Benches transformed into art raise funds for Bangor museum

BANGOR – Mundane wooden benches that had been transformed into art went on the auction block Saturday, raising thousands of dollars for the Maine Discovery Museum.

“People were generous,” the museum’s executive director, Andrea Stark, said Sunday.

The auction had included people bidding online earlier in the week and in person Saturday at the Spectacular Event Center in Bangor.

About 270 people attended the “Hold Everything!” auction and gala dinner.

Total figures weren’t available Sunday, but Stark estimated that the net proceeds for the night could be about $26,000, similar to last year.

In all, 77 benches were up for purchase, with bids starting at $75, although the tone was set early in the live auction when the first bench, featuring painted irises on the seat and colorful stained glass on the center cross piece, brought in $1,000.

One bench, not included in Saturday’s bidding, was signed by author Stephen King and placed on eBay. On Sunday, with still a week to go, it was fetching more than $450.

Drawn to Saturday’s auction for philanthropic reasons – to benefit the largest children’s museum in northern New England – bidders found a collection of almost museumlike variety of painted artwork, from still life to fantasy and fanciful papier-mache.

And that was the idea behind the benches, Stark said: Take ordinary items and allow artists the freedom to turn them into something extraordinary. In past years, rocking chairs, chests and mirrors had served as the canvas.

Clouds billowed across one bench, butterflies fluttered on another. Stained glass flowers bloomed, painted cats relaxed, mermaids rested on rocky shores, and intricate and colorful designs beckoned closer scrutiny.

Bidders came to help out a cause while looking for something special to fill a room, or to send a gift.

One couple wanted to buy a bench their daughter had seen and wanted to give as a thank-you to an organization that had helped her.

Cindy Hardy of Veazie was attracted to the vibrant red color, elegance and detail of a bench by Old Town artist Elizabeth Cherneski.

“There’s so much detail on all sides,” said Hardy, who along with husband Lou Hardy kept coming back to the tri-colored bench that featured vivid imaginative leaves and fronds.

For Cherneski the challenge was not to paint something to put on the wall, but something that would fit in a room yet not stick out.

“You want it to blend in to someone’s own decor,” Cherneski said outside after her bench had been sold for $500 in the silent auction.

With a palette limited to red, yellow and black, Cherneski, painted a bench reminiscent of the paisley designs on fabrics.

While the Hardys kept checking on the bench to see if they were outbid, Lainie Beede of Bangor barely left the spot in front of Salamander Quadrille, the green and blue bench by Brad Finch with his daughter Lily Finch of Bangor that featured beetles, frogs, salamanders and Beede’s favorites, dragonflies.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’ve got to have it.”

That the artists were from Bangor was a positive and a likely deal breaker if they weren’t, said Beede, who runs Lainie’s Reiki Healing and who said she likes to do business in the city.

When it came to the auction, Beede was all business, camping out in front of the bench so that she could be right there to outbid the competition.

“Everyone knows I’m in the antique business, so they kind of know not to come near me,” she said.