Anxious bidders raced against the clock Saturday night to scribble down their final offers just before the auctioneer announced the cap for bidding periods at the All the Arts for All the Kids Art Auction at the Fullerton Community Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The silent art auction welcomed community members to act as attendees, bidders and sponsors in an effort to encourage members to invest in the foundation\u2019s mission: providing art education to over 10,000 elementary students in the Fullerton School District. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The art pieces with bids ranging from $40 up to $300 were donated from a network of alumni connected to the foundation. Artists residing in San Diego, Los Angeles and Fullerton also put their works up for bid, including Jonathan St. Amant, a newly hired part-time teacher for the foundation and local Fullerton artist. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an art teacher, I think it\u2019s just exciting and it\u2019s good to know that we\u2019re inspiring kids to create at such a young age when a lot of districts don\u2019t provide the arts,\u201d said St. Amant. \u201cWhat\u2019s unique, I think about Fullerton, is it has almost this guarantee of arts education in all their grades.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The local school district currently focuses on dance, music, theater, visual and digital art. With support from the foundation, art educators are brought into elementary classrooms to provide six weeks’ worth of art lessons. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The foundation\u2019s president and founder, Lauralyn Eschner, explained that longitudinal studies have been conducted in partnership with Cal State Fullerton to assess students\u2019 creative needs in the classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can test for creativity and you can actually help creativity grow because traditionally, kids come into school systems very, very creatively and then by the time they get into sixth grade, it\u2019s down,\u201d Eschner said. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve ended up doing is, if you can nurture creativity, then you\u2019re nurturing all subject areas and that inventiveness that happens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old foundation has continued to hone in on its efforts to fund scholarships, compensate teachers and help sustain the multitude of art projects offered both in the classroom and in the recently established art studio in Downtown Fullerton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kari Holoubek, a member of the board of directors for the foundation, credits the foundation\u2019s growth to the newly established studio as a means to connect with more members outside of Fullerton\u2019s scope with outreach to home schools, charter schools and even adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What began as an auction for lapel pins designed by artists has since evolved to include a wider variety of art pieces, ranging from mosaics, paintings, ceramics and jewelry that have caught the attention of the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just grown and grown and grown and the same artists donate and bring their friends in,\u201d Eschner said. \u201cWe\u2019ve even had kids of artists donate, so it\u2019s become a family tradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the night drew closer, the bidding wars intensified with friends outbidding one another and the audience\u2019s commotion growing at the sight of a checkered flag waving above the huddled crowd to signal the closing of a table\u2019s bidding period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pressure from the crowd drew in members like Rob and Betsy McCann to jump in at the last second to compete as the highest bidder, to take home a valuable piece and continue to support the foundation as sponsors for the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to local involvement and community involvement, this is as local as it gets,\u201d Rob McCann said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a project for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The high community turnout was responsible for clearing each bidding table one by one and the night closed off through a final gift basket raffle as a secondary way for members to contribute to the foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think about the donations and the possible bidding that comes in on these items, that we\u2019re just gonna be able to continue to serve our kids,\u201d Holouvek said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anxious bidders raced against the clock Saturday night to scribble down their final offers just before the auctioneer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,2308,39405,15,12886,6386],"class_list":["post-299783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-art","tag-auction","tag-education","tag-elementary-school","tag-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}