Chair is Art. According to Renee Kropat, head of Gallery 202 in Westerville, almost anything can become art--maybe everything. Last year for Passages V, a conceptual art experience that culminated into an art show of women' expressions of some aspect of life, mailboxes were turned into art. The brilliance of the Passages series is in the collective expression. Each person for the last Passages, for example, was given the same prompt, the same type of mailbox, and told to convey the idea of how do we stay connected. No one mailbox turned out the same. Some mailboxes didn't even look like mailboxes anymore which was fine by Renee. Only a piece of the original mailbox had to be used. This year's Passage's theme has not been decided. When it is, I'm in.

"Chair is Art," another Kropat brainchild, is not just for women--or for adults. This show is open to anyone. I participated two years ago and got two friends of mine to also participate. All you do is pay a $10 entry fee if, you are an adult, or $5 if you're a kid, and bring your artistic expression of a chair to Gallery 202 by the due date, March 7, 2007. You can downnload the entry form from the Gallery 202 website. Either turn a chair into an art piece, or make a chair (for example, a school art class made paper mache chairs) or photograph a chair. This year you can even make a wall hanging, but somehow, a chair has to be represented. The Gallery 202 website also has the past Chair is Art chairs posted to give an overview of what is possible.

Besides the forays in to community art that includes murals in downtown Westerville, Gallery 202 also features local artist's work, has art supplies for sale and is a venue for at classes. Gallery 202 is a terrific resource and art world gem that pulls me to Westerville several times a year. It sure is fun to be an artist once in a while-even if I'm not all that good, Renee makes me feel like I'm an artistic genius-or something.