The Box is Open...

Sunflower Box lid...my entry

Or should I say the boxes are open? All 78 of them! Last night at Summit Artspace was the opening for the "out of the box" auction that will culminate at the Arts Alive! celebration on November 7 at the Portage Country Club. What a wonderful surprise! 78 Akron area artists have created and donated boxes to benefit The Akron Area Arts Alliance. And what a bunch of wild boxes there are! Openings are not the best venue to commune with art of any kind as it kind of goes like this: spend 30 viewing.....chat 5 minutes....spend 15 seconds heading towards.....run into someone else.....and on and on. So, needless to say, I plan to spend more time in appreciation of these creative efforts. Miller Horns' tiny and affordable housing boxes are thoughtful. Shannon Casey's box kite is a one-of-a-kind. Linda Nye's assemblage of paper painted flowers made into an upside-down flower pot is positively kookie....that really was a word in the 60's. A large-scale globe box with hands for legs by Candace Bennington is magical and captivating. The list goes on and on. The bidding sheets are attached....bidding has begun and will continue during gallery hours: Thurs-Sun of this week from noon - 5 pm. They are quirky, thought-provoking, humorous and quirky again.

This shoe box drawing was done during my perspective class this past summer. For me, a point of interest and learning is the brand title on the box lid. I purposely turned it upside-down in order to draw the word by the shapes making up the letters. Knowing the word itself (words come from the L-brain) interferes with this process. Not only is the word itself (as one unit) affected by two-point perspective, but the backbones of all of the individual letters are also affected. Those are some of the things you know inside, but are surprised nonetheless to see them spelled out in front of you. I love surprises!