Artrageous Extravaganza

Dare County Arts Council organise an annual extravaganza called 'Artrageous' – I remember seeing this on their website earlier this year and finding it amazing that Bideford Bay Creatives had put on an event with the same name last December (a different kind of event though). I was looking forward to witnessing this and getting involved behind the scenes to understand how its all done and exactly what it entails. To say its just an art auction is an understatement. A team of about 20 volunteers, some of whom are on the Arts Council Board, work on this event year round and it culminates in an evening Art Auction to raise money for the Arts Council's Education programme. The most staggering thing other than the $20,000 they raise annually is the amount of support generated through the local community. It takes place over 2 days – the first day being a Childrens' Day with hands on art workshops where kids paint images of the area and these are used to promote the following year's event. The best ones are framed and auctioned off 1 year later – the Arts Council rather than children own the posters to encourage their parents to bid for them. They can sell for $60 to $100. One lady I spoke to was the proud and happy winner of her own daughter's poster. She had a poster in the auction in the 2 previous years also which both raised such high prices that Mom was out bid both times! There's also a kid's auction where stuff is donated by local businesses such as bikes and skateboards to be bidded for and won.

The art auction took place in the Ramada Inn at Kill Devil Hills, going North up the 'bypass' road from Manteo. Dave and I arrived in the morning at 10.30 and we both helped to put artwork on display for both the silent and live auctions. The silent auction had around a 100 pieces donated and each piece had to be identified and a bid sheet written out to go with it. All artwork had a starting price of $25 with bids going up in $10 increments. The highest bidder, identified by their bidder number, wins the art. This was open all night from 6pm and closed around 9pm. The live auction programme started with doors open at 5pm, food and drink available and whilst browsing the art on show and listening to live music from a band. At 6pm there were speeches from Kitty Dough (President of Dare County Arts Council) and Laura Martier, Executive Director. At the end of Laura's speech she announced that she is working with us on planning an arts exchange programme, and that was wonderful to have it endorsed in public. Throughout the auction itself, I was helping out on the check out desk – a bit of a procedure I had to learn - get the bidder's file, add up all the purchases, add 7.75% tax, total it up and take the payment. The 'runners' (including Dave) went off with the sheet or ticket to collect the artwork. It worked well as a system and went very smoothly, it was just a bit busy at times as a few people all wanted to check out at once.

It was very valuable to take part behind the scenes and during the event, its given me an insight into how its all planned and executed and this is something that we at Bideford Bay Creatives aspire to do. Hopefully now we can go ahead and plan an event like this, perhaps not as big in scale at least not right away, to help raise funds for the BBC.

A Welcome Party

I had been planning and getting ready for the welcome reception in Manteo throughout the trip – before I left home I trawled through lots of our photos of Bideford, the arts community and artwork, the natural environment, Bideford 500 Heritage activities and hiking / landscape images. This would form a slidehow of pics for the Manteo folk to see what Bideford is like. I had also written some bullet points of what to talk about and had copied lots of information from various sources, including our own Experiencedevon website, as I know that the Americans love statistics and factual information and they always have theirs at their fingertips. I was also feeling a little daunted by the prospect of the whole thing – I didn't know what to expect, how formal or informal it would be or how many would be there.

I had been in touch with both local artist and restaurateur Sharon Enoch, and Laura Martier, Executive Director of Dare County Arts Council a few times before I left Bideford. Sharon had very kindly offered to organise a reception for my arrival and the Arts Council agreed to host us at their venue.

We arrived earlier in the afternoon to say hello and find out where the reception was. Dave and I were greeted very warmly by the staff, Laura Martier and Fay Davies (Gallery Director) and volunteers and I felt instantly at ease with the space – the Arts Council have just moved into the Old Courthouse and is a fabulous space, with a series of gallery rooms and a corridor downstairs and the Courtroom upstairs which will be used for classes and special events. I was also relieved to find there were no huge rooms for me to speak 'to' later on!

The reception was from 6-8pm and went very well, there were about 20 people there and we had wine, beer and some food which was wonderful and all catered by Sharon's Full Moon Restaurant. The lumpy crabcakes were to die for. I did a speech (without photos) and made sure that I covered why I was here, what I was researching and some key points about the arts connection and what I was hoping would happen in the future – mainly to set up some arts exchange activity and in the future an exchange programme between Bideford and Manteo. It was received very warmly and positively. Dave also talked a bit about his own work as a photographer, the networking artists networks for Bideford Bay Creatives (as the group were awarded a 'Go and See' bursary for this purpose) and the postcard project idea that Bideford Bay Creatives wish to do – exchanging handmade postcards between artists and exhibiting them at Appledore Visual Arts fest in 2011.

I met some great people, (lots of artists, the President of the Arts Council Board, the Mayor, someone who works on the replica Elizabeth 11 ship and is very knowledgeable about local history), and got a couple of leads to follow up for possible pottery finds, the main one being to go and talk to Scott Dawson at Buxton, on Hatteras Island, he has been involved in an archaeological dig there and has sherds. More on this later when I have been to see him! The Mayor and his wife, Jamie and Nadine Daniels were very eager to see plenty of us and make sure we get what we need from our trip. It was also a great opportunity to publicly thank not only Sharon and Laura but also Carl Curnutte from the Elizabethan Gardens for arranging our lovely accommodation at Fort Raleigh National Park.

The only regret is that Dave and I were so busy talking that we both forgot to take pictures of the evening or me doing my speech, but Fay Davies, Dare County Arts Council Gallery Director took photos - we haven't seen them yet but when we do we'll get a copy and I'll post them up.