February 2021
Bay View / Hunter’s Point
Frame is an enlarged version of an antique Rococo style frame. Howard’s frame is at the scale of the natural world around it, between 15-20 feet high. The use of the frame is no longer intended to frame a single small work of art, it frames the multiple views and perspectives of the Shipyard’s landscape.
Frame is a piece that sits in collaboration with Walter Hood’s Refrain.
Frame–Refrain transfers the framed object’s connoted values of appreciation, privilege, and value to the landscape itself. Frame–Refrain provides a historical point of contact between the worlds of public and private, bridging the brawny, industrial world of steel and concrete and the fragile treasures of the world of art and antiques.
Mildred Howard occupies several posts on this site. Mildred Howard (born 1945) is an African-American artist known primarily for her sculptural installation and mixed-media assemblages. Howard was born in San Francisco and was raised in Berkeley, California. Howard began her adult creative life as a dancer, before working in visual art. In the early 1980s, Howard’s installations took the form of manipulated windows from storefronts and churches. They later evolved into constructed habitats that provided walk-in environments.
Frame was paid for with monies from the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration.