Artists and Guests Partner for Teaching
Want to watch a colorful event, do good works, and score a vivid memory that lives on your wall?
On June 4, artists and spectators converge to spark creative combustion on behalf of teachers at QuickDraw, western NC’s spring live-art benefit. The annual event offers attendees the chance to partner with artists, to support art teaching in public schools, to help kids go to college, and the eye-popping opportunity to witness stages of art in the making.
[wppa type=”slideonly” album=”23″]QuickDraw 2015[/wppa]
This year, thirty juried artists step up to visually demonstrate their support for art teachers. Setting up their studios in the picturesque rolling hills of the Laurel Ridge Country Club, artists flex their creative muscle as they challenge a sixty-minute time clock. Strolling onlookers are amazed to watch the marching progression of composition, color, hue, form, finish while the artists intently work.
The live-stopwatch artists embrace the timer, and will complete their original – start to finish – before the buzzer, and then frame it for the evening’s auction. Without the luxury of time, live-action artists zero in on pure execution, rejecting internal second-guessing. At the same time, demonstrator artists using more process-intensive media design a piece in progress, and talk with guests while they create. The demo artists show off their techniques using fused glass, jewelry, wood, collage, clay, acrylic on metal, stained glass, watercolor collage, and fiber.
Live artists work in oil, acrylic, watercolor, colored pencil, inks, pastel, encaustic, and mixed media. Onlookers gain a sense of style and technique as they watch admired artists embrace dual challenges of working live and working against the clock. With the room’s energy and encouragement, artists achieve intuitively fresh work, free of cliché. Artists frame the works on the spot for auction, and personally speak at the podium before the gavel rises for a lively fundraiser. Afterward at the post-auction buffet, guests rub elbows with artists as they catch their breath and relax with new collectors.
A longtime favorite that attracts attendees from across the region, QuickDraw is a true collaboration between art and observer. QuickDraw showcases artists who step outside the studio and out of the box for art education. High school art students volunteer as artist assistants while they watch and learn from thirty artists making thirty different flavors. Art teachers show off student classroom art funded by QuickDraw artists and guests. Artists donate half or more of the auction sale to directly fund art teacher classroom grants and student college scholarships. Since 2001, QuickDraw artists and guests have funded $75,000 in art teacher classroom grants and $43,000 in scholarships.
The June 4 event includes the signature clock challenge, a small works gallery, live art auction, and a meet-the-artists buffet dinner. Tickets are $60, and include auction registration, the live art hour, and the buffet dinner for you and a teacher.
If You Go: QuickDraw – Art in the Making, Saturday, June 4 from 4:30-9:30 p.m.; shotgun start live artists 5 p.m. Laurel Ridge Country Club, 49 Cupp Lane, Waynesville. Tickets $60. Tickets, artists, schedule at www.WNCQuickDraw.com