During his framing career, Carl's seen his share of the strange and unusual. The oddest thing he was asked to frame was a colostomy bag, though he's quick to insist it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The bag was perfectly clean, in fact brand new. The customer bought the bag when she no longer needed it, after a full reversal of her illness. She wanted to frame the bag as a trophy, symbolic of her triumph over illness.

In a similar vein Carl was asked to frame an unopened cigarette pack. An ex-smoker wanted his last pack, leftover after quitting, under glass and out of reach. The piece was both a proud memorial to prevailing over addiction and something to remind him to "stay clean." Carl suggested the man stencil "Break Glass in Case of Emergency" across the frame.

Carl's trophy-making skills came into play again when he was asked to help a local businessman whose lack of hunting trophies was the brunt of a running joke among corporate peers. The man's business partners were big hunters whose home walls were lined with animal heads. The customer decided to do something. Not that he actually wanted to hunt or fish, he decided to brave the wet ink of a catalog and order the smallest fish he could find, a tiny stuffed blue gill. Then he had Carl mount it on an excessively oversized backboard. The result was truly pitiful, and clever enough to win the respect of his sportsman buddies.

Continued...