Creativity shines at Gallery Route One’s annual ‘Box Show’

Karen Haas' "All You Need is Love" is featured in "The Box Show." (Photo by Lisa Foote) Josh Costa's "The End is Near" is featured in "The Box Show." (Photo by Lisa Foote) Gordon Bryan's work is featured in "The Box Show.

" (Photo by Lisa Foote) Loretta Bresh is among the participants in this year's "Box Show." (Photo by Lisa Foote) Alix Schwartz's "Drakes Beach Reflections" is featured in this year's "Box Show." (Photo by Lisa Foote) Karen Haas' "All You Need is Love" is featured in "The Box Show.

" (Photo by Lisa Foote) What can you do with a simple pine box? Each summer for the past 26 years, that question has confronted 150 artists, whose answers are on display in “The Box Show” at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station. This year’s orgy of ingenuity and imagination opened Aug. 3 and runs through Sept.

7, also the date of the final auction and closing party. The premise is that each participating artist gets an identical pine box, about the size of a shoebox, and has until submission deadline — this year, July 29 — to incorporate it into something visually and/or conceptually compelling. Some artists use the box as a diorama.

Some use it as a base for sculpture, or deconstruct it and paint on the panels. Some have gone so far as to grind the box into sawdust to be mixed with paint, or burned the box and blended the ashes into concrete for sculpture. It’s all good — and all within the rules, provided that the box is somehow part of the finished piece.

There a.