ANSELADAMSGROVE

Art gallery owners spend a great deal of time framing pieces of artwork to be displayed during shows. For a gallery owner, doing this job yourself can save you a great deal of money, and will ensure that your artwork looks the way you desire. All manner of different framing and matting supplies can be purchased from online fine art photography picture frame suppliers, who offer not only the picture frames you need but all of the accessories, including mat and mount board, glazing, picture corners and hinging tape, as well as hanging apparatus, so that your gallery will look beautiful.

If your gallery has a particular focus, such as fine art photographs, you will likely select frames that are made of thin yet durable anodized black metal. Particularly for black and white photography, you will want a thin frame along with a wide white mat board. If everything on display is framed in a consistent way in terms of framing and matting supplies, then the focus will truly be on the artwork. It also helps to make the room look less busy, and visitors will find it a more restful environment for viewing the art. Also, if you are using the same type and style of frames and mat board, you can save additionally by purchasing the framing and matting supplies that you use most often in bulk quantities.

Each picture, in addition to photo framing supplies such as the frame and mat board, will also need a mount board. These photo framing supplies can be made of conservation quality foamcore, which is lightweight yet very strong.

You will also need framing and matting supplies to attach the artwork to the mountboard. In this case, you could choose from hinging tape or picture corner photo framing supplies. Hinging tape art framing supplies allows you to connect the mat to the mount board, and sandwich the photo in between them. This leaves the artwork more free in the frame, and helps to prevent wrinkling of the artwork’s surface due to changes in room temperature. Other art framing supplies you could use for this purpose are picture corners. These framing and matting supplies go on the corners of your artwork and are attached to the mountboard with adhesive on the back of them. The picture corner art framing supplies are quick and easy to use, and are a popular choice in photo framing supplies for galleries.

Glazing art framing-supplies come in two styles. Those are glass and acrylic. While glass is durable, acrylic is lightweight, so you will need to decide which you prefer in art framing supplies.

Your final photo framing supplies needed are the hanging apparatus for each picture. These can be made of wire or metal, depending on the size of the artwork.

You can select from dozens of framing choices by looking at online frame supplier’s websites to see what is available.

Busy art galleries that feature fine art photographs and other types of artwork know that gallery packaging is an important component used to keep the gallery running smoothly. When artwork is sold, art packaging is needed to get the piece protected and shipped out to the customer in a timely manner. When shows rotate through the gallery, photographs and paintings must be placed into gallery storage that will protect the pieces until the next time they are taken out for display. By carrying a range of gallery packaging items on hand, you will be ready for any shipping or storage project that arises at your art gallery.

Art Packaging

The packaging of artwork should serve several key purposes. You want packaging that will fully provide cushioned protection for the surfaces and especially the corners of your fine art photographs and paintings. The packaging not only needs to be durable, but also lightweight and streamlined, especially if the artwork needs to be shipped to a customer. Flexibility in how you can insert the artwork into the packaging also makes it easier and quicker to use.

It is for these reasons that gallery owners often turn to a gallery pouch for their packaging needs. A gallery pouch is like Bubble Wrap brand plastic material, but has been changed in order to meet the needs of those who are packaging and storing artwork. A gallery pouch has the familiar plastic air bubbles, but it also encloses those air bubbles in between two layers of laminated polyethylene. What this means is that there is protective layer on both sides of the air bubbles used in this type of specialized art pouch, so it is much harder to break those air bubbles, a common occurrence with ordinary wraps.

Gallery Storage

Gallery storage requires wrapping materials that are cushioning, lightweight, durable and easy to use. For storage purposes, using a gallery pouch makes sense, because the bags are sized to fit both large and small pieces of artwork. Another great feature that makes the use of an art pouch popular is that the opening of the pouch is sealed with hook and loop fasteners, making this type of pouch reusable, and thus can save a gallery money over the long term.

Pictures can be placed in the pouch, and if they are framed it is a great idea to use cardboard corners to protect the edges of the artwork from damage, and then the pouches can be stacked on shelves or inside storage boxes. In this way the artwork can be carefully preserved until you need it. Find the gallery pouch and other types of packaging and storage items useful for art galleries from fine art photography framing suppliers online.

If you are trying to frame your fine art photographs, you have several choices to make when it comes to mounting the artwork to the mount board. Although it is quick and easy to simply use an adhesive spray to glue the photo to the mount, it is not possible afterward to remove the photo from the mount board without damaging the print. Over time, the chemicals in adhesives can react with the surface of the photos as well, and cause discoloration. If you are looking for way way to mount your photos that is considered conservation quality and allows you the flexibility of removing the photo later on if you wish, then you will want to try using photo. Archival photo corners are an easy answer for securing your fine art photographs to mount board.

Photo corner can help to preserve your artwork in various ways. First, archival photo should be made of conservation quality materials, for this will help to prolong the life of the artwork in which they come into contact. Second, the use of photo corner mounts allows the photograph to expand and contract due to changes in temperature without the surface wrinkling, which is impossible if the artwork is permanently affixed to the mount board.

In order to hide the photo-corners so that they are not seen, you have a couple of choices. Clear photo corners can be used for this purpose. Another way to go is to select a wide enough mat board to place over the photograph being held in the photo corners, and the mat board will hide them. In all cases, photo work best with photographs that have a border edging them.

