You know that most charity events in the city feature auctions -- live, silent, both. Items may include signed sports memorabilia, spa treatments, paintings of flags, trips, even cars.
Now, if my little rhetorical gambit has paid off, right now you're stuck on paintings of flags. Sports memorabilia, spa treatments, paintings of flags?
Listen, you would not believe how popular a painting of a flag is in this world. An Arkansas flag painting went for $1,000 at the Old State House Associates' annual supper Oct. 9. The painting was by Benton artist Matt Coburn, and Janett Crain won it.
"I think there's a lot that you can do with it," Coburn says. "I can only speak for me -- the outside of the Arkansas flag is all red, but I don't do it that way. I mean, there's some red, I keep some red in it, but I incorporate all kinds of other colors.
"They're fun. They're exciting to look at, I guess. I guess that's part of it."
Exciting to look at? What's the benchmark? A bowl of pears?
In truth, flags do evince a couple of things all Arkansans can appreciate. The first is allegiance. As bumper stickers and jerseys and Facebook "Likes" all illustrate -- we want others to know what we're a part of. We want to pledge fealty, even if the thing we're loyal to is, like sports teams, a dynamic thing whose direction we have no earthly control of. A bowl of pears doesn't do that.
The other thing these paintings do is what great painters like Vincent van Gogh and Jackson Pollock knew so well -- they glut us with color. Sensational color. Color that does to our eyes what a cymbal crash does to our nap.
We feel deeply satisfied drinking in rich hues put to a canvas impasto. That's a technique wherein the acrylic is applied so thickly it's sometimes not brushed on but smeared with a blade, like spackle, and Coburn and other artists frequently do this.
Coburn rifled off a handful of central Arkansas painters he knows have done flags: Steve Griffith up in Conway, Pat Matthews, Bob Snyder -- "he's got three at the Art Group gallery right now" -- Bob Lump in Florida (formerly of North Little Rock).
"I think everybody should have one, whether it be mine or Bob's, Pat's, Steve's, Lump's. I think that is something that is unique to us, to our people."
Our people?
"To Americans, to us."
Do people not know they can buy a flag? You can have the actual flag! Hey, its all-weather, and pleasingly kinetic on a breezy day.
"What people tell me about my American flag paintings [is] they love them because they're so textural," says Matthews, who may have been the first to satisfy the surge in popularity immediately following the terrorist attack Sept. 11, 2001. "Every brushstroke -- I use a lot of thick and heavy paint -- is there, OK?"
It's not just patriotism, though it certainly is that. It's also art, Matthews said.
"Yeah, you can go out and buy a flag, you can hang it on the wall, but you don't get that same feeling of an original painting."
Matthews says banks have commissioned him to do flag paintings. His flags hang in lawyers' offices, judges' chambers; the state attorney general and the governor each have one. Unlike a nude or an abstraction -- common genres for the acrylic set -- a flag isn't going to distract or unsettle people in a corporate setting. In fact, there's something incorporating about the flags of our state and country.
Crain says she has bought more than a dozen flag paintings. She uses them in her family's car dealerships. They've gotten a "huge response," and she speculates it's one part "pride" and one part "splashes of color."
"When we have them in the dealerships, people like that. Especially our Kia dealerships, which are Korean. We just kind of wanted a niche that was Americana/Arkansas art."
OUTSTANDING! BOTTOM'S UP
The state Association of Fundraising Professionals chapter is again hosting an awards luncheon. It's Nov. 12 at Embassy Suites. The Harrow Smith family, Sharon and Kevin Lamb, and Rick Fleetwood are the big individual winners. The Arkansas Enterprises for the Developmentally Disabled, the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, and Ben E. Keith are big group winners. Casey Williams is Outstanding Youth Fundraiser.
Williams ended up being the volunteer coordinator for the city of Vilonia after the ravaging tornado April 27, and for her work got called out by President Barack Obama when he visited. "I was the youngest one in the room with all the first responders when he came and the only one not in some kind of uniform," she told me. "I was wearing a dress."
Tickets are $60 and can be bought at AFPArkansas.afpnet.org, or by calling (501) 517-5794.
In related award news, High Profile is proud to bestow its semi-annual Best Event Name honors to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation. Saddled with one of the area's more unmarketable ailment charities, folks like Cris Mammarelli offer us a fantastic theme, one alluding to the nature of this alimentary condition but in a way that makes us believe there'll be an open bar and Mad Men-era boozing.
Bottom's Up goes down at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Crowne Plaza. Bonnie Boaz, who has Crohn's disease and works as the coordinator of transition services for the Arkansas Department of Special Education, and her brother Ronnie Fehrenbach, who is a Realtor for The Janet Jones Co. and serves on the CCFA leadership board, are chairmen.
Call (501) 580-6672 or visit CCFA.org/chapters/arkansas.
High Profile on 11/02/2014