16th Annual Box Show

Once again Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station California is hosting its annual Box Show.

The way it works is the gallery provides plain pine boxes to as many as 150 artists to do creatively as they please with (as long is the box remains in the final piece in some form).

The show functions as a fundraiser for the Gallery.

This year we were given an unusually small box.   Molly and I always brainstorm and create the boxes together. 

I started out wondering if it was possible to do block printing directly on the wooden box. My experiments pretty much failed but lead to another approach. We played around with applying one of my older block prints directly to the box. I wasn’t sure how that would work either since it required adhering a rice paper print to wood using Molly’s gel medium.

Skeleton figures trimmed. 

I cut out and trimmed a “Jug Band” print. I also drew an additional figure in ink.

Original figure taped to box just to see what it would look like.
We decided to reverse the image.

Molly decided we needed to do a photocopy reversal of the additional drawing.

Original image and reversed' twin'. Copied and inked.

Adhered with gel medium

The trimmed artwork was positioned on the box.

 Molly applied layers of gel medium.  ( Molly painted the box as well).

We created another skull for the top of the box.

On past boxes we’ve often done a lot of painting, carving of Basle wood figure’s, attaching additional elements. Fancy stuff. This was probably one of the least labor-intensive boxes we’ve made for the show but I think it’s pretty effective.

The 16^th annual Box Show reception is Sunday, August 3^rd.

The show runs until September 14^th.

You can check out the details at: galleryrouteone.org/box-show         

You can check this blog’s archives (Aug. 26, 2011 and Aug. 26, 2012 
or July 24, 2013) for more info on our boxes.