• Trevor Villagrana
• Models hit the runway at RAW: Natural Born Artists on Thursday, May 17.

As the clock hit 8 p.m. on May 17, the air in the Powerhouse Event Center was buzzing with artists and art appreciators decked out in their Sunday best. Attendees had piled in for a night of film, music, comedy, fashion and burlesque called RAW: Natural Born Artists.

Even though it started a tad behind schedule, Kirsten Strough’s short film STZ opened the night with a hilarious rendering of zombies as sexually transmitted diseases.

From there, singer-songwriter Shari Olivieri took the stage in a slinky black dress armed with a Les Paul. Her sexy voice and gentle string plucking filled the space, through the crowd was largely inattentive.

The audience's chattiness also hurt comedian AAron Sheehan and the Fleet Street Klezmer Band. Sheenan’s act, although hilarious and gritty at times, was lost on the crowd, whose focus was much more on the bottom of their glasses than the show. And Fleet Street’s traditional Jewish bellows and shouts fell upon ears deafened by side conversation.

Despite the distraction, the Red Light Variety Show saved the night with help from some well-placed pasties and sultry stage banter.

• Josh Gross
• Bottlecap Mural at Roosevelt Elementary.

Hundreds of students at Boise's Roosevelt Elementary gathered May 11 in the gym/cafeteria for the unveiling of a project that they have been collectively working on since January: a mural made out of plastic bottlecaps.

The project was spearheaded by self-proclaimed "art moms" Tracy Olson and Julie Bush, who were inspired by the recycled materials work of Michelle Stitzlein and the school's educational theme of respect to create the design and help the students assemble it.

Why bottlecaps?

"They aren't recyclable; they're free and they're colorful," said Olson.

And it didn't hurt that the school's walls were completely blank thanks to a large-scale renovation last year.

After a brief speech thanking the students for all their work, Principal Juli Bronner invited two sixth-grade students to remove the large blue tarp covering the mural, while the rest of the audience offered up a drum roll.

"But we already know what it looks like," one little girl who had worked on the mural groaned.

The students pulled the cords, revealing the brightly colored mural and eliciting a giant round of applause.

Afterwards, Bronner said there were ice cream sandwiches waiting for all the students to reward them for their hard work. Right on cue, they all immediately began screaming.

• Vans Inc.
• Baked potato and ear of corn, extra rubber.

The Potato State is reppin' four pairs of kicks in a national competition with a $50,000 grand prize in sight.

After an aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign at this year's Modern Art event, the intrepid visual art students at Mountain View High School in Meridian have reached the Top Five in the Vans Custom Culture shoe design contest.

Voting for the Top 50 schools ended on May 3. Representatives from the top five schools have now won a special trip to Los Angeles, where the Willy Wonkas of the Vans world—celebrity judges Whitney Port, Tony Alva, Jordan Buckley, Oliver Peck—will select the grand prize winner on Wednesday, May 30.

Should Mountain View High nabs top honors, the kids of Laura Ritzer's art class will see $50,000 donated to the art program's coffers. Each runner-up will receive $4,000 for their school's art program.

You can peep the rest of Idaho's submissions here.

• Tyler Bush
• Check out Tyler Bush's antique dollhouse at Home on the Strange: Peacock Manor.

Artist Tyler Bush has been a recurring figure at the Modern Hotel's Modern Art event. At this year's event, Bush and Minerva Jayne staged a modern recreation of John and Yoko's bed-in for peace. And in 2011, he created another living installation featuring women in Gothic dress bearing antlers and playing poker.

Now, Bush will expand on the Deer Ladies theme with the second part of his Home on the Strange series, which debuted in a rented Victorian mansion on Second and Jefferson streets last year. The focal point of his new exhibit, Home on the Strange: Peacock Manor, is a four-foot-tall dollhouse belonging to Bush's 91-year-old grandmother, La Venia Jacobson, who spent 18 years building and furnishing the scale model Victorian mansion. The exhibit will also feature the aforementioned Deer Ladies in a more ghostly setting.

Home on the Strange: Peacock Manor will open with an artist's reception at the Eagle Performing Arts Center on Friday, May 11, from 6:30-9:30 p.m.

Here's some footage of the Deer Ladies at Modern Art in 2011:

Modern Art went down May 3 at The Modern Hotel. This video by former BW staffer Tyler Bush shows the entirety of what went down in his John and Yoko-themed room in just five minutes. Yeowza that's a good time-lapse.

