As a parent, we greatly enjoy hanging our daughter’s artwork on the fridge.
Sure, they have a long way to go until there’s a gallery show featuring their work, but every artist has to start somewhere. Who knows, maybe their finger-paintings of who knows exactly what it is could be priceless when they’re the next big thing in the art world – if that’s the career path they want to choose, of course.
For now we’ll just enjoy the scribbles and smears we get to stock pile in the old memory box.
But for a group of parents, they’ll get to experience what it’s like to have your child’s art in a show at the 7th annual Art Show and Silent Auction put on by the Child & Family Development Center at NHTI this Saturday in the NHTI Library.
The show and auction are open to anyone – you don’t need to have a child enrolled in the center, which is open to children ages 6-weeks through kindergarten. Each child in the center’s four rooms (infant, toddler, preschool, kindergarten) have two pieces in the auction, so with 63 children enrolled, that’s a lot of art you can bid on.
The art has a nice range, with both paintings and drawings. The classes used curriculum on fairy tales, Northern Lights, symmetry and ocean animals, among others for inspiration.
The auction runs from 9 a.m. to noon and is of the silent variety, so there won’t be any bidding wars or auctioneers belting out numbers really fast.
Parents also have the ability to invoke the Parent Purchase Price rule, which allows parents to buy their own child’s work no matter if they were the winning bidder or not.
The auction has raised anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 over the previous six years, but this year’s goal is to reach (and hopefully surpass) the $2,000 mark.
The money has then been used to purchase things like playground equipment and musical instruments. This year’s money will be used to help obtain items on the four classrooms wish lists.
There will be a raffle featuring books made with the children’s artwork and a collage created by preschool room teacher Aimee Gansel. Raffle tickets are $1. A collection of vendors will also be on hand.
And if that all wasn’t enough, there will be face painting from 10 a.m. to noon with snacks.
The show and auction run from 9 a.m. to noon.
