Island fund raising gets boost Art created by homeless men to be auctioned to benefit library

LONG ISLAND – A fund-raising campaign for the Long Island Community Library is getting a boost from an unlikely source: artwork created by five homeless men in New York.

Five large pieces of intricately carved wooden furniture – called “tramp art” because they are made from discarded materials – were donated to the church in Maine last month. They will be sold or auctioned this winter and are expected to bring as much as $100,000.

The tramp art became available through Tom Caliandro, a summer resident of the island and the vice president for program development for the Discovery Channel in Maryland.

Caliandro said one of the Discovery Channel stores no longer needed the art and wanted to make a donation, so he suggested that it donate it to the library project.

Nancy Jordan, chair of the library expansion committee, said an auction house in Georgia that specializes in folk art has shown interest in the pieces. Another option is to sell the work on eBay, an Internet auction site.

While Jordan said she is not sure how much each piece will sell for, she heard that the Discovery Channel was selling the largest piece for $65,000.

For now, the pieces are on display in the Portland Public Library’s Portland Room until mid-January. They are part furniture, part sculpture, and are carved in nostalgic, patriotic designs.

“I’d never heard of tramp art,” said Jordan. “You really have to see it to appreciate it.”

Tramp art emerged after the Civil War and is named for transients who created artwork out of discarded cigar boxes and fruit crates. Artisans carved and glued pieces together to make decorative pieces ranging from picture frames to large sculptures.

The pieces for the library came from the Hermitage des Artistes, an artists’ community of recovering alcoholic transients in Troy, N.Y., that makes art in the tramp tradition.

The Long Island library so far has raised more than $630,000 toward the project’s $825,000 construction cost. Most of the money has come from donations from islanders and grants from corporations and foundations.