Better late than never

When I graduated from college, I had to move back to my parents' house. Having paid for my college education myself, I was absolutely broke. It took a year, but in January 1985, I packed up my stuff and moved into my first apartment. I had a roommate, and it was she who had invited me to live with her since her roommate at the time (her sister) was about to get married.
Our apartment was in the center of town, above the Army-Navy store. Just around the corner was the storefront gallery of a local artist whose work I loved. I used to stand on the sidewalk and wish that I would someday be able to afford one of the watercolors or lithographs on display in the window--many of which depicted Doylestown streetscapes.

When my 24th birthday came a few months later, my roommate was waiting for me as soon as I woke up. She handed me a heavy cardboard tube and said, "You can't even imagine..."

She was right.

The tube held a lithograph of David Frame's print, Dance. Frame had pencil-signed the print and written a birthday message along the bottom of the paper. I was astounded.

Dance by David L. Frame, 1976

I knew how much this print cost, and I couldn't imagine how my roommate, a college student, had been able to buy it. She told me that she stopped in to take a look at the lithograph a few days before. She asked the man who was sitting there reading a magazine if the gallery had anything small she could see. They didn't. He asked her why it had to be small and she said, "Because I know that I can't afford anything big."

My roommate went on to chat with this guy for quite some time. She explained that she was shopping for a birthday gift for me, that we were newly on our own, both totally broke, and that I loved art and was generally interesting. She told him that I traveled overseas without my parents--twice--as a teen and that I spent my senior year in Chile. She also explained that I had just graduated with a degree in communications/broadcasting/journalism, but I hadn't yet broken into the field. She also said that I had a nice collection of coffee-table art books, but that I had never been able to buy a "real" piece of art. In fact, I didn't have one thing to hang on the wall of our apartment.

She mentioned that she was standing in this gallery because I absolutely loved David Frame's work. The man asked her which subjects I liked and she pointed to Dance. She said that I was so taken with the print, that I had stopped in several times just to look at it.

The man said that in order to show her some things I might like, he needed to know how much she could afford to spend on this gift. She told him, and it was about half of the selling price of Dance.

And then it happened. David Frame introduced himself as the artist, saying that being the artist qualified him to be flexible in his pricing.

I never had the money to get the lithograph framed. Something always came up, or I was in the process of moving, or sending money to my parents, or needing a car, or paying for graduate school, or something. Every year around my birthday, I would take the picture out of the tube and just look at it before tucking it away for another year.

This went on for too many years. This year, I decided that I wanted to spend some money on something that wasn't medical or pharmaceutical in nature. One Saturday afternoon, I took the tube out of its storage spot and headed out to, of all places, Hobby Lobby. I had a coupon.

There is something about this picture. The framing technician unrolled the print and weighted the corners with little sandbags. After a day full of baby pictures, ten-dollar posters, memorabilia and the other things people want to frame, he was stunned to be looking at, as he said it, "the real deal."

I gave him the short version of the story of how I got the print and what I knew about the artist. He stepped aside to take a call, and gradually, a small group of people gathered around the Frame print. Everyone was taken with it, and everyone had questions. I love this picture and I was glad to be able to tell about it. The framing shop manager came over and asked if I needed help. I said, no, I was waiting for the other framer to finish his call. The manager immediately fell in love with the print and asked me a lot of questions about the artist and about Bucks County.

Then he asked me why it had taken me 24 years to get the picture framed. I explained about finances, grad school, life, and my recent medical expenses, as well as the financial realities of my choice to work with refugees. I said, "I still can't afford this, but enough is enough. It's time."

When my framing tech came back, his boss called him aside and talked with him briefly. The tech came over and said, "My boss wants me to do this job for you for half price, no strings attached."

And so it is that I finally have this large, gorgeous picture prominently displayed in my little house. It looks perfect.

David Frame's bio/obituary.

View some of David Frame's art by collection