STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Sun Valley Museum of Art will hold the first of its new Mash-Up lectures  at 6 tonight—Thursday, Feb. 15--at The Museum in Ketchum.

John Bieter, a Boise State University professor and Basque historian, will discuss a project capturing images of wayfinding and cultural carvings that Basque sheepherders have carved in aspen trees for decades.

He will be joined by Crystal Markham Brown, a yoga teacher and sound healer. She will talk about using sound--especially mantras--as a form of mind healing and recovery from trauma.

The Mash-up Lecture Series is a collaboration between The Museum and Boise State University’s College of Innovation and Design. It’s designed to bring together the worlds of art and innovation and open a dialog about what it means to be human in the face of such digital innovations as social media and artificial intelligence. It will also look at how the arts can affect health and healing.

Each evening two presenters will eeah speak for 20 minutes with a third 20-minute segment set aside for questions and answers.

Two more Mash-Up lectures are scheduled in this series:

DEATH MASKS AND SIGN GEEKS—6 p.m. Thursday, March 21

Tim Andreae, a Boise artist, musician and mental health professional, will discuss an art installation that invites people to create death masks, then destroy them as a reflection on impermanence.

Jacky O’Connor, a self-professed sign geek will discuss her work tracking down and capturing photographs of vintage signs, then finding and sharing their stories.

BIRD PROOF BUILDINGS AND HABIT REHAB—6 p.m. Thursday, April 18

Kirsten Furlong, an artist and director of the Blue Galleries in the Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies at Boise State University, will talk about a collaboration between her department and the Intermountain Bird Observatory. The project focused on decreasing bird deaths caused by architectural design.

Darrin Pufall Purdy, associate professor of Theater Arts at Boise State, will discuss his research on the historic garments worn by women in religious orders and how that led him to design historically accurate habits for the Broadway revival of “Doubt.”

Admission to each is $10 for Museum members and $12 nonmembers. All of the talks will be held at The Museum. For tickets go to https://svmoa.org.