Photo courtesy of Four Corners Gallery
Gallery director Karen Clanton, left, and owner Carla Hamilton of Four Corners Gallery, located in Inverness Village.
Carla Hamilton is owner and CEO of Four Corners Gallery, located at 4700 U.S. 280 #8 in Inverness Village.
Q: Please tell our readers about yourself and the Four Corners Gallery?
A: Four Corners Gallery is both an art gallery and a custom picture frame shop. We specialize in conservation framing. Our gallery director, Karen Clanton, is a Certified Picture Framer (CPF), leading us in preservation framing practices. A CPF is required to stay up on conservation techniques and materials and retest every three years to maintain credentials. I’m the owner and came to the business through my background in design, art history and business. Four Corners has been in business at its current location since 2004.
Q: What all services does Four Corners Gallery provide?
A: We offer a wide variety of services that go beyond traditional framing. We sell fine art — originals, limited editions and prints — from artists around the world. We design and build custom frames, with more than 3,500 styles to choose from, including options made from acrylic, steel, leather and hand-carved gold leaf. We also create acrylic box displays for both tabletop and wall presentation.
Another part of what we do includes damage assessment for insurance claims, as well as art and antique frame restoration. We offer digital retouching for damaged photos or documents — and even enhance everyday phone pictures — and we can make archival prints of your digital images, with optional retouching beforehand. If you’re not sure how to display a piece or where it belongs, we offer in-home and office consultations to help you design the space. And once you’ve chosen your art or frames, we also handle the installation — safely and precisely.
Q: What kinds of materials do you use in framing that protect special items?
A: We use acid-free mats and backer boards and mount artworks in a conservation manner. That means hinging paper artworks or using mylar corners to hold them in place without damage. Fabrics are either sewn, pinned or mounted with magnets. We take a “leave no trace” approach — much like when hiking. Conservation framing means not impacting the object being framed.
Q: What are some of the most interesting items you have framed for customers?
A: We’ve framed some truly one-of-a-kind pieces — a turkey’s tail feathers and beard, petrified mushrooms, 8-track tapes, unopened collectible Pokémon card packs and even a Dave Chappelle cigarette butt!
Q: Four Corners is obviously dedicated to employing skilled craftsmen. Tell our readers about your restoration process. What kinds of items do you restore? What kinds of damage can you correct?
A: We restore a wide range of pieces, from canvas paintings to paper-based works and photographs. For canvas, we can address issues like tears, punctures and chipping paint. Sometimes that means patching or restretching — or removing discolored varnish and applying a new one.
When it comes to paper-based works and documents, we can often clean yellowed paper, remove foxing, mend tears and even brighten faded colors. As long as the piece doesn’t include water-soluble materials like ink or watercolor, we can also deacidify the paper to prevent future damage.
For photographs and fragile documents, we use digital restoration. We scan the originals and correct or enhance the images — often bringing out barely visible elements with clarity. Our digital retoucher is also a professional photographer, which gives each project an extra layer of technical care.
Q: How did you become interested in framing, preservation, and restoration? What kind of education prepares someone for a job in this field?
A: I studied commercial and graphic design and worked as a professional graphic designer for about 10 years before entering the gallery and framing world. That experience with color and composition translated naturally into art curation and framing. I also studied art history, which gives valuable context when helping clients choose the right framing approach.
Karen, our Gallery Director, has a degree in fine art from UAB. Understanding materials and techniques is a huge part of knowing how to preserve and display artwork properly, and she also has a background in art history.
We both genuinely love working with people — helping them solve problems, create a vision or celebrate a memory. Every project is different, and every piece has a story.
For anyone interested in the visual arts, this can be an incredibly rewarding career. If you're drawn to conservation, there's also a growing demand for people trained in preservation and restoration.
