Main Sections

Addison County Service 20th Hospice Volunteer Annual Arts Auction May 12th

Tuesday May 2, 2006

    A Vermont community event not to be missed is coming soon!  It's the Addison County Hospice Volunteer Services 20th annual Arts Auction on Friday, May 12th, at the beautiful Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain in Vergennes, from 5:00 - 8:30.

Both the silent and live auctions will include over 200 pieces of work generously donated by very talented Vermont artists and crafts persons, plus “special auction items” donated by area businesses and individuals.  Items for auction range from greeting cards to fine paintings, from baskets to pottery, and from gift certificates for dinner at local inns to lift tickets at local ski resorts.  There will be something for each and every one of you here at this very fun, relaxed, social event.  Also included in your entrance ticket is food---a variety of hors d'oeuvres, a hot buffet, and scrumptious homemade desserts.  A cash bar will be available.  As you stroll through the event, enjoy the soothing sounds of the very talented Fred Barnes on piano.

The silent auction will be from 5:00 - 8:30, the buffet from 5:30 - 6:30, the live auction from 6:30 - 7:30, and dessert from 7:30 - 8:30.  Hospice Volunteer Services, a small nonprofit agency dedicated to providing compassionate emotional and physical care for people facing the end of life by the use of trained hospice volunteers, asks that you come on down and help support them by attending their biggest fundraiser of the year.   

Tickets for the Art Auction, where you may bid on some of the work of these artists are $20 and may only be purchased at the door. The ticket price allows entrance to both the live and the silent auctions, and includes food. For more information about the Art Auction, please call Hospice Volunteer Services at 388-4111.

Prindle Wissler-Mullin

Surrounded by her art, Prindle Wissler-Mullin is as inspiring and engaging in her thinking and her attitudes toward life as in her work.  Early on, as a student at Skidmore, Ms. Wissler-Mullin told her art teacher, “I can't draw.” He encouraged her to feel things and draw accordingly. That is what she seems to have done in her art all her life: from her earlier descriptive, detailed storytelling (see: Wintersport, Our Town) to paintings brimming with color (Rich Fat Lady) and on to her more recent, abstract creations of detailed, complex line drawing in pen and ink with splashes of water colors. Works that assume such names as Burning Bush or Crustaceans. This particular technique has developed since Ms Wissler-Mullin at age 93 is visually impaired and “contrasting lines and colors work”, she pronounced. “I am grateful that I can continue to work in this style.”

Few career opportunities were open for women during her undergraduate years at Skidmore, “It was either becoming a secretary, a teacher, or a nurse. So I chose teacher,” Wissler-Mullin commented. She has been a teacher of art up to the present. Now in her small  second floor studio that she jokingly calls the “horror chamber,” since it is overflowing with art pieces and the tools of her creation, she teaches small groups of mostly adult students.Her own formal learning took her from Skidmore to Columbia, where she earned a Masters in Fine Art. Over the years, she has exhibited in several locations and many galleries, was featured in the Bicentennial Exhibit at Middlebury College and feels honored to have her art displayed in the Governor's office during the month of April of this year.

Ms Wissler-Mullin has been a local resident since the '40s  when she married Ben Wissler, a professor of physics at Middlebury College. Through her folk art she has documented our state and county in many detailed and loving story-paintings in the past and present, an amazing legacy for all who cherish our state as Ms. Wissler-Mullin seems to do. She has donated her highly acclaimed work to the HVS Arts Auctions for many years.

Peter Jensen

Peter Jensen lives in West Addison where his wife Daphne and he are the innkeepers of the Barsen House Inn. They share the property with two cats, a dog and 13 chickens. Together, they have raised four children and now have five grandchildren, all under three years of age. He has been teaching in Middlebury since he left the Army in 1975.

Peter became active in non-profit volunteering in 1991 when he enrolled in the HVS Living With Loss program. Since then he has served several terms as a United Way Board member and is currently a Hospice Volunteer Services bereavement volunteer and a Board member. He is also a founding member of the ARCH group working to establish the Addison Respite Care Home in the Middlebury area (for people facing the end of life.)

For the past fifteen years Peter has been donating handcrafted wood objects, from tables to lamps, to the HVS Arts Auction. He uses such woods as mahogany, cherry, maple and oak and this year, a four foot long mahogany bench waits for the right bidder.

