A modern picture frame’s function is simply to provide a border for a painting or photograph—to be inconspicuous. In Holly Lane’s hands, however, frames play anything but second fiddle.
Holly Lane—Not Enough Time to Love the World, a new exhibit at NUMU New Museum Los Gatos, displays 25 of the Merced artist’s recent paintings and intricately carved basswood frames, which, when viewed together, look like one work of art.
Born in Cleveland in 1954, Lane has worked as an artist since 1988 after she received her MFA from San Jose State University. It was at the university library where she discovered and studied medieval illuminated manuscripts and thought about expanding the limits of picture frames. Her paintings and carved frames have appeared in gallery and museum events all over the country, including a previous 2016 group show at NUMU.
“At that time, and probably still now,” Lane says, “the frame was just a protective border. It signified that everything that was in the frame is art and everything outside the frame is not art. It’s the wall. It’s the frame. It’s whatever. So when I was looking at medieval manuscripts, they had elaborate borders. Some of them had humorous, little creatures. They’re making commentary on the text or they’re further extrapolating from the text. That was my epiphany. I thought a frame could not just be the protector, it could be the artwork. It’s part of the artwork itself. It could be a commentary.”
The collection’s name is taken from one of Lane’s pieces, a painting of bubbles on the surface of water that she calls “an elegy or contemplation about climate change, turmoil and people dying.”
“Bubbles are ephemeral,” Lane says. “They only last a short bit of time. The frame has all kinds of symbolism and iconography of depth and the passing of time.”
The entire survey is influenced by nature, animals, philosophy and mythology. “Gentle Muse,” for example, is a drawing of trees on a mylar balloon that pays homage to her mother, with temples carved into the frame.
“After the Storm” has three different painted scenes and carved doors that are inspired by Henry W. Coe State Park. “Cottonwood Moon” depicts the moon rising above the cottonwood trees in Merced National Wildlife Refuge, and has a bowl at the bottom of the frame’s pedestal. And “Wading Through Amber” paints sandhill cranes in between carvings of cattail plants that grow in the marshes.
Lane’s pieces range in size from six inches to a seven-foot-tall gold sculpture called “Eudaimonia and the Four Pillars of the Sky.” (Eudaimonia is a Greek term from Aristotle meaning either happiness or welfare or human flourishing.) The sculpture consists of four pillars, nine birds, a star inside of a dome and relief carvings of medicinal plants.
Lane says she usually simultaneously conceptualizes both the painting and the frame, going back and forth between the two. Museum visitors can learn more about her artistic process in a concurrent exhibit, Holly Lane—In the Artist’s Studio (Aug. 23-Jan. 26), which features her sketchbooks, drawings, paintings and color trials, as well as painting and woodworking tools.
“I want people who go to the exhibit to want to go out into nature and relish it,” Lane says. “To be soothed by it and healed by it. I want them to love animals and nature and to feel at one with them.”
Holly Lane—Not Enough Time to Love the World opens Aug. 2 and runs through Jan. 5, 2025 at New Museum Los Gatos, 106 E. Main St., Los Gatos. The museum is open Thursday-Sunday; admission $10 ($6 students, seniors and members of the military). numulosgatos.org.
I’ve been a fan since the 80’s. Not only her exquisite frames, no that’s not descriptive enough, but her paintings within are masterly and match the quality. I wish I had one to live with, to get lost in.