As I mentioned last week, if you're on Main Street in downtown Boise, you can go to the Basement Gallery to look at Fred Choate's landscapes, or Art Source Gallery to check out Josh Ritchie's wire sculptures.
Or you can go to Brown's Gallery to see a gold-painted, plastic-bejewelled gas can. Ooookay. Message piece, I take it.
Actually, the best thing about going to Brown's Gallery on First Thursday is that not only are the artists there, you can watch them work on pieces. Barbara Michener was plotting paint onto postcards, and Wendy Blickenstaff was painting a landscape with a single tree around the edge of an open-mouthed vase.
I enjoyed Gerry Exline's mixed-media series of faces. Pencils scribbles add shade and depth to the paintings. Up close, they look like mere scrawls. From farther back, faces peer out at you with sunken eyes and deep, chiseled mouths.
One of my favorite pieces in the gallery -- something that looked half-teapot, half-boiler -- didn't seem to be labeled with a title or artist's name anywhere that I could see. As much as I like the informal nature of local galleries -- it's a wonderful opportunity to talk to artists -- formal details like that are pretty important.
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