Santa Fe, NM
La Fonda on the Plaza, April 4
**Update: The ARTsmart Dinner & Auction has been postponed due to the coronavirus situation. Click here for more information.
This story was featured in the March/April 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art March/April 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
Kevin and Jennifer Box, Ladder of the Rising Cranes, steel/bronze/stone, 72 x 21 x10.
BILLED AS A “groovy evening of celebration and showing your love,” ARTsmart’s annual dinner and auction gets underway at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 4, in the elegant Lumpkins Ballroom at La Fonda on the Plaza. Guests are encouraged to dress up in bell bottoms, love beads, and other hippie-inspired attire to celebrate the theme of this year’s fundraiser, All You Need Is Love. Proceeds from the ticketed event support ARTsmart’s art-education initiatives for youth in northern New Mexico.
“We all need love right now, in all ways, and especially with our organization,” says events coordinator Victoria Brown. The evening’s theme, she adds, was inspired by the metal origami-crane sculptures of this year’s honorary artist, Kevin Box. In addition to peace, hope, and healing, the Santa Fe, NM, artist says his crane-inspired works represent optimism—something he has been passing along to youth in his community. Box and his wife Jennifer spent six weeks mentoring art students from Santa Fe’s Capital High School on all aspects of being an artist and other career opportunities in the fine-art industry. The couple also helped the students create their own museum-quality origami-crane sculptures in stainless steel mounted on river stones. Those pieces—which are paired with the students’ preliminary origami-paper patterns in shadow boxes—are up for bid in a silent auction that precedes the evening’s live auction. Guests can also bid on juried fine artworks and a variety of other tempting items in the silent auction.
Christopher Solano, Series Plate.
One of the items up for sale in the live auction is LADDER OF THE RISING CRANES, a 6-foot-tall sculpture designed by Box and his wife with help from Capital High’s art students. The work, cast in stainless steel and bronze, depicts a flurry of small paper cranes alighting on the rungs of a ladder. The collaborative piece, says Box, “represents ascension and a graduation, of sorts, from adolescence into adulthood.” Symbolically, the large cranes positioned at the top and bottom of the ladder, he adds, “are helping these smaller cranes along.” The live auction also features a set of ceramic plates hand-painted by fifth graders from Santa Fe Public School District.
It all adds up to an art-filled evening that guests can commemorate with a souvenir photograph at the Hippie Photo Booth. For a dinner and an auction, says Brown, “It’s as lively as you can get.” —Kim Agricola
contact information
www.artsmartnm.org
This story was featured in the March/April 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art March/April 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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