As reported in the Bainbridge Review on March 9, 1983, the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts crab feed slated for March 25 of that year would feature the standard round of goodies on which to bid.
“Weekends at several Seattle hotels, dinners, lunches, and the services of a male or female exotic dancer will all be on the auction block….”
Pardon?
Such colorful donations were par for the course at the crab feed and auction, which ran from 1969 to 1994 to benefit BAC. Other highlights:
1975, a year in which the weekend at an ocean beach condominium was likely upstaged by the baby pig and the truckload of fertilizer.
1984, the year “extraordinary glamor (sic) items” included a condo in Hawaii, a piece by prominent artist and islander Rosalyn Gale Powell, and five yards of gravel from Fred Hill Materials.
1989, the 20th annual event, at which the big draw was a 15-foot Bayliner Bowrider Runabout with a 50-horsepower engine, trailer and mooring included.
The so-perfectly-Bainbridge character of the crab feed, Executive Director Susan Jackson said, factored strongly into BAC’s decision to resurrect the event as this year’s big fund-raiser, taking place on Oct. 24 at IslandWood.
“We’ve been talking about this since I came eight years ago,” Jackson said. “As a new Bainbridge person, every person I met said, ‘Oh Bainbridge Arts and Crafts? The crab feed!’”
As was the case for those 25 years, this month’s auction will benefit the nonprofit organization’s range of endeavors related to the visual arts including education, scholarships and awards as well as maintenance of the gallery.
BAC is grappling with a $92,000 budget shortfall this year, Jackson said. Gallery sales have suffered in recent years, and, as is the case with numerous island nonprofits, city-sourced funding was reduced.
Additionally, the arts troika comprising the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council and Bainbridge Performing Arts along with BAC, mutually agreed not to stage the annual joint Auction for the Arts this year.
So Jackson is enthusiastically plugging the notion that polished, hilarious auctioneers Frank Buxton and John Ellis will guide guests into a crustacean-fueled bidding frenzy.
“We think this crab feed is going to be the most fun way to make some money and get the community involved with the gallery again,” she said.
The take-home perks aren’t bad, either, providing the bid is right.
First and foremost, there’s a lot of art including painting, ceramics, glass, metal, photography, wood, jewelry and prints – including four small signed prints by Powell, internationally recognized painter and BAC mainstay, who died in 2007.
There are also Elton John/Billy Joel tickets; getaways in Paris, Mexico and Whistler, B.C.; several sails on luxury boats; and a flight over Bainbridge in the winning bidder’s choice of aircraft.
Linda Costello, Bainbridge Island’s master of the movable book, has created a crab pop-up; Commuter Comforts has donated a basket. There’s green garbage pickup for a year. And in the crab feed’s grandest tradition, there’s a load of good dirt from Emu Topsoil.
But the one that tickled Jackson the most was the donation of “happy hen eggs” for a year.
“You may never meet more pampered ladies than our hens,” the donors wrote. For locale, they specified “your refrigerator.”
“You go to auctions, and they could be really anywhere,” Jackson said. “This will really feel like Bainbridge. And it will feel like art.”
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A crackin’ good time
The Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Auction and Crab Feed takes place at 6 p.m. Oct. 24 at IslandWood. RSVP by Oct. 5, 842-3132. Accommodations are available for those who don’t eat shellfish.
