Nick's Favorite Framing projects from 2017

As we start the new year I wanted to review some of my favorite framing projects from last year. If you see any framing techniques or styles that you would like to replicate with one of your own pieces, stop on down for a one-on-one framing consultation!

Vintage David Bowie Poster

Hand Painted Kenyan Rug & Pillowcase

A Mark Hamill Signed Star Wars Poster

Stephen Sheffield's Hand Sewn Collage

Andrew Seguin's Cyanotypes for Panopticon Gallery's First Exhibition

A Selection from Newport Art Museum's 'be of love and other stories'

Somerville Toy Camera Festival

Francine Weiss

About the Festival:

Since 2013, the Somerville Toy Camera Festival has celebrated the quirky and creative results that can happen when photographers are forced to loosen their controls, submit to the light and embrace the accidental. Each year since, the Festival has brought a wide range of toy camera photography by US and international artists together in simultaneous shows at galleries throughout the city, and featured related programming including artist talks/panel discussions, workshops, social events, and a darkroom day.

This year the guest juror was Professor Christopher James who is the Director of the MFA photography program at Lesley College of Art and Design in Boston.

Liz Ellenwood with the Gold Holga Award!

What is a toy camera?

Holga, Diana and LOMO just to name a few. They are simple and inexpensive film cameras where you have little to no control over shutter speed and apertures. Common qualities of images made with toy cameras are vignetting, soft focus, light leaks and other distortions. It is the true point-and-shoot camera!

Toy camera photography has been widely exhibited at many popular art shows, such as the annual "Krappy Kamera" show at the Soho Photo Gallery in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City. Various publications such as Popular Photography magazine have reviewed the Diana camera in its own right as an "art" producing image maker. Several books have also featured the work of toy cameras, such as The Friends of Photography's "The Diana Show", "Iowa" by Nancy Rexroth, and "Angels at the Arno" by Eric Lindbloom.

Chris D'Amore

When is the exhibition?

The 2016 Somerville Toy Camera Festival will take place in September-October, with exhibitions at three non-profit spaces in Somerville MA: Nave Gallery Annex, Washington Street Gallery, and Brickbottom Gallery. For a full list of opening dates check here.

In addition,  The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA will have a walk-in camera obscura built by artist Marian Roth! The installation of the camera obscura in a small gallery at the Griffin will take place on September 8, and is open to the public. The camera obscura will be accessible to visitors during regular Griffin Museum hours through October 2, 2016.

Liz Wood

How are we involved?

We have been proud sponsors of the Somerville Toy Camera Festival for the past few years. We offer a 15% discount for the exhibiting artists of the Festival for their scanning, printing & framing needs. Every year we look forward to seeing what each artist has created with their plastic cameras!

Ky Lewis

One Stop Shopping for Exhibition Production

What is one stop shopping for exhibition production? Here at Panopticon Imaging we can assist you with all phases of your exhibition from file upload, paper selection, printing, scanning, image editing, image sequencing, framing consultation, custom box building and delivery! Planning an exhibition is exciting and nerve-wracking.  We work directly with you to make the production process as stress free as we can.

To start all you have to do is upload your images to our website. We can also create a secure FTP login for you, if you are printing over 10 large files ( over 10GB).  Most recently we have worked with the Flash Forward Festival to produce the exhibition "Boston: Irish" for Boston photographer Bill Brett.

Framing doesn't have to be a daunting task. We have a vast variety of mounting, matting and frame moldings for you to choose from. We are more than happy to assist in selecting the frame that will highlight your artwork and convey your visual aesthetic.

Once the exhibition is all framed. We take meticulous care of every photograph by individually wrapping and photo cornering the images. Also, on large scale shows we can mark each image with the thumbnail print out on the outside wrapping. This makes the installing easier as you can sort all of the images.

Also, we can create all kinds of boxes for photographs. Are they getting shipped? Or transported on a van for local delivery? We do not buy pre-made boxes instead we customize everything for you. Each box is built by hand to ensure that your images arrive in perfect condition. We created half boxes for these images for delivery to Boston. This will protect the images from shifting during transport.

We have a delivery van that can accommodate images up to 56x70 inches in width! We can make deliveries on request to Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Here at Panopticon we try and make it as easy as possible for so you can enjoy your opening! For more information on Bill Brett's work check out his website here.