The fifth-annual Modern Art event went down last week at The Modern Hotel. In between cocktails and swing dancing in the Art Barter Room, BW managed to shoot some video documenting the event for those who couldn't make it, or who focused more on the cocktails than the ample art.

• Portland, Ore., poet Zachary Schomburg reads from his latest work, Fjords, Vol. 1, at The Crux Sunday, May 6.

The Crux seemed like the perfect venue for an evening of poetry and film. But with the stage area located at the front of the shop, and the only suitable wall for pointing a projector at the back, the awkward transition of turning around between acts on May 6 proved challenging for the audience.

Local filmmaker and Boise State undergrad John Shinn provided video vignettes featuring local poet Matt Truslow as the principal actor. The poems of Ashley Gould were recorded as accompaniment, but the projector's small speakers proved too quiet for the audience to hear.

So instead, Gould read the text of her poems from her iPhone's screen while the film flashed on the wall below a Budweiser sign. Though the technical difficulties were distracting, both portions were compelling, even if sometimes out of sync.

"Tell me about the destruction of your father," Gould read in a poem dedicated to Portland, Ore., poet Zachary Schomburg, who took the stage next.

After the audience turned around to face the stage, Schomburg opened with a different set of poems than at his Saturday, May 5, reading, which was also at The Crux.

"We might cover much of the book, so you won't need to buy it," he joked. "You'll know all these poems."

At this reading, the author of The Man Suit, Scary, No Scary and Fjords, Vol. 1, stuck mostly to sex poems. Some of them were steamy, like a narrative about making love in a movie theater ticket booth, while others were tastefully bizarre. It was a topic for which the audience of 50 showed some interest.

"If there's no babies here, these are some sex poems," Schomburg said. "You guys like sex poems? Good, I was hoping that would get a positive response."

Alliances can be a good thing—in strategic board games, in international relations and especially in art. The Treasure Valley Artists Alliance is one example of a great alliance, and it is currently demonstrating the fine work of its members at its second-annual Foray exhibition.

The show features more than 60 works in a variety of media and styles on display at the Boise State Public Radio offices at 220 E. Parkcenter Blvd.

The exhibition opened April 27, and will continue through Thursday, July 26. Visitors are welcome from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday. You can view more work from TVAA artists in the group's online gallery.

• Comedian Alvin Williams talked openly about every topic, including race, during the Shades of Black touring show at Boise State May 5.

• The CoaliSon dance group performed for almost 600 audience members Tuesday.

Mixing spoken word, music, dance and comedy performances, the Shades of Black touring show returned to Boise State May 5, turning the Simplot ballroom into a crosscultural investigation into identity and drawing a crowd that almost filled the 600-seat room. Comedian Alvin Williams, the host of the program, said the show's celebration of black culture fit right in to Cinco de Mayo.

"This will be the best ever black show on Cinco de Mayo," said Williams. "This was my plan, this is something that needs to be addressed. Black people and Mexicans have been attached at the hip for decades. Those Taco Bell KFCs are not an accident."

Many laughed at Williams' portrayals of racial stereotypes, something he stated was necessary to better address the issues of people of color in America. He introduced acts like The CoaliSon dance group, Boise poet Elizabeth McCarthy, who performed at 2011's Shades of Black show, and soulful Boise singer Victoria Lunde, who showed off her Mariah Carey-like pipes.

"Different races of different people belong together," Williams said. "Jaeger and Red Bull do not belong together. Red Bull gives you wings: How long would it take Boise Police to shoot down a flying black man? ... We are all one race in here tonight."

Perfecting the painstakingly precise process Chicago, Ill., artist Stephen Eichhorn employs has been an exercise in patience and focus.

Using an exacto knife and other cutting tools, Eichhorn assembles menageries of flora or images on paper, favoring the lines of organic elements. He's also fond of cats.

"It's fairly obvious that this stuff is hand cut, and that it is fairly laborious, but I'm not ever actually trying to insert myself into that artwork," Eichhorn told thisartist.tv in a Web video.

Eichhorn's work comes to the walls of the Breneman Street collective Black Hunger on Saturday, May 5, with a catered reception beginning at 7 p.m.

• Eichhorn's series Nine (IV).

• Ebersmoore Gallery
• Eichhorn's 40- by 30-inch Yellow Orchid (Drape) collage.

• Ebersmoore Gallery
• Print of Grass Burst, by Chicago, Ill., artist Stephen Eichhorn.