Giving Back Creatively
Artists are often asked to donate their work for charitable causes. I’m not a fan.*
But I have been lucky enough to find a local non-profit for whom I can donate my time and skills in a way that is fun, meaningful, and creative. That organization is called SILO, which stands for Serving, Inspiring, Loving, Others. SILO does great work in my community and the 50 or so volunteers have become dear friends.
Each year we host a fundraising event in January called the Snow Ball. It’s a themed “party with a purpose” that includes open bar, dinner, live entertainment, and dancing. The nearby Herr’s Potato Chip Factory warehouse is generously donated as our venue.
This massive building takes a lot of work to transform according to our theme. The brainstorming is one of my favorite parts…how to create a castle for a medieval feast…
…or transport guests to ancient Greece for a night at the Parthenon, or build giant mushrooms for a trippy Alice in Wonderland experience….
This year, our theme was Under the Sea. It would have been terrific to have had Dale Chihuly here to create his incredible sea form glass sculptures, but we do work on a tight budget. This limitation makes the work even more interesting and I learn a ton. For example, how to make a smack** of 20 giant jellyfish floating above the 500 guests, or how to create a kelp forest for them to walk through, or individual coral reef centerpieces for each table. Take a look at some of these creations and see if you can figure out what they were made of…
sea urchins
anemones
sea fan coral
coral
more coral
coral reef thingys
squid
jellyfish tentacles
kelp forest
Here’s a photo on the night of the event. Lighting was the finishing touch! If you want to know more about attending the Snow Ball in January 2021, sign up for news here.
*According to US tax laws, if an artist donates a piece to a nonprofit organization or a museum, she can only deduct the material costs that went into the piece, which would include paint, canvas, as well as paying someone else, such as a framer or printer. They cannot value their own time.
** Other collective nouns for a group of jellyfish are bloom or swarm. But, smack is most descriptive, which you would know if you’ve ever encountered one.