Weekend Wrap-Up

So, in my last post I mentioned that I was going to Sacramento this weekend to attend a silent auction benefit for breast cancer... My little brother submitted 6 prints to the auction, with "metamorphosis" as the theme. (The theme was chosen by the coordinator of the event.) Tony worked really hard on this and produced some pretty awesome photos.

I wish that the "coordinator" had been a more effective planner. Hardly anyone showed up. Mostly family and friends of the coordinator and artists. (And actually, it was mostly my family and Tony's friends. I don't know that anyone from the other artist's circle came.) I think part of the problem may have been the location. It was in a back room of a church, though you couldn't tell from the address given that it was being held in a church. Once you got there, there were no signs to direct you to the correct room. (If Tony and his friends hadn't been standing outside when I got there, I wouldn't have had a clue where to go.)

So...we gather inside, and the coordinator (who had to be in her very early 20s), launched a presentation on breast cancer. It was like sitting through a health class presentation in college (or high school, as Kerri was thinking). I'll just say it involved an outdated video and posterboards with magazine cutouts propped up against the back wall (and not even used as a visual aid during the presentation). It just didn't seem very professional at all. The 2 speakers (breast cancer survivors) were fine. In fact, that was probably all that was really needed in the way of presentations. During the question & answer period, my mother, the RN and lactation consultant, was in her element, and was able to provide much better information on the issues. (I was thinking she could have run the thing herself with no problems!)

When she introduced the 2 artists, she went into this spiel about how she couldn't get a hold of the one photographer until a few weeks ago, so he had to throw his work together at the last minute and work really hard. I was kind of annoyed by that statement, as I thought it inadvertently belittled my brother's contribution, which he did put a lot of time into. Of course...and there's only a wee bit of bias here, you could really tell that Tony put a lot of himself into his work. In my opinion, he had a much better grasp of the theme (metamorphosis) and tied it into his work. He also did a much better presentation of his work as it related to the theme and breast cancer, when he introduced his work.

Unfortunately, there was only one bid on any of the artwork, and that was my mother's opening bid on one of Tony's photos. At the end of the "auction," the coordinator said she was going to put the pieces on Ebay to see if they'd bring in any money for the cause. I haven't heard anything else about that yet though, or I'd post a link. (She seemed rather flaky to me...)

Anyway, I feel kind of bad for Tony, since the auction didn't go better. Hopefully, one of these days he'll get a break!

(On a different note - Happy Halloween!)