Arts & Culture

Chelsea Snow opened Bricolage in 2010, when the economy was still bleeding from the wounds of the Great Recession. The downtown Boise store sells things like handmade jewelry, cards and clothes.

But Snow’s vision was to create more than just a store – she wanted to make a community space where crafters of all levels could learn new skills. She hosted workshops on crafts like sewing and printmaking.

The Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa has been recording the stories of Idaho veterans for more than a decade. It’s part of the Library of Congress and its Veterans History Project.

Each veteran tells their story on video as a way to preserve the history of their service in their own words. Now the museum has gone a step further, with a new book that captures those stories in pictures and print.

Friday and Saturday Ballet Idaho does its winter show at Boise’s Morrison Center for the Performing Arts. And tickets sold much faster than usual. This ballet is made up of four short pieces but one of them in particular is generating the excitement.

At a recent rehearsal John Selya goes over trouble spots with Ballet Idaho dancers, an activity he calls slaying dragons.

More than 440 bands will play this year’s Treefort Music Fest. Despite that huge number – which will be the most so far in the event’s five-year existence – festival director Eric Gilbert says the tough part of booking those artists was having to say “no” to many others.

Ross Partridge says above all else, aspiring filmmakers need to be extremely passionate about what they’re doing. Partridge is an actor, director and writer in Hollywood – and is hosting a screenwriters workshop at Boise State University Friday. He says one also has to be able to shut out the naysayers, and trust your instincts when it comes to storytelling.

Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic came up with the idea that became the Museum of Broken Relationships (MoBR) while they were breaking up more than a decade ago. Because of it they now spend more time together than they did when they were a couple. It started as an exhibit at an art show in their native Croatia. They solicited mementos of failed relationships and asked people to write descriptions of the object and the relationship. The two say it was hugely popular from the very beginning.

In the note posted on social media Monday, Trevor Powers told fans “youth lagoon is complete.” The Boise musician, who attained wide national acclaim for his debut album entitled "The Year Of Hibernation" and subsequent two albums, says his upcoming tour is his last one as Youth Lagoon. The band starts their European tour later this week.

It’s a rags to riches story, starring a Boise man who lost it all, then found his way back through video games. Now Ryan Zehm owns and operates a thriving gaming company called NurFace Games.

A few years ago, Zehm went from working at a top tech company to living at a Boise homeless shelter. Now, he’s telling his story of how his perseverance and a little help from the Boise Public Library brought him back from the brink.

Baseball is known as America’s pastime. But a short documentary by Idaho-born filmmaker Reed Lindsay might make you question if another country is more deserving of this title. 

One of the signature events of the annual McCall Winter Carnival is the giant images carved in blocks of snow. But many people don’t know that the Carnival hosts two separate snow sculpting competitions. One is sponsored by local businesses and teams can use power tools and chicken wire to build their masterpieces.

It has not been an easy past few months to be a Muslim in America. After the Paris attacks, presidential candidate Donald Trump said there should be a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. His polls immediately soared. In Boise, the Islamic Center says the Muslim population in the Treasure Valley may well be over ten thousand.  Now, some of Boise's Muslims are sharing how it feels to be a Muslim in the current political climate. 

For those of you who don’t have plans yet for New Year’s Eve, or for those of you who want advice on avoiding crowds that night, here’s an update on what has become Idaho’s biggest New Year’s Party.

It’s probably safe now to call the Idaho Potato Drop an annual event. This is the third year a car-sized foam potato will be lowered from a crane in downtown Boise as a crowd counts down the end of the year. This time the event is moving a few blocks to the small park in front of the state Capitol building. 

There’s a theory that postulates you can learn a lot about a person from what he/she searches for online (though I think people in the sciences would quibble over the use of the word theory there.) A blog from real estate site estately.com extends that theory to learning about states from residents’ Google searches. Estately’s 2015 list says Idaho Googled the word “Vaccines” more than any other state.

Students at the College of Western Idaho are entering the next phase of their project of documenting rock art in the Snake River Basin outside of Melba. The Anthropology Club is going from the field to cyberspace to bring petroglyphs to researchers around the world.