Art Auction Review: Amerian Heart Association Art in the Heart
November 1, 2007

To Adan's   Arts Content List   A Blog  of Arts Related Interest

You might as well know up front, I had a great time, you’d guess that easily along the way anyway. Food, drink, dance, music, oh, and art!

First things first, food! Floating among strategically placed mounded tables of cheeses, olives, and crackers, were floating trays brought by smiling servers of long-toothpick-picking-ready cubes and skewers of herbaled tomatoes, salmon, olive anchored beef strips, and crusty bread things that were really good.

Equally strategically placed (including at the entrance to the Design Center) were tables of red and white wines plus, said the bartender, a martini-like martini that was nice and cold.

Intentional or not, the strategicness of the varied tables’ placements helped guide the festive, chewing sipping crowd to, past, and along the long tables of art that ringed the brick walls of the center’s interior where, just the week before, my second place winning “Austin at Night” had hung during the recent CAS exhibit. Each work of art had a paper sheet with suggested increment bidding amounts, plus, a neat “buy-it-now” price the buyer could just jump to that said, “okay, this is sold.” Nice.

The variety of art matched the variety of white and yellow cheeses, thin and thick crackers, large almond stuffed olives, and green greek-wrap treats. An assortment of photography, watercolors, oils, and acrylics worked into abstracts, hearts, flowers, landscapes, figures, cityscapes, and a great looking pooch by Genae Girard sparkled on the long cleanly laid tables. Eye food. Though, mostly small pieces, as requested by the Heart Association, there were also a few medium to larger pieces available.

If you worked your way through most all the tables of food and art, you would even discover the semi-hidden layout of skewered strawberries and cake awaiting the molten chocolate just asking to be wanted, and wanted it was! To the left of this never deserted area another table with fresh de-caf, full throttle coffee, and bottles of iced water waited.

The variety at this gala auction even extended to the entertainment. Alibi, an Austin jazz band, pressed close, and seated near the items on the for-the-live-auction table, played soothing up-tempo sounds while potential bidders checked the select group of art for the live auction, including a ceramic clock, a shimmery sheet of metal (copper I think), and Linda Dumont’s colorful curved-canvas signature style work of the Austin skyline.

At the end of the evening, Linda Welsh would wail like the auctioneer she is, gathering as high a bid as she playfully skillfully could for the American Heart Association, cheerfully chiding anyone who, during the bidding, might wave an arm to a friend across the room and otherwise be caught inadvertently kicking up the bidding.

Before the live auction though, more entertainment, dancing from the KDH Dance Company. Three agile ladies, first singularly then as a troop of nature-inspired, organically grown it seemed, florals and vegetation sprang their way across a cleared area, arching and angling supplely to the jazzy sounds of Alibi playing for them near by.

By now, evening had darkened and someone had turned on the chinese-lantern-like lights strung across the stone patio outside the glass doors at the rear of the hall. Chairs were set in twos and threes by the cooling pond and steady fountain beyond the lights. Guests chatted and sipped their wines and waters. A sax from Alibi sent musical "alibis" from inside.

Wispy, red draped on luminous white-toned skin, skillfully silent, Carolyn Sutton, mime dancer and statue by turns, Japanese Butoh Performance Artist by trade, appeared and dissolved in spaces now lazily glanced at, leaving me wondering of vague notions of time and self.

It was getting late for Sheila and me. We still swore we'd be at 6 am Jazzercise the next morning. What were we thinking? Oh, well, that it'd be Friday next day, and we could survive doing this the ending day of the regular work week :-)

Once the live bidding was done then, leaving the large milling whispering crowd to go round and round the long tables of silent-bidding offered arts, we walked fellow Creative Arts Society member and artist donator, Virginia Calvino, to her car en-route to ours. She has recently returned to Austin from a spell of art making in the Caribbean, and was also glad to have found the opportunity to donate to the American Heart Association's Art in the Heart auction.

Both our pictures from the auction are at the end of this review.

Next year, if I'm blessed to contribute again, I think, with the greater lead and time frame, I'd like to create something more specific to donate for the event. Something more targeted from the heart, for the Art in the Heart.

Thanks ya'll,

adan www.adanlerma.com

ps - my last donated work in an auction this year is nov 10th in columbus, tx; at the same location, the live oak art center there, a member show starts dec 1st

 

Adan Lerma, aka "me"




Virginia Calvino

Back to Adan's Arts Content List Original Works Subscribe to the Email Newsletter Your information will not be sold, lent, rented, or distributed to anyone without legal authority. Unsubscribe at anytime. Newsletter is intermittent, covers a variety of art related interests, and is also available online. Feel free to bookmark. Thank you. Please Note:  All comments received are eventually reviewed and may be removed or not posted at the sole discretion of the moderator. Copyright Adan Lerma - All Rights Reserved * rss feed available each page * Back to Top - Post Comment Below - Main