Photo-corner mounts are made from varying materials. For the best clear photo-corners that are also rated for archival purposes, you will want to look for acid-free polypropylene clear photo corners. Also look for products that are listed as “photo safe,” so that they do not damage the delicate top surface of your photographs. The back of the photo-corners will be treated with a pressure-sensitive adhesive, so you simply pull the thin covering off the adhesive, place the corner mount where you wish and press it down. This makes them very quick and easy to use, and it also helps to preserve your photographs because the adhesive never comes in contact with the artwork.

You can buy photo corner mounts from better online fine art photography framing suppliers. It is an excellent idea to keep them on hand, especially if you do a lot of framing, so that you will have the supplies you need to frame your photographs inexpensively yourself.

If you are an artist who works with paintings or fine art photography, then an extension of working in those mediums is what to do with the artwork when done. This inevitably leads to picture framing, and it becomes a second skill that fine artists need to learn in order to truly finish their artwork off masterfully. You may know that standard picture are available in ready-made picture frames, and that unusual sizes are available when you create a custom frame. But knowing exactly what picture frame sizes to purchase for your artwork can be somewhat confusing. You will need to know a couple of different dimensions before you shop for your picture frame, in order to ensure that you will get picture frames sizes that will match your artwork.

You will first need to measure your artwork. This means that you need to know the dimensions of the image, which can be different from the size of the paper if it includes a border.

Once you know the size of the artwork, you can then tackle finding the correct picture frames sizes to suit. When you look at potential picture frames, you will need to see if a mat is included. The opening of the mat is smaller than the outer dimensions of the picture frame, and this is where people sometimes get confused with common picture frame sizes. The actual standard picture sizes that you will see listed on the frame packaging usually refers to the inside opening dimension of the frame without a mat. Even when you see standard picture sizes listed, they are not absolutely correct, because most frames are cut a little larger to allow room for the glazing as well as mount and mat boards to fit, and to provide the needed clearance for artwork size changes due to fluctuations in temperature.

The key, then is to know what the outside dimensions are of your fine art photographs or paintings, and then check the inner dimension of the picture frames sizes to see if they fit together. You will also need to think about if you will be using a mat with your artwork. If yes, you will need frame picture sizes that are larger than the dimension of your art piece to compensate for the width of the mat board, or else use frame picture sizes to match the art’s dimensions, knowing that the edges of your artwork will not be visible when it is framed. This may diminish the effect that you want from your art, so it pays to measure the frame picture sizes and compare them to the matboard’s exact opening as well as their external size in order to get a good fit.

If you discover that you need something outside of the common picture frame sizes, custom framing is available. Ready made frames come in common picture frame sizes.

Once you know these tricks, you will be able to select picture frame sizes that work well with your fine art photographs and paintings.

Over the past few years, mainstream media has picked up on the idea that global climate change is a negative event and that we should be yelling at the tops of our collective lungs to summon a dragon slayer to deliver us from this beast of burden.

Despite reports of scientific cover-ups and misinformation, one would be hard pressed to make a case that the climate isn’t changing. Visit any Ansel Adams location and compare your new photograph with those he took back in the day. We can see with our naked eye the receding of ice fields, the rising ocean levels, and we have all experienced those freak snow storms in the middle of deserts. And all the while, we proclaim the earth is coming to an end.

Billions of years before man and his ‘progress’ capitalized on her resources, Mother Earth has always taken care of herself. And she will continue to do so. Earth is absolutely not in trouble. Mankind, on the other hand, should be very wary about making any long term plans. And for (likely) monetary reasons, those two entities, earth and mankind, have had their names tossed together, interchanged in some generic dice game conceived to presumably fuel passions for charitable donations, job creation strategies, and other ill-connected nefarious motives.

Want proof? Name one charitable organization that is called Mankind First!, Save Mankind, or Mankind Conservation Corps. You cannot because they do not exist. And why don’t they exist? Because of the 6.5 billion ‘mankinds’ on earth, barely a handful would fork over their hard earned money for such a concept. There is just no sell in saving mankind.

In Copenhagen recently, more than a hundred countries delivered representatives to discuss global climate change. What’s to discuss? Mother Earth is on a menstruation cycle of sorts, purging herself of toxins and waste. She has done this forever. Ice Ages, Jurassic Era, blah blah blah. Climate change is an inevitable and natural occurrence in the cycle of Mother Earth. Period.

I wonder how many carbon offset credits were needed for that Copenhagen conference.

Sure, Bangladesh has seen their coastal waters rise, as have other countries. And sure, it’s a bad thing for those living in Bangladesh coastal communities. But there will always be a Bangladesh coastal shoreline. You may just have to move inland a bit to live there! Maybe that old joke about ocean front property in Arizona has a ring of truth to it.

And to be sure, not everyone is adversely affected by the current climate changes. Discussions with aboriginal peoples in Northern Canada might give one a different perspective, as they do not fully share the mainstream view of dominant world countries. There are indeed some positives to this climate change. The censured mainstream media, major conservation groups, and interested multinational corporations will not speak openly about these positives.

No, my fellow reader, contrary to what certain religious, political, and social groups might have you believe, earth is not coming to an end… at least, not because of global climate change.

And that’s my take…

©2010 by Curtis Sagmeister. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author
Curtis Sagmeister is self-described as a Photographer, Author, Poet, Songwriter, Student of Human Behavior, Community Activist, Social Commentator, Environmental Steward and Wage Slave. A number of his creative works have been published throughout the world and he recently launched his website at http://www.sagmeister.ca and a blog accessible from his website.