Franco has designed theatre and opera sets for nearly forty years, working with luminaries like Gian Carlo Menotti, Frank Corsaro, and Ian Strasfogel, for locations as varied as the New York City Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, The Music Opera Association/Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, The Oxford Playhouse and the Edinburgh Festival in the United Kingdom.

Franco also designed the Emmy award-winning production of La Boheme with Luciano Pavarotti, which went on to tour Italy and the world.

Franco lived and worked the heyday of his design career in a warehouse style loft in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood in the 1980’s. The series of original paintings in this show is a fascinating interior catalogue of this time period, begun as Franco wrestled to regain his eyesight after major surgery in 1997 and developed in private over his last 12 years teaching stage design at North Carolina School of the Arts.

SoHo Memory Paintings | Franco Colavecchia

La Boheme Act I | Philadelphia Opera 1982 | Franco Colavecchia

Check The Frame Maker blogs for more detail, and be sure to join us next week, June 4, at The Frame Maker showroom for our reception for “SoHo Memory Paintings– Franco is in San Diego right now on his annual teaching visit to UC-San Diego and will be our honored guest Thursday night!

If you missed Jessica at ArtWalk in Little Italy back in April, her booth and presentation was the product of a new scholarship program sponsored by ArtWalk and The Frame Maker, and lead by John Hiemstra of the San Diego Finishing School.

In the program, a student artist form SDSU is awarded with a mentoring sequence in the “Business of Art” built around the two day exhibition ArtWalk exhibition.

We’ve written some about the ArtWalk experience for us as 2009 Event Sponsors, and its fun to see both shows serenely installed now in The Frame Maker showroom after two frantic days at ArtWalk.

Here are a few pictures of Jessica installation in the Artists’ Services room, we’ll post more about this particular project from our point of view soon.

Jessica Siemens original oil painting at The Frame maker

Jesica Siemens original watercolors at The Frame Maker

We hope you’ll join us to see what six San Diego artists– who also happen to be longtime custom framing professionals– do when turned loose on the most current digital reproduction technologies available today. Through The Frame Maker’s new Artist Services program partner Moebius Color, these artists have printed on paper, canvas, steel, plexi and even directly on to an innovative green, 100% recycled panel product using durable UV resistant inks to create both new experimental editions of their work and in one case, to create new originals altogether.

Here’s a few preview pictures of the final installation.

Jason Sherry at The Frame maker

Mike Brown at The Frame Maker

Tom Houk at The Frame Maker

We threw up some pictures from our booth last week and went off to take a nap; we point you back to that post today as a preview of the next show here in our showroom, “Artists’ Proof: 6 San Diego artists explore digital reproduction”.

The 7 pieces displayed in our booth at ArtWalk are part of the larger show installed this week in the shop.

(It wasn’t just the bloggers who needed a rest after ArtWalk.)

Here’s a picture of TFM lead designer Tom Houk’s contribution to the show, a series of three pieces that aren’t reproduction in the expected fashion. Rather, Tom has utilized digital reproduction onto steel and plexiglass panels layered and collaged with found objects to create original one of a kind piece.

detail of Tom Houk's installation at The Frame Maker

Here’s some preview pictures:

After our A-is-for-Art reception on March 24 (next Tuesday), we were going to move on to a show we are developing in house. But because so many people like our current show, ECHOES, we’re going to reinstall it for the month of April leading up to our booth at ArtWalk on April 25th and 26th, so if you haven’t seen Lea’s art glass and Maire’s abstract photography yet, now you’ve got another chance to get down to our Mission Hills showroom to check it out.

Here’s the special invitation the Children’s Center whipped up for Tuesday:

Everyone contributes to making this community project work. The “A-is-for-Art” event itself is the culmination of a year’s art work and the genesis of the next: all the work created by the kids is auctioned off, with the proceeds going to fund next year’s program.

Last year, we were pleased to frame up twenty paintings for an even better show at the KPBS studios on the SDSU campus. This year we are really proud to display selections from the show in our showroom starting next week. We are planning a reception on Tuesday March 24 as a preview to the auction itself on April 10th (back on campus at KPBS).

Here is a link to a story about the event in today’s “Daily Aztec”, the SDSU student paper online.