Treasure Valley Artists’ Alliance

May 08 2015

Up and At ’em

By melissasasichambers Exhibitions

Tonight is the Opening for Spring Awakening, the latest TVAA exhibition at Boise State Public Radio. It is also the debut of my tarpestry “Spring Awakening (The Unconcious Arsonist).”

I’m excited to have one of my original tarps out in the world where people, besides my nearest and dearest, can actually see it in person. Descriptions and detail shots don’t do it justice — you have to see the entire “elephant” if you know what I mean.

It’s been a whirlwind around here lately what with making plans to sell my beloved artists’ home, and being so jazzed about making more tarpestries inspired by our New Orleans trip, and having a new traffic box to design — yes, I’m doing a “traffic tarpestry.”

It’s actually a bit ironic that I am oozing with inspiration at the same time I have to subtract myself and a lot of my art from this house. Potential buyers have to be able to “see” themselves living their lives here, not me living mine.

(This bad boy is coming with me!)

I’ve “restaged” a couple of the rooms so it is more “housey” and less “artsy.”

Buh-bye “Gallery,” hello Living Room…

Buh-bye “Music Room,” hello Bedroom…

I left myself enough space in the Living Room to work on my tarps, sort of. It’s a little cramped, but that just highlights the kind of studio space I really need, and is helping define what we want for our next place. The next space has got to work as a studio first. We can live in our studio, but it’s much harder to turn traditional living space into working space. I’m guessing a lot of you are very familiar with that conundrum.

This is my latest New Orleans inspired tarpestry — sorry about the usual less than great shots since it is so big, and is on the floor.

Some detail shots…

And this is the “traffic tarpestry” under way…

(More to come on this piece in my next post.)

I hope you can make it to the Opening this evening for Spring Awakening — there is a ton of other work besdides mine to enjoy as well.

Up and at’em!

Nov 11 2014

Just Doing It

By melissasasichambers Personal Her-story

There does seem to be a certain amount of disconnect between living a creative life and writing a blog about it. I’m not managing to do both — you may have noticed — but that’s because I’m choosing the “living” part, and the “blogging” has had to wait.

Lately I’m obsessed with the idea of “just doing it.”

You know what I think about feeling pressured to do things just so we can say we did, but I feel equally strongly about actually DOING the ideas that keep nagging at us — especially the ones we push away because they seem too difficult or outrageous or contrary or even a little embarrassing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting you go flying off on every crazy idea that pops into your head like some sniggly baboon drunk on fermented Marula fruit. You need to have a plan, be willing to work your ass off, and see it through. Unfortunately it’s not like those movie montages where they show 6 hours or 6 days or even 6 months worth of work completed in 6 minutes — it’ll really take you those hours, days or months to complete. I just believe it will be worth it.

I am NOT now going to list all the work that I have been “just doing” which has prevented me from keeping up with this blog, though I will say that things look very different around here — literally — and though deadlines and pressure in general may actually have increased, at least I’m the one in charge.

I’ll be more specific about what’s going on soon, but for now I’m just doing it!

Sep 21 2014

Hellooooo…….? Anybody Still Out There?

By melissasasichambers Everything Else

I know, I know! I’ve been just terrible about keeping up with this blog. Inertia is a total bitch! She sneaks up on you and before you realize it, it’s been 2 WEEKS since your…MY…last post. Uuugh.

At least the inertia hasn’t extended to the rest of my life as I’ve actually been quite busy. On the TVAA front, I submitted a piece to the TVAA & Track 13 juried exhibition “Water Works” called “The View from Logan.” I’ll find out if it gets into the show this week.

I also got the prospectus written, and it’s now posted for Foray IV — our final FORAY, and my last exhibition as the Chair of the TVAA Exhibition Committee. I’ve been the “buck stopper” for all 15 shows we’ve put on so far, 14 of which I curated. It’s been wonderful, a crapton of work, and I’m ready for a break.

