With their latest idea turned exhibit, the Bainbridge Island Arts and Crafts curators could be considered either completely mundane, or completely brilliant.
The theme of the Gallery’s August exhibit is centered around an item so incredibly simple it could easily be construed as containing no artistic value whatsoever. Yet in what it contains, that item’s creative possibilities are almost infinite.
That determination will be made in the eye of the beholder.
But when that eye is peering into an extremely retro camera box containing a glowing representation of the universe — like it would when looking at Linda Costello’s creation “Box Camera” — it’s difficult not to sway toward the more “infinite possibilities” side of things.
“The closed box opens the imagination,” BAC’s press release for the August show reads. “We guess, we wonder, and then we invent what’s inside.”
“What we didn’t know was that the show would turn out this beautiful,” said BAC education director Victoria Josslin.
Honestly, who knew boxes could be so beautiful?
Beautiful like Amy Robert’s “Shattered Core No. 3” — a curious work of expert craftsmanship, an oblong box with walls of shattered yet intact glass. Beautiful like Leah Tarleton’s “Scenes of Venice With a Hidden Drawer” — a creatively crafted, delicately painted, elegantly traditional-style jewelry box.
Beautiful like the chaos of gallery owner Susan Jackson’s boxy, 3-Dimensional collage work.
“It started out as a show of geometric art … then we thought, ‘Why keep it 2-Dimensional?’” Josslin said.
And so they arrived at the topic of boxes and the response emphatically unfolded. From the typical boxed artwork you’d expect — like Jay T. Scott’s freestanding wooden cabinet and Kathleen Kler’s little porcelain boxes — to that which one may not have even thought of, like a box in the shape of a bodiless kimono.
And who would’ve thought that boxes could be so clever?
In addition to Costello’s off the wall creations — the universe inside a camera box and a gutted foosball table filled with old bingo cards and paper cutout action figures among other things — the show also hosts pieces that are witty. Like Linda Jarvis’ 6.5-inch Jack in the Box, whose content is both quirkier and more literal than a spring loaded clown.
More than 15 different artists submitted work into the show which fills both special show rooms of the BAC Gallery. But interestingly enough there were no Pandora’s boxes, heart-shaped boxes, crayon boxes or boxcars.
The show — Boxes — will be up until Sept. 3 when a show called “Arts and Letters” will move in at the Gallery — 151 Winslow Way E. on Bainbridge. Info: www.bacart.org or call (206) 842-3132.