Annemie Curlin

One of the many artists featured in this event will be Annemie Curlin. Annemie who resides in Charlotte, has been donating her watercolor collages to the Art Auction for a number of years.

Last year, Annemie was awarded a grant from the Vermont Arts Council to create public art for the Rutland County District Courthouse. The oil paintings of aerial views of Rutland County are based on the State of Vermont's aerial Photos (“orthos”). These paintings depict the surface patterns and forms of the recognizable locales, allowing viewers to see the calligraphy of roads and railroad lines, the mosaic of fields, the surprising attractiveness of industrial landscape in unaccustomed ways, seeing order and beauty where they may not be apparent on the ground.

In addition to the aerial views, Annemie will create two community maps of cherished places. She will visit with local people and ask what they value about their community. This could be natural history, history, architecture, or simply sentiments and observations about their community. The community maps will consist of drawings, small oil and /or watercolor painting, perhaps historic photographs or sketches of photographs and calligraphic writing over a simplified topographic map of the area. The idea is to make the community proud of the new courthouse, to feel a sense of ownership, having participated in the creation of the art that enhances the building.

Kristine Myrick Andrews

One of the many artists featured this year will be Kristine Myrick Andrews. For those of you who can't own enough baskets, once again, Kristine Myrick Andrews will be donating a basket to the Hospice Arts Auction. The large gathering basket will be auctioned off in the live auction.

Competition is usually fierce, so come early to get the best seats. Kristine, a native Vermonter, works and lives in Salisbury, Vt. She is trained in textile design and weaving at UVM; she now applies her weaving skills almost exclusively to creating award-winning baskets. Early Shaker, Appalachian, and New England designs inspire her work. Kristine works with split rattan and a variety of native materials. Her final products are stained to achieve a warm finish. Kristine sells her work throughout New England, so we are very fortunate to have her work in our auction again this year.

Jaclyn Davidson

Jaclyn Davidson has been working with metal since she was a student at Kent State in the late 60s “As long as I am working with metal, I know who I am.”, she says. For twenty years, she has created and sold jewelry in silver, gold and glass enamel; ornamental pieces, among them wedding bands ordered by Robin Williams and his wife Marcia, (who also own 24 custom made celebration cups similar to the one in the auction). All of the cups present magical and ritual figures, such as the four ' netsuki' - like beads chosen by the Smithsonian Museum of Art, part of their permanent collection of 20th century crafts.. When asked about her art creations, J.D. vehemently contradicts:

“Art is not my field. Let's talk about design.” When working on design, she comments “there is this vast wasteland of possibilities that must be run before a thread of light presents itself. Reaching through that light I find a network of lines which will form the next series of pieces.”

Davidson applies a similar principle in a new joint venture with Louis Nop, designing, producing and installing customized milled steel vehicle gates,  fences, and arbors, large forged and welded objects. Jointly, Louis Nop, who owns his own local welding business, and J.D. have a hot shop with forge and vintage, turn of the century power hammer. Recently, they contributed to Middlebury's downtown by making and installing a pictorial, milled-steel fence with art-deco accents along the falls, near Frog Hollow.  ”Louis  and I come to this venture with our own sense of scale and experience. Louis knows the physics, the property and beauty of steel and I come with my history of ways to bend a line. It is a symbiotic relationship. We produce objects that work consistently well and emanate strong custom design.

Currently, however, they are working on a sculpture commission - based on the biblical text of the ten plagues. The design illustrates the temporary collapse of the Egyptian society as the Hebrews leave. It is an expressive, jagged sculpture with the verse “ Remember, I Bore You on Eagle's Wings” in Hebrew lettering set against a sun. The upcoming HVS Arts Auction will carry two pieces of Davidson’s's work: a silver ceremonial cup and a steel gate which was jointly created with Louis Nop.            

The Valley Voice has dedicated this Hospice Arts Auction  Page in memory of  the late Marjory Cady  who was a special friend of the Valley Voice. The Voice also dedicates this  to our  late mother  Shirley White Neger who passed away March 10, 2006 . Everyone should support  Hospice and the Arts Auction.  The White Family: Cheryl, Steve, Terry, Ron, and Bob White

Printer Friendly

Top

Advertisements

Search our Archives