sun Inspired Hailey
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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o Spectators Enjoy Cycling Festivities Too
Bellevue Garden Tour This Friday
the weekly
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Nez Perce Appearances This Week Augment Caritas Performance Page 7
Find Everything You Can Do in the Valley This Week Pages 12-13
read about it on PG 18
J u l y 1 1 , 2 0 1 2 • Vo l . 5 • N o . 2 8 • w w w.T h e We e k l y S u n . c o m
Combining Art and Music into a MASSV Festival BY KAREN BOSSICK
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et ready for a concert of a different ilk. Music will be coupled with art tents, fire cannons, the world’s largest traveling laser light show, smoke machines, glowing paragliders and a Red Light Variety show featuring trapeze artists Friday and Saturday when Music and Arts Showcase Sun Valley (MASSV) makes its debut in downtown Ketchum. The two-day music and arts festival, which invokes the spirit of Mardi Gras, will play out in the lot of the future home of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts across from the Ketchum Post Office. A torch-lit drum march after the MASSV concert will lead the way to an after-party on Main Street, Ketchum, where the festivities will continue with a laser glow and DJ. MASSV is the latest and most exciting event to happen this summer in Sun Valley, according to Sabina Dana Plasse. Festival-goers are encouraged to dress up in costume. The eclectic and energizing creative rock, funk and electronic sounds of Ghostland Observatory will fill the air, along with the hot vibes of the acoustic and electronic combination sounds and dance performance of Beats Antique and the mixing mania of the dubstep group, The Adventure Club. The event will also feature the James Brown-like soul of Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears, the hip-hop of Brother Ali, and the reggae, rock ‘n roll and Americana music of Gift of Gab, Proper Motion, Stylust Beats, Winstrong, Boombox, the B-Side Players, Boise’s Equaleyes and the Wood River Valley’s rocker trio Finn Riggins, all emceed by Rashan Ahmad. Installations at MASSV will feature the latest Sun Valley Center for the Arts outdoor exhibit, “Camp Out,” along with the Austin Bike Zoo, Arial Tissue dancing by Selkie, live wood carving by ALEPH and live painting on custom longboards and skateboards. Apier Clothing will present an Elevated Recreation Life Art Gallery with an interactive collaborative mural project and the festival will present an Outdoor Art Gallery displaying the works of local artists. Jugglers, stilt walkers, break dancers, hula hoopers, African drummers and other entertainers will also be involved. Gates open at 2 p.m. Friday. The show starts at 4 p.m. and ends at 11 p.m. that day, with the Ketchum street party taking place from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. The gates open at noon Saturday, with the show taking place from 2 to 11:30 p.m., followed by the Ketchum street party from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. A weekend pass is $69.99 and individual day passes will be $45. Tickets are available at Akinsons’ Market, the Board Bin and The Cornerstone Bar & Grill in Ketchum. There will be food and drink on site and MASSV will offer parking and camping for a nominal fee for those who want to camp out in Ketchum for the weekend. For a schedule of bands, go to massvmusicfest.com tws
by the Human-Animal Bond
PHOTO & STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
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randis Sarich couldn’t have pets in the San Francisco apartment she grew up in. So she did the next best thing—she walked a tumbleweed around on a leash. “I was an animal nut. All the photos of when I was little show me with animals,” she recalled. Sarich never outgrew her love of animals. Though she got a degree in architecture, she ran the Sun Valley Horseman’s Center when she came to Sun Valley in 1991. And, when she found time for painting, it was border collies and German shepherds, pronghorn antelope and moose that filled her canvas. “When I lived at the Horseman’s Center, I not only had 50 horses, but so many deer, antelope and bear around me. It was quite an experience to meet all these animals, and when I was on horseback, they seemed less afraid, so I could get up closer,” she said. Sarich will be one of more than 100 artists exhibiting their work at the Ketchum Arts Festival Friday through Sunday at Festival Meadows on Sun Valley Road. She will feature pet portraits in acrylic and watercolor stressing the human-animal bond and anthropomorphized paintings featuring such scenes as a pronghorn antelope talking with a squirrel. She will donate 10 percent of any commissions during the fair to the Animal Shelter of the Wood River Valley. “I want to tell animals’ stories,” she said. “I painted a picture of a pronghorn talking with a squirrel, for instance, because I saw the pronghorn with its mouth open and it looked like it was talking.” Sarich designed a number of buildings here through 2005, showing art at Gallery Oscar on the side. In 2005 she and her husband Kevin, whom she had met while working on an urban streetscape architecture project at the University of California-Berkeley, decided to head to Maui to see if she could make it painting full time. Sarich estimates she’s painted at least 340 dogs—most on commission. They include a French poodle that belonged to a Portland Trailblazer and the dog of Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia Brady on “The Brady Bunch.” She received permission to paint Bo Obama, America’s First Dog, on the cover of greeting cards to raise $5,000 for shelter, food and helping to reunite pets that had been separated from their owners in last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
Brandis Sarich recently served as artist-in-residence at a school in Ohio, leading 800 schoolchildren through an exercise in painting portraits of their pets, including pet geckos and hamsters. It was especially interesting to see how brothers and sisters portrayed the same pets, she said. “I told them to let go of the need to have them look like their photo and focus on their personality.”
She’s also painted a series of police horses for the City of Portland, giving each an American patriotic theme since they were in service. Sarich usually starts with photos and stories about the pets, emphasizing how their owners see them, rather than just what they look like. She painted a rescue dog snuggled in a down comforter, the dog of her church pastor in Maui with a lei around its neck and a Lab with a teddy bear in its arms, since the dog’s owner wanted to make sure he was seen with his special toy. When she painted a German shepherd mix in California, she consulted an animal communicator, as she often does, to find out why the dog continued to go up the stairs even though its aging joints made it difficult. “The dog told the communicator it was its duty to stay at the side of its owner so I tried to show that complete dedication and partnership in my painting,” she said. “I used a cat hugging the dog to show how the dog was the coolest friend he could have, and gentle, even though he was a tough breed.” Her larger 3 1/2-foot-by-6-foot fine art pieces have forced her to slow her painting down. “Before, I had so many deadlines. Now that I’ve slowed down the important thing is to get it right. Some take months, but it’s worth it,” she said.
See page 3 to find out more about the Ketchum Arts Festival The fine art features scenes like a border collie in the back of a 5B pickup that looks as if it’s talking to a horse. That painting was inspired by the Idaho landscape that surrounds her East Magic Reservoir cabin where she spends part of the year. “I saw a border collie in the back of a pickup and it looked like it had a lot to say. And I noticed the horse’s ear was turned sideways, as if it were listening,” she said. Fine art depicting dogs and trucks and surfboards was inspired by her Maui sojourns. “Surfing holds special a spiritual quality for me, which I want to express,” she said. “I greet the day surfing at dawn when there’s no wind and the ocean is smooth and quiet. And being out in nature puts everything in perspective. I’m seeing more and more dogs on paddleboards, surfboards… I think dogs just like to do everything we like to do.” Sarich’s husband Kevin says he never gets tired of looking at his wife’s paintings. “I like that her paintings are happy,” he said. “She’s a painter without angst.” tws