Crow T. Robot

A couple weeks ago I went to the Green Chutes Gallery. A friend of mine was singing at Salt Tears in the same location, so I decided to bring my sketchbook.

First, the crow:

"Looking Off", by Melinda Bristol.

Then, the robot:

Part of "Monkey Robot," by Jason Sutton.

And, uh, they serve tea at Salt Tears. Yes. That will be my excuse for getting in the initial in my blatant MST3K reference.

People with Animals on Their Heads (and an octopus)

I'm finally getting around to posting my drawings from First Thursday earlier this month. First up is my drawing of Jean Calomeni's "Bustle in Her Hedgerow" at the Basement Gallery:

 After that, I realized the Modern Hotel was having its annual Modern Art at the Modern Hotel, so I headed there. This is a sketch I did of a watercolor by Georgia Gelder. Only when I'd nearly finished did I realized I had a theme here: people with animals on their heads.

It was a fantastic theme while it lasted, but I realized I had to break it up when I saw Ben Brunn's delightful octopus painting. I love cephalopods.

Mike Flinn at the Basement Gallery

I did a rough sketch of Mike Flinn's "Conversation with an Extrovert" at the Basement Gallery on First Thursday and colored it in later. Flinn had a lot of fun pieces like this, and it was entertaining listening in on some of the conversations of people looking at them. One guy who was standing next to me said either to me or to no one in particular, "I'm never having dinner with Mike Flinn." My favorite overheard snippet was another man talking to his friend about a Flinn painting a few feet away from me: "I like the symbolism, whatever it is. Oscar Meyer Wienermobile ... and a horse on fire, expelling flaming gases."

Noble Hardesty at VAC

I drew this version of a painting by Noble Hardesty quite a while ago when I saw Head at the Visual Arts Collective and have just taken my sweet time coloring it. But I was at VAC for New Year's Eve and it was still up, so you may be able to catch it and Noble's other pictures. If I remember right, there were also some great ones with wolves, pigs, and some King Kong-inspired ones. Noble's large paintings are displayed along with his preliminary sketches on beer coasters from Gernika.

The Internet is for ██████████

Hi, loyal readers. I have to tell you something -- I'm a little worried.

I'm worried about the Internet.

Yes, I'm worried about this marvelous kingdom, this world where lolcats and keyboard cats and nyan cats reign supreme. You see, there's this bill called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. It gives an enormous amount of control to major content providers, who would be able to have sites shut down without due process to determine if the Fair Use Act applies. It could institutionalize censorship and introduce security flaws to the World Wide Web. The original bill even mucks about in the DNS, requiring ISPs to redirect traffic from sites that are deemed piracy havens. It's been watered down a bit since then, but that's cold comfort. What's worse, really, is the example we'd be setting to the rest of the world -- that it's okay to censor the Internet based on business interests or political interests. China anyone? Iran? That's what we'd be reinforcing with this bill. We need a free Web.

SOPA must die so the Internet can live.

█████ ████ ████ for the ██████████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a █████████.

████ ████ ████ for the █████ █████████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a █████ ████████.

████ ████ ████ for the ████,
and I ████'t █████ out ███████ I ████'t a Jew.

████ ████ ████ for me
and █████ was no one ████ to █████ out for me.

Jacqueline Hurlbert and Erin Ruiz at the Basement

This statue, "Lighthearted" by Jacqueline Hurlbert, was a lot of fun to sketch, its limbs splayed out every which way and the great expression on its snout as it stares at its winged heart.


I'm sure I've said many times on this blog how much I love Erin Ruiz's work. In this sketch of her picture "Wolves in the Bed," I tried to capture the way she used red for outlines and highlights (and for the eyes of the wolves) to lend a sense of danger to the picture. I ran out of room before I could sketch the fourth wolf, which is tearing into a pillow.

Rick Walter at Visual Arts Collective

Last weekend I went to see Red Light Variety Show at Visual Arts Collective. It was pretty cool -- think Cirque du Soleil with pasties. While I was there, I sketched this piece by Rick Walter. Didn't see a title for the piece, but I thought it was interesting. Aw, it looks so forlorn for a horrifying bat-winged disembodied head thing.

Melissa Graves and Jerri Lisk

Apparently, I was into aspens last First Thursday. This is Elk Meadow by Melissa Graves at the Basement Gallery. These trees were actually very yellow, but you know, blue background ... pastels ... yellow and blue make green ... and I have limited patience with trying to fix these sketches sometimes.


This is Growth Chart by Jerri Lisk. I probably ought to have drawn one of hers for this blog before now, since they are quite nice, but I tend not to go to the Lisk Gallery very often because it's always the same stuff.

Joseph Cowman at the Basement Gallery

My apologies that this didn't reproduce very well on the scanner. I was really impressed by this untitled piece by Joseph Cowman I saw at the Basement Gallery on First Thursday, though. I really liked all the tension from all the wires and hooks pulling the figure every which way.

Isaac Grambo at Visual Arts Collective

This was one of a couple of silhouette-style pieces Isaac Grambo had at the Visual Arts Collective when I went there a week ago. Love the red tie.

New kids on the block: Black Linen and Green Chutes

A couple new arts organizations have recently started up in Boise. One is Black Linen Productions, a theater company making its debut production, Closer (a Patrick Marburg black comedy about sexual politics and partner-swapping) in the Linen Building at 1402 Grove St. They're only staging it for three nights, and the last night is tomorrow at 7, so if you want to check it out, that's your last chance.

The second is Green Chutes artist co-op and gallery in the Collister Shopping Center at State Street and Collister. I went to the grand opening last Friday and did a couple sketches:



Green Couple, by Sheila K. Carney.


Dancer in Red, by L. Collins.

Green Chutes is a fantastic space. There are several corrugated shipping containers throughout the building with pictures hung inside. The art there is very eclectic. I was impressed by Carney's use of bold shape and color, and the dramatic pose and silhouette work in Collins' piece, along with some of the photography by Jim Boudan (? I can't quite make out the spelling) and Matthieu Duquette.

Marianne Konvalinka

This is "Soaring" by Marianne Konvalinka. It's mixed-media, so that's an actual piece of sheet music and a real map in the original. It's currently in Art Source Gallery.

Bill Carman at the Basement Gallery

This is my rendering of Bill Carman's picture, "Oh crap, sorry," which was hanging at the Basement Gallery. He's been a longtime favorite at the Basement, so it's nice to see the new owners haven't changed that. I love this little narwhal-headed guy.

2010 Idaho Triennial at BAM

I went to the Boise Art Museum last weekend and sketched a few pieces by Idaho artists for the 2010 Idaho Triennial. This is "Delusions" by Matt Bodett. I like the horrific, detailed mouth on the figure on the right compared to how rough everything else is.


And this is a partial rendition of "Snorkels with Floating Prison" by Garth Claassen, one of my art professors at College of Idaho. I think he'd be pleased that I'm still sketching in galleries.

Ego and Kelly Packer

This exhibit actually just closed at the Basement Gallery. I came in Friday afternoon, the second-to-last day of the exhibit. But I wanted to post these anyhow. Above is A Comparative Reading of the Past by Kelly Packer. I liked the blocky shapes in the background and especially along the spine.


This is Forgotten Monarch by an artist called Ego. I like the kind of ancient, but not deadened look to him.

Noises Off (quick and dirty)

I saw Noises Off at Stage Coach Theatre opening night, and it's very funny. Great cast, great set, great comic timing. It continues Sept. 9-12 and 16-18.

Metapost -- No more formal theater reviews (for now)

When I started this blog, I was unemployed. I had no prospects and a lot of free time. Today, I'm going to school full-time for a computer science degree and working part-time at a software company I really like. I'm taking 300- and 400-level classes, so my homework load is getting bigger and more challenging. This summer I had a full-time internship and a part-time job, and I never said word one on this blog about the show I was directing at the time. My life has gotten much more complex, and I need to scale back some of the ancillary things I'm doing. Theater reviews is one of them.

I might still post my reactions to shows on this blog, but when I do, it's going to be quick and dirty. Like a couple sentences. I'll be posting one of those shortly.

I still enjoy doing the sketching, and I'll keep posting drawings I make of other artists' work in Boise galleries. I may even try to do that more often. I'll be posting one of those Monday morning.

If you see value in formal, long-form theater reviews and would like the chance to do them, let me know in the comments. I could make you an admin for this blog. And if you miss the lists of upcoming shows, check out the link to Larry Dennis' site "Theater in the Boise Valley" in the left column.

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon

Oh boy oh boy oh boy robots and art! Two of my favorite things! I've been telling myself since I saw this exhibit was coming to BAM that I had to see it. I finally saw it a couple weeks ago, and it actually lived up to my grand expectations for it. Lots of cool fine art and multimedia stuff, plus some actual robots from local FIRST Robotics Competition teams. This is a sketch of part of Michael Mew's "Robot 4," and it actually combines three of my favorite things: art, robots and comic book characters. I recognized the guy on the right as a Marvel superhero from the Avengers who was married to Scarlet Witch. (Apparently his name is The Vision. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

This exhibit closes on Sunday, May 16, so if you like robots and art as much as I do and you haven't seen it yet, you'd better high-tail it down to Boise Art Museum.

Panache

Stage Coach Theatre's production of Panache is an inventive, heartwarming romantic comedy between two unlikely characters: socialite Kathleen Trafalgar and Brooklyn diner cook and artist Harry Baldwin.

The show was filled with fantastic performances. Jodi Nelson Deerfield was delightful as the perfectly polished Kathleen and brought a lot of humor through her poor attempts to relate to the lower classes by talking about the time she roughed it at a Holiday Inn. Randy Lord did an excellent job portraying Harry as he tries and sometimes fails to wrestle his inner demons and come to grips with the losses in his life. The two achieve a real believable romantic connection onstage. Liam Tain was very funny as Jumbo Dombroski. Bradley Campbell had an infectious enthusiasm as Irwin Alcott, an old college friend Harry set up on a date. And Robina Bant was sweet as Laura Baldwin.

The show has excellent acting a great script -- not at all a cliche romantic comedy. It closes this weekend, but if you see it, you're in for a treat.

Fiction

Steven Dietz became one of my favorite playwrights after I read the script for his play Rocket Man and the script for Stage Coach Theatre's current production, Fiction. His plays have smart, witty dialogue, and Dietz has a way of telling a great story.

The play is about a married couple, Michael and Linda Waterman (played by Andrew Ebert and Teresa Rodrick), who are both authors. Linda has been diagnosed with cancer, and she tells Michael that when she dies, she wants him to read her diaries. She also wants to read his. He's reluctant, but agrees. The secrets that spill forth from the pages take a few twists and turns when we see the prominent role that another woman, Abby Drake (Autumn Kersey), plays in both authors' journals.

Director Claudia Scott and Ebert, Rodrick and Kersey did a wonderful job of bringing the script to life. One of the really key elements to pulling it off was the tight pacing. At times, the actors -- particularly Ebert and Rodrick -- talk right over each other. You can make out what they're saying, and even if you can't, you can make out the meaning. But the way they interrupt each other really adds to the tension. The concerns over Linda's health, Michael's fears about her reactions to what he's written -- those really come through in those little interruptions and the halting dialogue. The fast pacing keeps the show moving along and keeps the audience eager to see what's coming next.