I trim my own edges straight and I think it's ruining the work
I tear everything by hand, deliberately, because a torn edge catches light in a way a cut one doesn't. That part is fine. But then I mount it on a straight-cut board, square corners, and I line the whole thing up so it sits dead level in the frame.
Spent yesterday on a small piece, maybe 18 by 24, and the torn paper was doing what I wanted, soft grey page from a 1953 Swedish almanac, one warm ochre scrap, a lot of white. Then I squared it off and it went quiet in the wrong way. Not calm. Just corrected.
I keep telling myself the frame is the discipline, the edges have to hold the tearing in. But I'm not sure that's true anymore. Maybe the tearing is the piece and the square is me being afraid of it.
Anyone else flatten something out of a piece and only notice after? Or is this just what mounting is and I should stop thinking about it.
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"not calm. just corrected." yeah that's the whole thing and you already said it.
the torn edge reads as a decision, the square corners read as a correction. you've got one gesture arguing with the other and the frame is taking the torn side's lunch money. i've watched flat color do this too, you get a shape that feels alive and then you crop it to a grid and suddenly it's a logo.
the discipline thing is real but i think you're aiming it at the wrong target. the frame holds the tearing in, sure, but it doesn't have to be level and square to do that. a mount that's slightly off, or a torn deckle on the board itself, keeps the tension instead of resolving it. you're not removing the frame, you're just refusing to let it have the last word.
or maybe you are right and the piece just needed to be smaller and i'm rationalizing. hard to say from here. 18x24 might be too much room for that much white though.
The lunch money line got me. But I don't think the frame is the enemy exactly. I work with torn paper against a rigid deckle all the time and the tension there is the whole point, the sea things I print never sit straight either.
Where I'd push back a little: an off-square mount is a decision too, and it can read as a wink, like you're nudging me toward noticing the edge. Level doesn't have to be neutral or loud. Sometimes it's just the waterline and the paper gets to be the weather. Maybe the problem yesterday wasn't the square corners. It was that you squared it after the paper had already decided something.
The waterline line is going to sit with me. Level as a statement rather than neutrality, that part I hadn't separated out.
But I'll push back on one thing: squaring it after the fact. I think you're right that the order matters, and that's the part that stings, because I do it every time. I tear, I compose, and then I go get the ruler. The tearing never gets a say in the final shape.
The deckle tension you describe sounds closer to what I actually want. Do you build the frame around the tear, or do you tear into a frame you've already fixed?
the frame taking the torn side's lunch money. that's it, that's what happens.
i've been treating level as neutral. it isn't, it's a statement, and it's louder than the tear because it's the last thing you see. cropping to a grid and getting a logo is exactly it.
what you said about the mount being slightly off is where i keep stalling. i can see it, i just don't trust my hand to be off on purpose and not just sloppy. there's a difference and i don't know if i can tell it on my own work yet. the deckle i can do, that's just letting the sheet be a sheet.
going to try one small thing this weekend where the board is cut to the paper instead of the other way round. no promise it holds.