Mason Bee and Chicken Assault !!

Saturday, March 28

At 2:15p.m. Saturday, March 28 after the Farmers Market closes, everyone is invited to Valise Gallery at 17622 Vashon Highway, one door south of Gusto Girls.

We are offering presentations by Jerry Gehrke on “Mason Bees on Vashon: Why, When, and How To” and Amy Beth Holmes and Toby Holmes, along with Sheryl Allen and Grace Hockley on “Having Chickens – a Local Pecking Party Panel.”

Amy Beth Holmes is the owner of Holmestead Farms along with her husband Toby. http://www.holmesteadfarms.com/. Questions are encouraged. Prizes will be awarded for the best chicken and Mason bee imitations.

Valise is a Vashon artist collective of 11 members who have dedicated the last week of each month’s art exhibition to community involvement. Currently, Britt Freda is exhibiting paintings of chickens, bees, and other animals, which sparked the idea for the offering of “Mason Bees and Chickens” to the community. Bring a cushion or folding chair to sit on!

Questions? Call Carol at 567-5907.

Fowl Play at Valise Gallery

In honour of Britt Freda's exhibit, Fowl Brood, we asked Vashon Island musicologist and writer Ed Leimbacher if he knew any songs about chickens. Without much rumination, Ed began to chirp. Here is what we heard:

by Ed Leimbacher

Fowl of a feather brood together... and when they do, a soundtrack is a nice addition eggsactly. Chicks and roosters, hens a-scratchin', they all dig the old-time sound of the barnyard, whether Black, White, or Blues.

Take "Cluck Old Hen," for example, recorded by Taj Mahal on an early double album, and a splendid feature for his rolling, cackling banjo and sly talkalong, not to mention serious musicological learning. Or the Old Timey duo of Arthur McClain and Joe Evans recorded in 1931 (in the heart of New York City!), their syncopatin' mandolins rippling right on through "Old Hen Cackle." And anyone of a certain age likely remembers Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf (and then the Rolling Stones) dissing that "Little Red Rooster"--"too lazy to crow 'fore day," but still able to rise to the right occasion!

Well, this occasion definitely merits a pondering of the chickens of music. Oldtimers galore sang about "chickens crowin' on Sourwood Mountain" ("So many pretty girls you can't count 'em"), while Cannon's Jug Stompers honored the anti-distaff side back in 1929 or so with "The Rooster's Crowing Blues." (But hear this: unknown blues dude Walter Rhodes had waxed "The Crowing Rooster" before them in 1927, playing his accordion! Sea shanty blues, anyone?)

Still, some later "yardbird" connections could be even more esoteric: Charlie Parker stopping to claim a roadkill hen (to cook for dinner) and earning himself a permanent nickname thereafter; Amos Milburn eighty-eighting a "Chicken Shack Boogie" that may have been referenced years later when jazz organist Jimmy Smith recorded "Back at the Chicken Shack"; and New Orleans funkmasters The Meters doin' the "Chicken Strut," which became a NOLA standard and was maybe distantly echoed when Zydeco giant Clifton Chenier (yes, more accordion) declared that we should all "Keep On Scratching." And who can forget British blues bands Chicken Shack and Atomic Rooster, or slide-guitarist Ry Cooder teaming up with the Pahinui family for some Hawaiian slack-key "chickenskin music"?

Do chickens really "roost behind the moon"? Or are all these... well, tracks... strictly for the birds?

Who cares? Just ignore those cackling critics.

Dance, you funky chicken. Play, fowl. Cluck, old hen.

Valise, Contents Revealed.

A Smashing Good Show.

Thank you, Vashon Island for making our first show so successful.
Thank you for the turnout and enthusiasm.
Thank you, Britt for being part of the venture.

Valise Gallery Opens Tonight at 6 pm!

Please join us for the opening reception of:

Fowl Brood

Paintings by Britt Freda

First Friday, March 6, 6-9pm

Valise Gallery
(one door south of Gusto Girls)
17633 Vashon Hwy SW
fair Isle of Vashon

Ontogeny Recapitulates Philogeny

Once upon a time, humans lived on family farms and in villages. Humans raised chickens for sustenance and pleasure. It was an honest relationship, built upon natural cycles.

In her exhibit, Fowl Brood, Seattle painter Britt Freda celebrates the chicken, Gallus gallus. The show opens March 6 at Vashon Island’s new gallery, VALISE, at 17633 Vashon Highway SW.



Ms. Freda’s paintings depict exquisite birds, like the Belgian Mille Fleur and the Cochin Blue. The ancient breeds were as culturally distinctive as our ancestors. But this exhibit is more than an Ah-Shucks! homage to our feathered flocks.

I paint an up-close perspective of insects (honeybees) and agricultural animals, central to our human food chain, whose existence, evolution and future are being jeopardized by our cultural addiction to abundant consumption. Nature is bountiful, a land flowing with milk and honey, and resilient, but pushed out of balance essential components of our ecosystem are rapidly dying.

In a nod of approval to our provincial kin, Ms. Freda’s paintings contemplate chickens as symbols of self-reliance. Will we allow ourselves to become human versions of the industrial Leghorn broiler, living unfulfilled in cages? Or can we re-evolve to virtuous creatures?

I believe that the cracks in life are stuffed with surprise and the simplest of things, sometimes even chickens, are secretly studded with precious gems, tangible only to those who take the time to stumble. I believe that wealth is abundant when the common black of night, or an inky rooster, is jeweled by the light of places we imagine.

This is a show about the beauty of truth and our own natural cycles. The show runs through March.

Britt Freda - March 6 at Valise

Unclaimed Luggage No Longer a Fear

For Immediate Release
Vashon, February 19, 2009.

New Gallery Opens March 6

A collective of artists have reclaimed the gallery space occupied one door south of Gusto Girls. The new gallery will be called VALISE. A valise is a traveling bag, a suitcase that hints of mystery and adventure. What’s inside? Where has it been? Where is it going? The bag is curiously anonymous, nostalgic, and worthy of a closer inspection.

VALISE stands for Vashon Artists Linked in Social Engagement. We chose these words for their humorous, ironic, and activist bent. The Ramos Zamfir Project is an example of artists linked in social engagement, a conspiracy of humor to be shared by all.

The artist for February’s smoke shop project is Vic Monchego. As a writer, interested in social commentary, he wanted to create “a fictional narrative that speaks to reverse gentrification, economic downturns, George Bailey’s Pottersville, xenophobia, and the dreams of immigrants.”

VALISE will be operated as an artist collective, by member artists. The gallery will be dedicated to presenting subjects and media that are daring, unexpected and emergent. We want to stir our audiences. We want to challenge members to initiate fresh work. We want to share the venue with the community and tempt new ideas.

Collective members will show about half the time, and artists from outside the Vashon Autonomous Zone will show the other half. VALISE hopes to be an important and accessible art venue for the community.

What’s inside?

VALISE will open March 6, 2009. The gallery’s first show will feature Seattle artist, Britt Freda. Ms. Freda’s show is titled “Fowl Brood.”