Laurie Frank

LAURIE FRANK founded her gallery (then called Still/Moving) in 1998 with Floyd Byars with a focus on the still photography of motion picture cinematographers and film directors. , The gallery showcased the photographic work of academy award winning cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters) and Haskell Wexler (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), directors Harold Becker (Sea of Love) and Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) with an eye towards exploring the relationship of the individual artist to the collaborative medium of film. In 2000 Laurie Frank moved the gallery to a space on the courtyard of Les Deux Cafés in Hollywood where she expanded its mandate to include painting and sculpture as well as photography under the name Media Rare Gallery. In 2002 Media Rare moved again to its present location at Santa Monica’s prestigious Bergamot Station Arts Center, under a new name, Frank Pictures Gallery. The gallery’s roster of exhibitions includes legendary photographers Horace Bristol, David Kennerly, Malone Mills, Alexandra Hedison, Jeff Dunas, Robert Stivers, and Lynn Goldsmith, many noted California artists David Florimbi, David Eddington, Cayetana Conrad, Patricia Terrell O'Neal, Naomi Kremer, Tiffany Trenda, Shirley Cannon, RheaCarmi, Melly Trochez, Robert Tahar, as well as Texas based Annabelle Livermore (Laura Bush’s favorite painter), and Hollywood hyphenates Val Kilmer (actor-collagist) Joel Grey(actor-photographer), Billy Zane (actor-painter), Andy Summers (musician -photographer) Ione Skye (actress-painter) and Jerzy Skolimowski (Director-painter). Articles on the gallery and its artists (and gallerist) have been featured in the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, W, Venice Magazine and Hollywood Life. Laurie Frank is also an accomplished screenwriter and director outside of her gallery. She co-wrote the films Making Mr. Right and Love Crimes for the big screen and Heavy Petting, a sitcom pilot for the Fox Network and Skin Deep for Aaron Spelling Productions for CBS, as well as episodes of The Red Shoe Diaries. She directed Charlie Barnett in his Comedy Special for Cinemax and has directed shorts for Saturday Night Live including Prose and Cons, featuring Eddie Murphy's premier on celluloid. Her three shorts for the American Film Institute debuted then first-time actors Johnny Depp, Sherilyn Fenn and Max Perlich. She was writer-director-producer of the first live action interactive episodic series for a major studio when she created Angels & Outlaws for MGM, conceived to be a platform for a television series and feature film franchise. Ms. Frank wrote three of the first live-action games on CD-ROM. Her games for Digital pictures: Prizefighter, Make My Video: INXS and Make My Video: Marky Mark won gold, silver and bronze medals in the New Media Invision 1994 Multimedia Awards. Previous to moving to Los Angeles, Ms. Frank co-produced and directed four shows on female sexuality for the CBS award winning series, The Body Human (Daytime Directing Emmy). She was Associate Producer of ABC News Close-up, the network's documentary unit and was field producer and director for Relations, a prime-time pilot on ABC. She began her career as a writer for McCall's Magazine; she went on to become a founding editor of You Magazine and the Arts Editor of Distinction. She is a contributor to English publications The Sunday Times of London and The Tattler. She is a graduate of Yale University and the American Film Institute. In 2005 she became a member of the Board of Directors of PEN USA, the international society of published writers.