An art exhibit inspired by the 3rd grade

If you skipped elementary school to pursue a career chimney sweeping, you might not know that "telephone" is also a game where a sentence is whispered from person to person, becoming more garbled with each repetition. And that's what inspired this joint exhibit at Greenwood's Bherd Studios and Home Suite Home galleries

The visual-art version of Telephone works like this: one artist creates an original work, photographs it, and sends it to the next artist, who creates a piece based on the first, so a string of paintings that starts with a dessicated astronaut surrounded by space monsters..

... ends up just five paintings later as a gothic skull apparition floating above an old house, despite the fact that they're both by the same artist

There are 43 paintings spread across the two galleries, including this colorful poster-size depiction of a girl who, just one painting prior, was a skeleton, and probably will be again if she keeps letting those bugs eat her

The works are split into strings of six to eight paintings that show just how dramatically the artists' perceptions shift from one piece to the next. For example, in just four steps, this cute little bird will either be a giant mechanized owl, a Thanksgiving dinner, or stuck in a chimney somewhere in Bellevue, waiting for your 9yr-old self to save it.