Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife

1800s Empire, 2014, gold leaf, wood, paint, and composite, by Taylor Holland. Courtesy the artist and Galila Barzilaï-Hollander, Belgium

I’ve been dreaming, I’ve been paying dues I’m not one for the glory And I’ve been falling, won’t be landing soon It’s not the end of the story

I don’t want to hold back I don’t want to slip down I don’t want to think back to the one thing that I know I should have done

Months into my new art-framing job, the stacks awaiting me on the worktable each day still feel like a miracle, a surprise party just for me. The art is piled neatly between empty frames, matboards, sheets of glass, foamboard, giant vinyl portfolios. I turn the pieces over one by one, each a puzzle. Glass, paint, wood, canvas, paper, ink, cardboard, silk, wire, tape, staples. Dog hair. Legos. A golf ball. A recently filed legal brief—just a little stapled booklet—for a federal case about protecting immigrants’ rights. (The young attorney who brought it in explained when I asked, his face full of pride.) A century-old studio portrait of a small boy in a sailor suit, smiling out from under his bangs, taken the year before he died, a faded note handwritten on the back: The brother I never knew. I use my phone to take a snapshot of these words. Later on my computer I’ll enhance it, print it out, then slide it into an acid-free sleeve to be taped onto the finished piece’s back, as the customer requested. The original note will remain, too—sealed safely and invisibly inside the frame. Maybe for another hundred years.

We are not a museum, just a tiny, scruffy, neighborhood frame shop in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb known for Northwestern University and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, for its commitment to social justice and the arts. As in most places, that commitment often fails when it meets reality, but still, Evanston is fierce and beautiful where you least expect it.

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