Frames

An act of transition

I recently procured my first, framed picture. Yes, growing up I had gotten movie posters put onto foam core, pieces of plexi clipped on. Temporal, transient objects.

No, this time it was a cut out of a very old ad for a beer that contained some ominous language that drew me in as a writer. It was matted professionally and sits within a beautiful, wood frame.

When I brought it home and hung it, I wondered where I had gotten the urge to have it. Was it impulse? Or was there something inside of me that actually had an appreciation for visual objects. It’s not that I did not understand good design, I’d just been impervious to it before. I don’t seek out art museums and find it hard to appreciate the nuances when confronted with a piece of fine art.

Then, I remembered that my parents collected art for their walls. I suddenly raced back to a vivid memory of,fairly soon after we moved from London to Kuala Lumpur, me accompanying my parents as they bought some Native American themed art from a pop-up gallery in a suburb called Damansara Kim. That then reminded me of the immense, framed dancing geishas, all done in fabric that they had and the beautiful, porcelain Buddha which doubled as a light as well.

It had never really hit home with me how connected my parents actually were to art. They don’t exude the pretension of knowing what they bought, or who it was by. All they knew was that they liked it.

That it made them feel something.

I then came round to what a colleague told me about how framing something and putting it on your wall is a rite of passage. It marks your transition from the teenager with posters tacked on the wall to an adult who is considering what it is you like and what it is you want to say as well.

I guess that frame on the wall means I am growing up as well. Where once I was brazen and impetous, now I am daring and considered.