Larry's Vault: Space the Final Frontier (Kinda, Sorta)

We've decommissioned our fleet of Space Shuttles and now have to hitch rides on Russian Federation Soyuz ships to get off the planet. The Untied States seems to be effectively out of the space exploration business.

No moon bases. No mission to mars. 

Well, when I was a kid all of the above was possible and clearly on schedule to occur by around 1985 (at the very least by 2001).

Growing up, I watched Alan Shepard and John Glenn leave the planet Earth on grainy black & white TV. When I was about 9 years old, I wrote Nasa a letter  and got a mound of government reports on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs as a reply.

I had books on space exploration such as the How and Why Wonder Book of Rockets and Missiles.  

These books were always filled with top notch illustrations of the astronaut construction workers, space stations, space ports, moon bases and Martian colonies that I could expect to see as an adult.

We kinda, sorta got the future I was promised. We do have a space station—we're just missing the “space taxi” to get there.

In any case, by way of the past I bring you the future (or something like that).

Here's some great retro-futurist art.

Artwork by Robert Patterson, Jack Coggins,  Chesley Bonestell, John Polgreen, George Solonewitsch, Fred Freeman and Rolf Kelp.

A Brief Visit to the 15th Annual Box Show

We missed the artist's reception but we finally made it back to take a peak at the 15th Annual Box Show at Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes Station.

The gallery hands out pine boxes to about 150 local artists. Artists can do anything they want to the box (as you will see) as long as the box remains in the piece in some form.

Here  are a few of this years entries:

"Still Dancing" by Bonnie Clarke

"Go Figure Son" by Wim Van Thillo

"Bird Box" by Eric Jackson

"Gallery" by Thomas Wood

"Sewbot" by Lesley Gray and Norma McFaddan

"Past, Present, Future" by Judy San

"Doomsday in a Box" by S.M. Clark

"Beachcaster (Kelp Guitar)" by Lina Prairie

Here's are "A Mazed Minotaur"

The show is up until September 8th

(Check out our past posts in the archives to see some of our previous year's boxes)

The Box Show: A Mazed Minotaur

As promised we return to the dreaded box--but no longer blank.

This year for the annual Box Show we decided to do a Minoan themed box employing motifs and images associated with the ancient city of Knossos (This is about as reasonable as any other theme we've come up with).

Here's the process:

Molly's begins painting the blank box. The images of woman are from the famed "bullfighting" (bull jumping?) fresco from the Minoan temple at Knossos on Crete.

Larry works up sketches for the Minotaur.

Final drawing transfered to a heavy weight art paper

Inked by Larry. Painted by Molly. 

Gel medium applied and image cut out.

Minotaur is inserted into labyrinth/ temple

The 15th Annual Box show runs from July 26th until September 8, 2013 at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, California.  The reception is Sunday, July 28th.

For more about the Box Show check out:

http://galleryrouteone.org/box-show-archive/the-box-show/entries-2012.html

You can see more of Larry and Molly's previous box show pieces by looking in this blog's archives.