Along with Will Spearman and the other Excoms, Carol Elliot Smith, and Jordan Newberry, we laid out the dates and themes for the shows through 2015 and will soon have those posted on the TVAA website. It will be a good year and I plan to create new work for each of the shows. Our themes will be “Menagerie,” “Spring Awakening,” “Collage/Assemblage,” and “Cuisine-Art.”

I’ve also been seeing spots everywhere I look!

That’s a hot pink Lula as one of the See Spot Walk dogs I painted for this year’s campaign. My designs are showing up everywhere — on posters, rack cards, in the Boise Weekly. Lula’s famous, and she has no idea!

I also took the time to create a piece on the off chance it might become the cover of this year’s Moxie Java Idaho Ho Ho CD. They said they’d let us know by the 15th of September and I haven’t heard anything (All together now….Grrrrrrrr!) so I guess, no news probably means no cover. But here’s the design anyway. It’s called “Googly Tidings to You and Your Kin.”

I also (I’m trying to see how many “I also’s” I can get into this post) completed my first Second Life of my Treefort Tarp Picada “Granny Squares.” It’s too big to have just one photo of the whole thing, so here are a couple of detail shots:

And finally, I also (that makes 5) have begun yet another rearrangement of our house to better accommodate our use of the rooms as studio/working/living/showing/entertaining/escaping spaces. The first room to be transformed is a room that we called the “workroom” but which was really the “dump” — the room where things we planned to deal with later went to die.

We emptied it out completely, vacuumed up about 20 deadly poisonous spiders, then replaced tools and things we actually will use again in an orderly fashion, and today I plan to prime the walls for painting a color other than their current shade of “death warmed over.” I’m so excited!

Oh! And the best part is we’ve discovered that if you put ANYTHING with a “FREE” sign on it out in our driveway it will disappear. Like magic. All this time, and it was our driveway where we should have been putting those things we planned to deal with later! Well, live and learn!

I’ll try to be better about posting from now on. But if things get too crazy I can’t promise I won’t hang a “FREE” sign around my neck and go sit in my driveway.

At least you’ll have an explanation if I disappear again!

Aug 23 2014

Monsters! The Morning After

By melissasasichambers Exhibitions

I got to Boise State Public Radio at about 5:30 last evening feeling resigned about the condition I was going to find the lobby in — considering how torn up it was only two hours before.

We’d titled the show Monsters! after all — maybe the public would think the construction was an installation in the show?

But when I walked through the front door — Oh Happy Day! All the dust and tools and scaffolding had been cleared away.

Artist Marilyn Cosho took that picture of me feeling very relieved with her “broken” camera. Here are a few more of her snaps from the evening including one of some snazzy kicks worn by one of the patrons and one of a friendly monster who graced our refreshment table.

Even when it’s “broken” we can still have fun with it. Go see the show, it’s up through Halloween!

Aug 22 2014

Monsters!

By melissasasichambers Exhibitions

I have spent much of this week preparing for the opening tonight of the TVAA exhibition Monsters!

The artwork we selected was delivered on Monday. I figured out the arrangement with the able assistance of my mother, and on Tuesday, Sue Latta and I got it hung in our usual fashion with Sue doing the heavy lifting and me jabbering away while making her have to recalculate where to sink the nails — with annoying frequency I’m sure.

I’m quite fond of this show. It runs the gamut from the seriously monstrous to the scarily goofy, and I had fun with it myself — on the sillier end of the spectrum…

My pieces are titled “Idle Hands are the Devil’s Playthings” and “Venus in Fur.”

Here’s a wee tour of what you’ll see if you make it to the Opening this evening…

The scariest part of the show for me is the fact that BSPR is having a special wall constructed in their lobby — right now this very minute — and when I left this afternoon this is what it looked like…

Unless you come this evening you’ll never know if it got cleaned up in time for the Opening. Of course if it doesn’t, you will understand why the next time you see me, I look like this…