Hip to be square

SUN CITY – In Neighborhood 29 resident Joe Nitti’s world, it’s hip to be square. It’s not only hip but artistic and decorative.

After a successful 57-year career as an architectural draftsman, Netti (81) retired in 1993 from penciling lines and curves and shapes and applied his expertise to framing and matting.

Today he runs a side business from his Sun City home called Framing and Matting Solutions, where he provides professional quality frames and matting jobs for Sun City residents, Pencil and Palette Club members (which Nitti is himself), and a small list of happy clients.

Upon his retirement, Netti began working for a custom frame shop in California, where he learned the early essentials to building frames and matting. He continued his new profession when he returned to Illinois and took jobs with other custom framing shops, such as the Art Galleria in Lake Zurich and JT’s Frames in Crystal Lake.

Although Nitti no longer works for JT’s Frames (or the Art Galleria), he maintains a close and professional working arrangement with JT’s Frames.

“I get a lot of supplies from [JT’s Frames]. I use the facilities over there. I’m basically like an associate,” explained Nitti.

Nitti is also affiliated with Gilberts-based Gemini Moulding, who supplies Nitti with additional matting and framing hardware.

In addition to supplies and facility use, Nitti credits both JT’s Frames and Gemini Moulding with providing him valuable mentorship.

“I wish I knew what they forgot, and I know an awful lot [about framing and matting],” Nitti said.

Nitti has provided framing and matting services in Sun City for five years, starting when the Pencil and Palette Club tasked him with the job of making their presentations look more professional, and overall has worked at his new profession for 18 years.

When Nitti isn’t busy matting or framing, he’s busy creating the art that goes in frames.

Humbly, he said, “I’m an artist. I use the term loosely. My kids call me an artist.”

Nitti said his choice of mediums are pen-and-ink, watercolor, and colored pencil, and if framing and matting doesn’t strike you as an offshoot to his career in drafting, then his artwork surely will.

Reminiscent of world-famous artist Piet Mondrian, Nitti practices curvilinear and rectilinear art, which consists of coordinating circles and squares and color, but his talent as an artist goes beyond. He just “got tired of doing trees and bushes and houses.”

Nitti said his understanding of art and color theory aids him in his matting and framing work.

“When it comes to picking out mat colors, along with industry standards and styles, it’s a big book,” Nitti said. “And I’ve learned from some of the best.”

A former draftsman, curvilinear and rectilinear artist, and framing and matting expert, one might say that Nitti is partial to working with geometric shapes. However, he explained, “It’s all about the color and going into the field of color theory. I can use [this] when I do my rectilinear, curvilinear art.”

From drafting to art to framing and matting, Nitti is a professional both inside and outside the frame.

He said the field of architecture “gave me a good life. I’ve been very, very fortunate in both careers, you might say.”

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