BY KAREN BOSSICK

Sarah Bird doesn’t stack a bunch of fruit in a bowl when she sits down to paint a still life, as others might do. Her still life paintings are not staged with material objects but created in her imagination.

“My process is a lot like collage,” said Bird. “I paint without much planning and let my instincts guide my decisions. It’s not always efficient. Often, objects that I spent a lot of time on are eventually edited out of the work and buried under the paint.”

Sarah Bird is showing some of her newest works—paintings that weave landscape and still life painting together—at Hemmings Gallery through Aug. 23. She will be present at the Opening Night Reception at the gallery, 340 N. Walnut Ave., from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8, during Gallery Walk.

Sarah Bird’s “Bright Shades 01” can be seen at Hemmings Gallery.

Her new solo exhibition, “Bright Shades” uses the contrasting elements of light and shadow, techniques that reference the warped perspectives of Flemish Primitive paintings of Bosch and van Eyck with techniques from realism. The result: Objects like seashells, feathers and fruit set against deep mystifying horizons.

+++A stone’s throw away at Gilman Contemporary, 661 Sun Valley Road, Dana Hart-Stone will be present for his first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition “Americana” features his intricately constructed digital collages in which he draws from vintage photographs to create large-scale, patterned compositions.

Get up close and personal: From a distance his works resemble woven tapestry. Up close you’ll discover a man with the catch of the day, an oarsman on a quiet stream, a gold miner, a rooster, a horse, a vintage automobile--vignettes of history, in other words.

Hart-Stone told Eye on Sun Valley that he was inspired by the exploring he did as a child in Eastern Montana, which was rife with abandoned homesteads. Today he mines estate sales and historical museums, antique shops and even the Library of Congress, for snapshots that capture the everyday life of how America was built.

Silas Thompson’s oil painting “Evergreen Farms,” an ”, oil, 30” x 30"can be seen at Kneeland Gallery, 4th and Leadville.

He manipulates the images into film-like strips and mesmerizing circular compositions, then prints them on UV-cured acrylic ink on canvas to showcase what otherwise might be a fading history.

Hart-Stone said his art is designed to serve as a visual time capsule, evoking stories of a bygone America. And he’s given his works such titles as “Flapjack,” “On the Fly,” “A Brief History of Flight” and “Bluebird Snowfall” to spur viewers to delve deeper.

“His work is a fascinating look at the American West,” said Beth Rush, of Gilman Contemporary.

“His richly layered photo collages explore themes of memory, identity and American life. Each piece is a tapestry of moments, both intimate and universal,” added gallery owner L’Anne Gilman.

Look closely to see the old-timers in Dana Hart-Stone’s “Flap Jack” at Gilman Contemporary.

An automobile and more can be found inside Dana Hart-tone’s “Pinstripe” at Gilman Contemporary.

Also featured in the gallery are Steve Wrubel’s photographs of the American West’s rodeos, in which he’s isolated rodeo riders mid-air against vast open skies.

+++Graham Galleries, 600 Sun Valley Road, is featuring several new exciting pieces as it expands to the second floor of the gallery.

James Bourret, a Hailey fine arts photographer who recently won a prestigious international award, has three new stunning triptychs. One features a view of the Sawtooth Mountains’ Alice Lake that those who hike there during the day have likely never seen, given that Bourret managed to catch it “just as the sun galvanized” his camera.

Steve Wrubel took a bronc rider out of a rodeo arena and into the Western landscape in “Cole,” which can be seen at Gilman Contemporary.

The other two feature aspen in the snow and the fall colors of aspen out East Fork.

Other new pieces in the gallery include three large-scale wildlife paintings of an eagle manhandling a salmon, a mighty moose and a grizzly bear titled “Griz Almighty.” They have been painted by Heather Mehra-Pedersen, a North Idaho artist whose ski paintings have graced the gallery before.

She was told by her East Indian father to prioritize business over art, but her mother’s passion for art as an alum of the esteemed Philadelphia School of Art weighed in, too. Mehra-Pedersen has done it all, working as a licensed stockbroker, veterinary clinic manager, interior designer, sign language interpreter, co-author and artist, her richly colored and textured paintings bordering the line between Impressionism and Expressionism.

+++Gail Severn Gallery, 400 First Avenue North, will feature “Of Water,” an exhibition of 300 hand-blown mirrored glass forms suspended from the ceiling. The glass forms were created by conservationist artist Joseph Rossano as part of Rossano’s Salmon School project, which examines the decline of salmon populations throughout the world. Rossano will be in attendance.

The Gallery will also feature the work of Anne Siems, a Berlin, Germany, native who draws women and children in nature to evoke the nurturing and connectedness that nature provides.

+++Sun Valley Contemporary Gallery is in a new space in The Courtyard, 360 East Avenue, across from Saddletree Gallery and a few doors down from Broschofsky Gallery. It features a rich variety of artists, include sculptural works by Rob Burman and Floyd Elzinga, the mesmerizing three-dimensional paper wall reliefs of Anna Kruhelska and the floral works of Isabelle Van Zeijl.

+++Kneeland Gallery, 411 N. Leadville Ave., Is in the middle of its annual Plein Air Painting event. Artists will paint from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at locations of their choice. (Call 726-5512 to find out where they will be.) They will then paint in Ketchum Town Square on Friday, Aug. 8.

The artists—Steven Lee Adams, Ovanes Berberian, jack Braman, Shanna Kunz, Lori McNee, Robert Moore, Silas Thompson and Bart Walker—will then showcase the work they did in and around Sun Valley this week during Gallery Walk.

+++MESH Gallery, 4th and Leadville, will continue showing new works by Jeff Lubeck that he took in Scotland. Wouldn’t you know it? Scotland wasn’t the brooding landscape he’d gone for—it offered too many delightful days of sun. But the photographs are still astounding.

+++Broschofsky Galleries, 360 East Avenue in The Courtyard, will feature “Western Pop: Icons & Irony.”

    +++Saddletree Gallery, 360 East Avenue, is featuring the Western and ski chic photographs of Jules Frazier, some of which were taken in Ketchum, Fairfield and Mountain Home.