My life has gone off the map, it seems. Possibly also off the rails.

May 1, 2024 1:20 AM

At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
posted by chavenet (8 comments total)

What a tale.That takes me back! my first job was in a somewhat chaotic, definitely odd framing and mirror workshop, a typical Kiwi United Nations mix of bikers, Samoans, UK East Enders and various people lying low. I haven't thought about that place for thirty years.
posted by unearthed at 3:42 AM on May 1 [4 favorites]

This was really lovely — thanks for sharing it!
posted by ourobouros at 6:33 AM on May 1

A lovely story...My first job as a teen was sweeping the floor around big shredders in a place that shredded and bagged heads of cabbage into slaw. I lasted a week.
posted by Czjewel at 6:58 AM on May 1 [2 favorites]

As soon as she said leaning tower, I knew exactly what she was talking about. It's in Niles and unexpectedly coming across it is slightly disconcerting and then hilarious.
posted by cooker girl at 7:42 AM on May 1 [2 favorites]

I love posts like this, little (or not so little) gems that I might never have otherwise found. Thanks for posting.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:22 AM on May 1 [2 favorites]

Thanks for sharing this charming piece! I never would have found it on my own.
posted by rpfields at 8:51 AM on May 1 [1 favorite]

Lovely essay. My first job after college was at a frame shop in Charleston, SC - the alumni office called up one day to see if they had hired any grads. "Well, there's me," I said. "What did you major in?" they asked. "Art" I said gloomily, "Oh!" they said, excited, "You're working in your field!"

The owner was a lesbian with the most complicated love life of any person I have ever met, straight, gay, bi or what have you. Her lovers would show up at the door, shouting or in tears, and she would escape out the back. "Don't tell her I was here!" Sometimes our paychecks bounced. She kept trying to enroll me in various pyramid schemes. It was stupendously rare when anyone brought in any actual art. Mostly it was posters. The Southeastern Wildlife Expo poster of the year was always our big seller, ducks and puppies, and we framed it up real nice, with double archival mats and cutouts and metal frames - cha ching! It was the end of the 80s. It was basically a terrible job, only marginally better than the restaurants I'd been working in during college and I was delighted to escape. But knowing how to frame, even if not well, has been super useful for the rest of my life as a dirt poor artist with a day job. I'm working in my field!
posted by mygothlaundry at 8:59 AM on May 1 [30 favorites]

First job after college also in a frame shop, in Pittsburgh, mid-90s. So much like Brenner describes; no computers, trashcan of scrap glass, lengths of moulding that were decades old, waiting to be cut. And yes, very little original art, indeed real art made the owner nervous about liability. I had to turn away an art history professor who brought in some huge Phillip Pearlstein drawings. An order that was over a thousand dollars, but the owner was (rightly) worried about his crew of slackers wielding X-acto knives.

We did frame one memorable original though: the customer unrolled a drawing of what looked like Jodie Foster holding a lamb. But the customer also looked enough like Jodie Foster that I thought it might be a self-portrait. Co-worker immediately recognized it, though: Hannibal Lecter's drawing of Clarice, as Silence of the Lambs was filmed nearby a few years before. The customer was the commissioned artist. We framed a Lecter!
posted by bendybendy at 9:48 AM on May 1 [12 favorites]