Stuart Taylor | The Valdosta Daily TimesCarla Penny, right, talks about framing options with Susan Stewart.

VALDOSTA — After 38 years, Classic Art and Frame is getting ready to close its doors.

It’s a business that started almost by accident.

Carla Penny was in her last semester at the University of Georgia. She only had one class left and was looking for something to do in her free time.

She started working at a small, do-it-yourself framing shop in Athens.

There, she learned the basics of framing and design and started to fall in love with it.

“I remember being so anxious to learn,” Perry said. “I was trained in each aspect. Taught to cut frames, build frames, cut mattes. I wanted to do it all.”

When the owner, Elsa Heimerer, asked her to be a partner in purchasing a frame shop in Valdosta, Penny took the chance.

“It was a big adventure,” Penny said. “I bought the business and went to work the next day.

“I never intended to stay. I’ve always been more of a city girl. I thought I’d try this business out and if I liked doing it, I’d open a frame shop somewhere where I wanted to live.”

Penny slowly fell in love with her work, with Valdosta and with local artist Don Penny.

When Penny started work at The Framehouse in Downtown Valdosta in 1979, it was a do-it-yourself frame shop, similar to the one where she worked in Athens.

As more and more women entered the workplace, Penny’s customers started asking her to do the framing jobs.

“I love this kind of work,” Penny said. “I’m an excellent designer.

“Not a very good artist,” Penny laughed, “but a good designer.”

In 1987, Penny opened a second location in Tifton.

“We had too much inventory in the store,” Perry said. “We started laughing about opening a whole new store,and oddly enough that very same day, Bruce Green called from Tifton … wanting me to open a frame store downtown.”

Perry opened Third Street Art and Frame Company, which she sold in 2010.

Business kept growing in Valdosta, leading Penny to move the store to its current location in Barclay Square, nearly doubling store space.

“We’re the last remaining original tenant from 1991,” Penny said. “It started out with Hancock Fabrics, Movie Gallery, Hutton Real Estate Agency and Echols Jewelry.”

Business grew exponentially after the move and in 1995, Penny renamed the store Classic Art and Frame Company, in part to include the growing art side of the business.

“The most fun is framing original art,” Penny said. “A painting, a watercolor, a canvas, drawing. They’re just always the most fun, helping to enhance the artist’s ideas.”

While Penny has long been planning to retire this year, coinciding with her lease ending, that doesn’t mean she won’t miss it.

“My favorite thing in the world is helping people with their framing,” Penny said. “To enhance a piece of artwork, to make it look its very best is just my favorite thing in the world to do. And to do the same with a room, to tackle a room and just make it fabulous.”

Which isn’t to say she’s giving it up entirely.

When Penny started the business, everything was done with hand tools and she plans to keep those original tools, taking them home for her own use.

She also plans to focus on fabric design and work with Don on his ongoing ceramic work.

“I am so proud and pleased to go to work with him,” Penny said. “My intention is to help him finish out his ceramic arts career.”

When she first announced the closing, Penny planned to take custom frame orders until the end of January, but the response from the community has been so great that she has to cut that deadline short.

“Response has been so tremendous that we’re selling out of our time,” Penny said. “With announcing our close, all these people who love our work, who have been storing up all this stuff they want framed, they’re all coming out of the woodwork. We’re doing what we can, but time is limited.”

One last thing: The reason everyone has been going to Classic Art and Frame Company? Perry points to John Olszewski and John Lake.

“John Olszewski is the best picture framer,” Penny said. “He’s been my framing manager for eight years and he really is the best picture framer in the industry. The teamwork between him and John Lake, they are why everyone has been coming here for framing. When you put those two together, you have success. I can’t applaud those guys enough.”

Stuart Taylor is a reporter for the Valdosta Daily Times.