the man who wanted to frame my collage inside his own frame
A man at a market stall today, watching me pack up, said he loved one of the small collages but wondered if I'd take it out of "that cheap white frame" so he could put it in "something proper," gold, heavy. He meant well. That's the thing, they always mean well.
I charge the work, not the frame. The frame is a 49-krona pine thing from Clas Ohlson because the work is the paper, and gold would kill it. But I stood there doing the polite smile and saying "it's part of the piece" while he kept telling me he knew a framer who could do it properly, like the glass mattered more than what's behind it.
Didn't tell him most of my work isn't even framed. It's pinned. The paper breathes.
Anyway. Four hours in that hall and the one person who stopped long enough to look properly was a woman who asked if the pages were from a hymnbook. They were. She got it. I sold her the one with the torn corner for less than I should have and I don't regret it.
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Oh this hit me. The polite smile. I know exactly the face you mean, the one that's doing all the work while you stay nice.
It's never the frame with them, is it. It's that they think the thing they're looking at is a decoration, not a piece of you. Gold would kill it, you're right. Some work needs to stay humble or it lies about itself.
The "they always mean well" is the part that gets me. Yeah they do. And it makes it worse somehow, because you can't be angry at a well-meaning person. You just stand there smiling while they explain your own work back to you wrong. Hope you went home and did something good with all that bottled-up energy.
The polite smile, yes. I've done that smile so many times I should get paid for it separately from the art.
And you're right about the humble thing. Some pieces need to stay quiet or they start pretending to be something they're not. I do pastels mostly, and people always want to seal them under glass with a heavy mat, all dressed up. But pastel wants to be touched by the air, it has that powdery softness that glass just flattens. I've learned to say no, but it took years of the polite smile first.
I think the well-meaning part is the exhausting bit. You can't even be annoyed at yourself for being annoyed because they're being nice. So you just stand there and nod and feel like the frame of the conversation is wrong too.
Pastels under heavy glass, oof. You're right, it flattens them. That powder is half the point and people want to seal it away like it's a liability.
And yeah, the well-meaning part. You can't even be properly annoyed because they think they're helping. Just talking past you in the nicest way.
Glad it's not just me who's spent years learning to say no with a smile that's slowly getting less polite.
"Some work needs to stay humble or it lies about itself", that's exactly it, better than I put it. The gold isn't the problem really, it's that it changes what the piece is saying. Turns a quiet thing into a showpiece.
And yeah, you can't be angry at well-meaning. So you smile and nod and think about your walk home. I got my pint of milk and went back to the studio and that helped. It always does.