The Box Show is Back !

 Gallery Route One’s annual Box Show is on in Pt. Reyes Station.

The Box Show is a major fundraiser for Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station in west Marin County. 

The basic process is this: Each participating artist is given an unadorned pine box. You can pretty much do anything to it as long as elements of the original box remains in the piece (this could potentially mean that the box is dismantled, ground to dust or even burned).

Molly and I have worked as a team on boxes for the show for (an astonishing) 28 years according to my current reckoning!

Artistically, Molly and I comes from two different aesthetic worlds. 

She’s an SF Art Institute trained painter (primarily portraits) and I’m a black ‘n’ white graphics guy, tending usually toward comic art.  

So, our team-ups are always odd mash-ups, sometimes tending to lean towards her sensibilities, sometimes mine. This year’s entry was pretty elementary.  I imagined an ISS style space station and Molly shrugged and said sure.

I started with a scribble of an idea.

I penciled and inked my two astronauts.

Ditto for the space station (my cartoon space station is seriously inaccurate to the real International Space Station--- but it fit on the box !)

I spent a great deal of time doodling all sorts of ISS style equipment in the interiors.

I dropped the “walls" in to be adhered.

While I was doing all that Molly was going into full Hubble Telescope mode creating an entire universe on the exteriors of the box.

Molly decided the station needed thrusters and glued on the caps from our art fixative spray cans on the underside.

I inserted our astronauts with supports from behind so that they would float appropriately.

The show runs from August 29 to Sept. 26th

Closing reception Friday September 25, 5-7pm

Gallery Route One can be found at 11101 Highway One, Ste. 101

Point Reyes Station, California

galleryrouteone.org/boxshow

The Box Show 2023

Yes, we’re back with the Box Show.

The annual show is a fundraiser for Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station, Marin county.

The deal is simple: The gallery provides plain pine boxes to as many as 150 artists. You can pretty much do anything to it as long as elements of the original the box remains in the piece (In the past, people have taken them apart, burned them, shredded them and so on).

This year Molly and I wound up with an unassembled box to start with.

I started with sketches:

I originally had a notion that I would draw various fantasy-animal-headed creatures, but it mutated into extraterrestrial types instead.

Molly started painting the backgrounds without my drawings. 

They began to take on the appearance of some sort of apocalyptic alter pieces.

My drawing were attached and ultimately painted and sealed in gel medium.

We linked the pieces together with metal brackets.

               The show began on August 5th and continues until September 9th

                Final bidding and auction closing is Saturday, September 9, 3-4pm

                        You can see the entire show online at: The Box Show

Back to the Box Show !

What’s now characterized as a ‘San Francisco Bay Area tradition”, the annual Box Show at Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station, has been running for 23 (!) years. I believe Molly and I have participated in about the last 20 of those (maybe more).

Each year we receive a pine box of some shape or another (this year it came in disassembled pieces) to do with as we see fit. Most boxes go to individual artists. In our case, we work on them as a team. Some years they look more like Molly’s work, other years, more like mine.

Here’s what we did this time around:

I did sketches of an idea we talked about--U / Dys Topia

Drawn directly on the wood (like this one) or transferred from a rough sketch on paper. Then inked by me.                    

Painted by Molly.

Both the Dystopian 

and Utopian sides.

And the central Utopian panel

With the upper and lower Dystopian panels.

We assembled the pieces and screwed them together with metal plates on the reverse.

“U / Dys Topia” in the show.

The 2022 Box Show runs until August 20th.

You can see the show here:  2022 Box Show

or drop by Gallery Route One if you happen to be passing through Marin county.