CAFE auction returns Thursday
May 9—Clinton High art students are finishing up preparations for their upcoming art auction later this week. This is a part of the annual fundraiser they put on, which benefits the Clinton Area Foundation for Education (CAFE) and teachers within the school system.
The Annual CCS CAFE Art Auction is scheduled for this Thursday, May 11, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will be held inside the CHS Auxiliary Gym. Proceeds go towards supporting CAFE, which funds teacher resources and other school related projects, along with the CHS Art Department.
"This starts off as a grant and then CAFE gives us the money to be able to buy the materials, to make the stretcher frames, to stretch the stretcher frames and to prime them," CHS art teacher Michael Ray said. "We then use that to make our paintings so they're really there to help us get it going on."
The auction itself has been going on since 2003 and is one of their biggest fundraisers. Ray said they have no shortage of gorgeous pieces for this year and even he'll be doing a featured piece as well.
"We have good paintings and we've got them laying around everywhere," he said. "Half of the proceeds go to CAFE and the other half goes to Clinton High School Art Department, so it's one of our biggest fundraisers which is really cool. I also do one because if I expect them to do it I'm going to do it to."
"It going to be fun, we'll have a real auctioneer that'll be doing all the auctioneer stuff," Ray said. "Plus it's real exciting to when the parents and the people from community that come start getting into it. Seeing you're painting start to go up and the price goes up as people start bidding on it, it's just really kind of cool."
"At first, they're not really excited about it but after a while once they're actually participating they really like it."
In the past this was a full on event with a multitude of actives happening the same the day as the auction but not this year. Instead it'll be just the auction and with that being the case there'll be more pieces featured.
"This time they wanted it just to focus on the auction itself and this year we're actually going to have some print block prints in there," Ray said. "So it's going to be a little more than the paintings this year."
While there are funds to be made from this auction Ray said there's more to it than that as the event doubles as a valuable teaching experience for his students.
"Part of the lesson in this is teaching students if they're going to become a successful artists you'll have to make a name for yourself," he said. "I mean by being in an auction and maybe getting a really high bid on something some of my students have actually been able to get commissions from that."
"That's part of the lesson, but the other thing to is thinking about the community that you live in," Ray said. "If you're an artist and you want to sell your work, you can't just necessarily do everything you always want to do all the time. Sometimes you've got to paint things that you think are going to sell. So this auction, it's got multiple lessons in there to kind of help them if they're thinking about going into the field of art."
"Hey, if nothing else, you never know, one of these students could become a famous painter one day and you'd get one of their pieces for fairly keep," he added with a laugh. "Just think you'd get it at a good rate where later on you might be able to sell it for a lot. Because as you know, artwork, as long as you take care of it, it does not depreciate."
Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.
