John Frame (sculptor)
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.
His father, Rudolph Randolph Frame, had only a third-grade education and was a welder and sheet metal worker for the Santa Fe Railway.
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, F. Scott Hess, Cecilia Miguez, Ken Jones, Wes Christensen, Luis Serrano, Stephen Douglas and Stephen Dean Moore, among many others.
Though the refinement of his technical skill is evident in the stylistic changes in his work over the years, he has remained primarily a figurative sculptor with a humanistic, expressionist bent.
[7] 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.
[5] 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).
[4][7][8][9][10] Critics have noted other diverse echoes and influences in Frame's work, including 19th century allegorical statuary,[10] Black Forest Carvings,[2] aboriginal fetish figures [11] romanesque and gothic effigies, American Arts and Crafts, and cubism [12] His work has been noted to have commonalities with that of Joseph Cornell,[7] H.C. Westermann, Michael McMillen,[5] and Stephen DeStaebler [13] His sculptural output increased between 1984 and 1990.
[2] In the late 1990s, Frame's interest in literature began to be reflected directly in his work as he juxtaposed image and text in relief carving.
[2] 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.
[14] Combining “humanistic concerns with irony, intellect, and psychological insight” [15] they deal with the human condition, spirituality, and nature,[2] with transformation and sacrifice.
Critic Gerald Ackerman has interpreted the piece thus: “[it] gives us an unwelcome and unsettling realization of the ambiguity of both sexuality and affection, and of the troubles their impulsive interweaving can engender”.
[14] 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.
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 sculpted characters, most of whom are fully articulated, with moving fingers, bodies, and jaws.
Frame has been artist-in-residence, visiting artist or guest lecturer at more than fifty museums, universities and art-related institutions around the United States.
