Newtown United Event

Is All About Halloween This Year

By Shannon Hicks

Rosemary Rau’s living room is slowly being taken over by items that will be sold and auctioned during this weekend’s Newtown United ArtFULL — All About Halloween, which will take over The Alexandria Room at Edmond Town Hall on Saturday, October 27, from 7 to 10 pm. Mrs Rau’s home has once again become the drop-off point for donations from artists, and a collecting point for items to be offered in a vendor area, for the celebratory fundraiser.

Taking place the weekend before Halloween, coordinators this year are hoping attendees will arrive in costume. If not in costume, then ready-to-purchase items that will supplement or even create a last-minute look appropriate for an event taking place just days before the spookiest night of the year. Prizes will be awarded for Best Design, Most Frightening, and Most Fun costumes after three secret judges get a good look at the outfits of all guests.

This is the third annual event for Newtown United, LLC, a group of women and men who organized in 2010 to raise funds for Ann’s Place/The Home of I Can. Located in Danbury, Ann’s Place has long offered comfort and support to residents of Connecticut and eastern New York who are living with cancer and to their loved ones. This year’s fundraiser will also result in a donation for local food pantries.

Tickets for Saturday are $25 each, which include admission, hors d’oeuvres and drinks (soft and hard). Boplicity will return, performing live jazz during the evening, as will Richard Coopersmith to serve as auctioneer.

Newtown United has again teamed up with Ridgefield Nutmeg National Charity League, a group of mothers and daughters who take community service projects upon themselves, for the majority of the desserts.

“These women are part of the volunteer base for Ann’s Place,” Mrs Rau explained this week. “We were put together with them last year, and it was magical. They have again promised hundreds of fresh baked goods, all of which they are donating, just because they want to. It’s a godsend for us, and lovely that these women work together.”

Claudia Coopersmith has promised to transform the room with a haunted house theme. Additional decorating help will come from Regina Platano and Deb Geambazi.

“It is our great, good fortune to have Deb and her ten-year collection of Halloween frights and delights partnering with Newtown United this year,” Mrs Rau, president of Newtown United, said this week.

While the previous two years have featured auctions and outright sales of lavishly decorated bras (2010) and bras and boxers (2011), this year’s event has branched out even more. While a few artists have transformed bras into Halloween-themed decorative items, the majority of this year’s auction items are hats, masks, and chairs.

By Monday morning, nearly a dozen decorated chairs had taken temporary residence at the Rau home. There were director’s chairs, stools, small rockers, benches, and even a pair of miniature chairs, each measuring no more than 16 inches tall.

Adele Moros has decorated a parsons chair, covering its seat and back with the painted faces of more than 17 types of cats and naming the finished work “Alley Cats.”

Her second donation this year is a small wooden chair, intricately painted and placed atop a lazy Susan. The chair itself features a woodland fantasy scene, with fairies hiding underneath the chair. It rests atop a faux rock pedestal, with flowers and moss covering many surfaces. Small lights inside the display illuminate even more of the world created by Ms Moros.

Another miniature chair that had already arrived on Monday was “Sweet Charity.” Designed by Wendee Nussle to honor her friend, the late Ann Olson, namesake of Ann’s Place, the chair is 16 inches tall and covered with a whimsical pattern reminiscent of Mary Engelbreit.

Event Co-Chair Marie Sturdevant gave a child-size rocking chair her daughter used to use to artist Roberta Shea, who then gave the chair an autumnal treatment. Inspired by the Andrew Wyeth painting “Christina’s World” and its tans and browns, Ms Shea has painted fall-colored leafs onto the seat and back of the chair.

“I checked with my daughter, just to make sure she was okay with me giving her chair away, and she was fine with it,” Mrs Sturdevant said. “Leslie [Sturdevant Ackerman] is a big cancer supporter, so she liked the idea. It’s such an exciting project.

 “I haven’t seen the chair yet, but I hear it’s just beautiful,” continued Mrs Sturdevant. “I may even have to bid to buy it back,” she said with a laugh.

Seven Newtown High School Art Portfolio students also answered the challenge to create items for auction this year. A collection of six unique hats and one mask have been contributed for Saturday’s auction, including “Paper Cut Monster” by Mary Vodola, which looks like a hockey mask covered with small pieces of paper that have given its wearer a pretty tough outing.

Ian Solaski, another NHS Art Portfolio student, used Dalí’s “Persistence of Memory” as inspiration, and turned a baseball hat into his version of the Surrealist painter’s well-known work, melting pocket watches and ants included. Victoria Kokoszka created “Feeling Wired, Feeling Pumped,” with wires and braided cord on a wire mesh base that offers a very loose Tower of Pisa look and feel.

The work of Carol Skolas’s students, said Rosemary Rau, is “really quite amazing.

“It’s amazing where their minds are, and what they’re coming up with,” she said. “We were thinking inside the box. Hats. That’s all we told them and they just blew that away.”

“We are absolutely ready to go,” Mrs Sturdevant said Tuesday morning. “There is lots of excitement building up, and we are so grateful to the artists and everybody who shared their talents and treasures. We have a lot of people helping us.”

Tickets should be reserved in advance; call 203-426-2226 until late Saturday afternoon. Proceeds from ticket and bazaar sales, as well as the final bids on the silent and live auctions, will all benefit Ann’s Place as well as local food pantries.

Please visit NewtownBee.com and find this story under the Features tab. The online version includes additional photos of some of the items being sold and auctioned.