Brockport's second annual Stone Soup Auction will be Friday, October 14 at the Brockport High School auditorium. The auction of works by area artists starts at 7:30 p.m., preceded by a viewing of the auction items in the school's atrium beginning at 6:30 p.m. The Art and Aesthetics committee of the Brockport Walk! Bike! Brockport Action Group is organizing the event. The auction's theme is based on the children's story of villagers adding ingredients to a soldier's stone soup until all enjoyed a tasty meal. Tom Martin will be the auctioneer. The auction will be shorter than last year, with no intermission, according to event project director Lori Skoog. Some of the artists and crafts people contributing to the auction are: Tom Markuson, Jack Beck, Bill Stewart, Bill Heyen, Helen Smagorinsky, Debora Fisher, Lori Mills, Mary Ann Scarborough, Sandy Kane, Lori Skoog and Kitty Hubbard. This year the group is raising funds for a commissioned outdoor metal sculpture by SUNY Brockport professor and artist, Jennifer Hecker. The house-shaped sculpture with open sides measures over seven feet long, three feet wide and nine feet tall and takes the form of a bed. It is a piece of furniture to get across the idea of home and the bed metaphor has also been used in prior work. Hecker said it refers to the cycle of life, as in a garden bed. The sides of the bed are drawings in steel of plants, with the roots forming the box spring, and the leaves and flowers filling the mattress level. The gates to the structure represent the headboard and footboard both with a water theme, one having a tree, the other representing homes and college buildings. The water and tree represent the Erie Canal and the community's agriculture, both part of the village's origins and life today. The buildings on the other gate represent the human aspect of village life. For Hecker, water (including raindrops on the roof) is a unifying theme with roots and plants altogether representing the cycle of life idea. Hecker lives in Brockport with her two children. The $10,000 target sum being raised for the sculpture will come from the auction, the sale of fine-art reproductions by Brockport artist Helen Smagorinsky and the sale of raffle tickets for a fine-art reproduction by watercolor artist Dianne Hickerson, also of Brockport. Last year, the auction project raised more than $12,000 for materials for a Bill Stewart sculpture scheduled for completion near the canal Welcome Center in late October. For information call Skoog at 637-6586. September 25, 2005 |
