China Phoenix 2: Art Box Round Robin 2011

Monday, January 23, 2012

Art Box Round Robin 2011

As we eagerly anticipate the grand reopening of our favorite gathering place for both shopping and camaraderie, I thought I would share the artistic journey of a group of crafty friends who decided to trade some art.

Early last year, Arley Berryhill organized an Art Box Round Robin and invited some folks to participate. The players in this production were Kit Stein, Liz Forbes, Nancy Ellis-Hines, Nancy Kreischer, Nancy Yoshimoto, Arley Berryhill, and little ol' me, Cheryl Valadez. The idea was to select a theme and craft a box and/or decorate a box out of whatever materials were appropriate to effectively see your vision come to life. Once the boxes were complete, each person passed off their box to the next person on the list and created a page interpreting that person's theme. The boxes were traded once a month with the idea that at the end of this process, every box would proudly house a piece of original artwork from each member of the group. The results were staggeringly beautiful, amazingly clever, and above all else, incredibly original.

Over the course of the next 7-weeks, I'll share detailed photos of each box. Let's start with the box created by our Organizer Extraordinaire, Arley Berryhill. Here's what Arley had to say about his theme:

For my Art Box, I chose the theme "Pandora's Box". It represents the box Pandora was given (from the Greek God Zeus), which held horrible evils. As the myth goes, Pandora's natural curiosity got the better of her and accidentally released all the evils in the world. So, I asked the artists to create a piece of art that represents "evil" to go in the box.

Let's take a look inside: