Business & Tech

Meet the Owners: Teri Basile and Stevie-Lyn Colaianni of Art World

Where the real art is what's around the edges.

Earlier this year, I walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan with one objective in mind: to see "Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze. 

I had the image in my head, obviously. I'd seen it before in history textbooks and photos and in silver relief on the back of New Jersey's state quarter. But I'd never seen the actual canvas. 

It's a massive painting, in scale and depiction, but the thing that struck me first when I saw it in the American Wing wasn't so much the imagery, but the frame. 

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I didn't know it at the time, but the ornate, gilt masterpiece that surrounded that oil-based piece of Americana was a restoration project, years in the making. 

Finally finished, it had a wall practically to itself in the Met, the frame as much a labor of love as the piece it ensconced.

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It proved, to me anyway, that sometimes art is less in the eye of the beholder, and more about what's actually doing the holding.

Few in Forest Hills, or in Queens, embody that philosophy better than Teri Basile and Stevie-Lyn Colaianni, owners of on Metropolitan Avenue.

Art From The Inside, Frames For The Outside

The custom framing shop — which is stuffed from floor to ceiling with more than just frames — has been in business in Queens for more than five decades. Its current ownership picked up stakes from a prime spot on Austin Street to the quieter, but still lively Metropolitan Avenue about four years ago, Basile said.

The guiding principle of the shop is simple. No art is too small to be an expression of what's inside, and to really shine, sometimes it takes a little framing.

"Art is so important to me, to Stevie, to our customers, to be in here, people come in here every single day and just love being in here," Basile said. "We try to keep the place balanced, we try to keep a positive, even flow in here."

For Basile, art becomes deeply personal, whether it's for herself or someone else, and the element of discovery inherent in the job is part of what keeps her walking through the door every day.

"There's so much inside of one person, so many people, it talks to you, and people who really get art understand it, know it, and they let it out," Basile said.

"To me, art is something that, when you put it up on your walls, it just makes an area in your home warm, it makes people, what they feel inside of themselves, like your personality comes out, you can tell what a person feels and thinks when they put this stuff up. You can tell." 

"Everybody Knows Art World."

For Teri and Stevie, Art World is a conduit into family relationships — an entree into the connection between parent and child or family matriarch and the generations that came after.

"Generations are coming in to Art World. Two and three and four generations of people that frame with Art World," Basile said. "It's wild to see."

It's that connection to families and the respect for treasured memories that Art World's owners say sets them apart from other framing shops across the city.

"Nowadays, in a lot of places, the service is not there," Basile said. "We've always given special service for people." 

Colaianni agreed.

"We develop relationships with these people, and they're not just clients, they're friends. We're picking what's going to dress their memory." 

"Forest Hills is like the crossroads of the world. It brings people from all over," Colaianni said. "It is very conducive to what we do."


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