Art Trip

My friend Cheri Lasher-Sandhu never met a surface she didn’t like.

When I knew her in Israel, she’d paint anything — cabinets, furniture, pillows, clothing, and the unfinished Arab-style pottery plates and water jugs sold all around Israel. If memory serves, she painted part of the hallway leading to her apartment. She was compelled to paint, a painting whirling dervish.

Cheri and I met when we both lived in Tel Aviv, a fateful meeting of funny bones — we’d bounced hilarity off each other with that sort of synchronicity and timing I find only with certain people. Some days we’d perform a type of guerrilla office art warfare by faxing each other assorted wacky creations to see how much we could crack each other up at work (read: sabotage)– fake purchase orders, made-up business correspondence, xeroxed snacks for a 2-D birthday party. Now try and imagine me sitting next to a fax machine, seeing an x-rated cartoon addressed to me coming in, and me looking over my shoulder while surreptitiously force-pulling it out before my boss would notice.

And then there was her apartment: a wonderful visual cacophony of her own artwork, quirky collectibles and funny retro things.

For reasons of economy at the time, we were both very into what is now called “repurposing stuff,” the difference being that when it comes to painting I could barely handle plain minimalist white. Once I spied a hobby horse on the curb awaiting trash pick-up. I literally threw my car into reverse and zoomed backwards down the entire block to grab the prize for her, and sure enough, she transformed it into a wonderful, slightly psychedelic child’s toy-turned-piece-of-art.

It was no longer trash. It took on a personality. Friends gave it a name. Avigdor.

These days Cheri lives outside of Chicago and her huge apartment is still a feast for the eyes, albeit more grown-up. Textiles and collectibles from India and Israel blend with her own primitive-mod painted wall hangings. Her hand-painted pottery lines the floors and the tops of bookcases. Her studio is crammed with paints, stencils, vintage ad art and long easels where she stretches the silk scarves she paints and sells. Around the house bold colorful canvases practically trip with faces, symbols and interlocked neon geometric shapes like the intercultural lovechild of Picasso and Peter Max.

Years ago while working at UCLA’s International Institute I used Cheri’s remarkable eyes in an academic music project CD cover. Alas, this is all I am permitted to show of her.

She doesn’t have a website yet, but here’s a taste of the Lasher wild ride. Some of these shots are a bit out of focus because I took them with a Flip video, but, well, you’ll get the idea.