While working at a small custom frame shop in my mid-20s I answered to an honest, hard-working butch lesbian. The actual owner of the business was an upper-middle class nouveau riche mama’s boy with unresolved homoerotic daddy issues. Somehow, the two formed a dysfunctional symbiotic parental unit that kept the shop running on an even keel. I loved the women in that building like sisters and felt more at home there than with my family, for the most part. Making $8.50 an hour in Memphis, TN was pretty decent and I could do that job in my sleep. A fine place to sit idle and figure out some priorities.
It always amazes me what kind of shit people will frame. A purely aesthetic industry, it’s apparently the only way to keep walls from closing in on you. There are people compulsively spending $60 to do what most parents accomplish with a fridge magnet. Paying to frame every art project their child brings home from school, as if that makes it worth more. “All your kid wants is your attention, dipshit. But thanks for the busywork, it keeps the boss off my back.”
Sometimes I got the chance to work with real art. Unique items that could be copied but never recreated. Names like Freida Hamm, Pinkney Herbert, Maysey Craddock and Rana Rochat are forever burned in my memory from admiring their work in detail while framing for gallery shows. The rest of the junk people bother to frame passes into a blur after the first few weeks. Every diploma, poster and photo collage hammering home exactly how much money people have to waste hanging crap on walls. Honestly, the best art shouldn’t need a frame. Unless your art is making frames. The parade of mundane bullshit gave us a chance to encourage creative decisions and maximize aesthetic but there are only so many angles on a turd. Ultimately, all shit looks the same.
The only downside to the whole thing was the aforementioned boss. He’s the type of ignorant redneck that throws elaborate tailgating parties for college football games but didn’t actually attend college. That itself wouldn’t be so bad, except he lives in Memphis and supports a team in Knoxville. If I’m going to arbitrarily decide I’m a college sports fan, I’d at least pick one of the local teams. I mean this is the SEC, proximity is 70% of the fan base. If you want to travel multiple hours for every game, follow the Big 10 like a real man.