Something odd happened while the 40th Anniversary edition of Planet of the Apes was showing at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 6, the news broke that the film's star, Charlton Heston, had passed away at the age of 84. This evening Madison once again taps one of Heston's most well known films as Cha Cha Hair Salon opens the doors to a second space on Willy Street. To celebrate the opening the Salon will be teaming up with Anxiety Gallery to present a night of art featuring unique local and national artists. The Cha Cha Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Art Show and Party starts at 7 p.m. Below I have written up some brief profiles of a handful of the artists put together based solely on what I could find on MySpace profiles and personal blogs or websites.




Maggie (RedHeaded Girl)

This will be the first gallery showing for Maggie who works in the the medium of cut-paper. She cuts up "pieces of printed paper and make them into girls." She will often use her work to tell stories or will create a series based on a theme. For example, she has been working on a "Solar System" theme using the cut-paper to tell the story of the characters that constellations and moons are named after. She recently completed the sub-series of Jupiter's Galilean moons.

Squidnik
Squidnik is Shan Michael Evans from Nevada. He works in the medium of print, but has also designed vinyl toys. His influences: "Creation. Life. Death. Eternity. Saturday Morning Cartoons. Spirals. Lovecraft. Monsters. Zombies. Toys. Shoegaze. My Head. Stars. Galaxies. and such." If he had to hide in a ginger bread house he would "hop into a giant gumdrop, and fall asleep inside. I would have the most wonderful dreams..." Fantastic.

JonBoy
JonBoy is a local artist who you may have seen working in the medium of flesh at Capitol City Tattoo on Willy Street or at Cha Cha's Friday night Buzz Club. In addition to tattoos he is also a self taught artist who paints in watercolor.












Mike Maas
Mike Maas is an artist from Tempe, Arizona who has previously shown his work at Madison's Fly Over Gallery. Maas is an illustrator who is currently working on a series of Ouija Boards featuring famous people including Tori Amos, Morrissey, Sylvia Plath, and others. The Ouija Boards feature planchettes that are tied to the personality on the board. Morrissey, for example, has a broken heart planchette. He also designed some adorable characters for Phoenix baby/toddler store Little Artika.



Betso
Betso is an urban artist out of Salt Lake City who works mostly with the subject of toothy bunnies. Check out these awesome kicks that Betso designed for a traveling show called "Sneaker Pimps."












Art on Acid
Art on Acid specialize in "blotter art." Blotter Art became a recognized art form in the 60s when LSD dealers wanted to find a way to make sure purchasers recognize their batch of LSD from all of the others. As a result, they began putting images on the perforated paper that would be distributed to buyers. hence, "blotter art" was born. According to Art on Acid's MySpace page the collectors saw value in the work and began purchasing and preserving unsaturated work. Interestingly, you could be arrested for selling the artwork: