lost Tale
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The Tale of the Crippled Boy: Three Fragments of a Lost Tale
579:. American Arts Quarterly, Spring 2005. (Anonymous Review)
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Enigma Variations: The Sculpture of John Frame, 1980-2005
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2001, “Representing L.A.,” Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
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2005 Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
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A Group Show of Figures Studies More Than the Body,
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348:1981 Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, Washington
784:. Image Journal Artist of the Month, March 2011.
622:A New Enigmatism: The artists of beyondappearance
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321:1996 Kohn/Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
318:1999 Kohn/Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
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339:1983 Installation Gallery, San Diego, California
333:1987 Jan Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
330:1990 Jan Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
324:1993 Jan Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, California
651:Divine Folly: John Frame at Jan Turner Gallery,
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173:From 1979 to 1980, Frame attended the
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911:21st-century American male musicians
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866:Claremont Graduate University alumni
916:20th-century American male artists
891:21st-century American male artists
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491:. Long Beach Museum of Art, 2005.
309:, Stott Gallery, Portland, Oregon
208:To Hear the Sirens' Song and Live
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664:John Frame's meaning of life
504:L.A. Times, August 30, 2002.
445:"John Frame: The Intuitive."
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653:Artweek, February 22, 1990.
520:L.A. Times, October 2, 1997
360:Cornish College of the Arts
61:must be removed immediately
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816:Filmmakers from California
167:San Diego State University
76:"John Frame" sculptor
861:Sculptors from California
591:Morgan, Robert C. (1993)
418:Claremont Graduate School
240:All A Poet Can Do Is Warn
175:Claremont Graduate School
620:Alter-Gilbert, Gilbert.
362:in Seattle, Washington.
831:American male sculptors
826:American male composers
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604:Drohojowska, Hunter.
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238:), and Wilfred Owen (
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705:Breaking the Figure,
678:Ackerman, Gerald M.
228:As water is in water
54:Contentious material
624:Asylum Annual, 1995
307:Portland Art Museum
187:Michael C. McMillan
735:www.lyricopera.org
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163:Colton, California
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