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Art
Blank canvas: Charity art sale making COVID comeback – Regina Leader Post
Art from the Attic — a donation-based art sale that raises money for charity — is set to return on Sept. 17 after a two-year COVID hiatus.
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Sherry Wolf believes that artwork should be seen to be appreciated.
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In fact, she’s counting on it.
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As one of the volunteer organizers behind Art from the Attic — a long-running charity event in Regina — Wolf is eager to help revive the annual art sale after it was cancelled for two straight years due to the COVID pandemic.
As the name implies, Art from the Attic relies on donations from the public. The pieces are sold for charity during a one-day event that runs Sept. 17 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Cathedral Neighbourhood Centre (2900 13th Ave.).
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There’s no entry free and the art is “priced to sell.”
The event is operated by the Regina branch of Grandmothers 4 Grandmothers, a national non-profit organization that partners with the Stephen Lewis Foundation. The Toronto-based foundation was created in 2003 to work with grassroots groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Funds are earmarked to support “grandmothers” raising a generation of children who’ve been orphaned due to AIDS and HIV.
According to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, it has raised over $40 million through the grandmothers campaign while contributing to 2,100 projects and 335 community-based organizations in 15 African countries.
The Regina group has been part of that initiative since 2006, but the arrival of COVID presented some unique challenges.
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“Like most non-profit organizations, we’ve all been struggling to try and do what’s normal for us, which is fundraise,” Wolf said. “It has been hard. We’ve had some creative ideas (to raise money online) … but it hasn’t quite been the same.”
If not for the pandemic, Art from the Attic would be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2022. The Regina-based grandmothers are also closing in on $1 million in total charitable contributions since their organization’s inception.
“We’re well over the $900,000 mark,” Wolf noted “We do lots of small fundraisers so it’s a big deal for us to get close to that milestone. We’re hoping with this sale — or by early next year — that we’ll be able to do that. It’s exciting.”
In order to reach their goal, organizers are counting on people to make their artwork available for donation. There are four drop-off locations: Atelier Arts (2075 Albert St.), Benjamin Moore Elements of Colour (4350 Albert St.), Colourburst Paint and Wallpaper (551 Albert St.), and Independent Living (3870 E. Eastgate Drive).
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The deadline is Sept. 13.
“We typically get a push at the very end,” Wolf said. “We’re hoping more donations will come in. Our sale depends on the donations. It’s coming in but not as quickly as other years. It takes a while to get back in the swing of things.”
Art from the Attic only accepts two-dimensional pieces (no sculptures or pottery). Donations can be original artwork, prints, photos, water colour, acrylic, oil, metal art, fabric art, etc. — basically “anything that people are willing to donate to us that can hang on a wall.”
Before the artwork goes up for sale, it’s inspected, cleaned and refurbished (when necessary). That process might include replacement of the matting and frame to make it more appealing for potential buyers.
The end result is a piece of art that’s almost like new, even if it was gathering dust in someone’s attic.
“The Regina community is very generous with donations to us; I think people recognize it’s a good cause and it’s a way to recycle their art,” added Wolf, who expects the sale to be well-attended, if history is any indicator.
“People are (usually) lined up at the door on Saturday morning. People know it’s good art and there’s lots of great bargains. It has quite a bit of a following and we’re hoping that’s what happens this year.”
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A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
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- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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