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After two full and successful years running the local science fiction
club, Daina and I decided to do something big and thought to host a
Science Fiction & Fantasy art auction. Consulting with our only
remaining co-founder of the group, Elizabeth, she explained the
process to us: We would write invite letters to various artists
informing them of the auction and those who were interested would
send us a selection of their artwork at their own expense and supply
a check for the return postage as well. We would display the artwork
at the auction, preferably having some awards where a guest author
could be the judge. All proceeds for art sold were split with the
club keeping a slice and the rest, along with any award money, being
sent back to the artists with their remaining artwork.
This was perfect as there were no up front costs to the club and
Elizabeth knew someone who already had temporary pegboard walling
that we could use to display the artwork. Daina composed the invite
letters and I mailed them off and we waited to see what would show up
for the auction. We contacted one of our favorite guest authors to
be our host and then figured out what awards we were going to have.
In the meantime, given the club's growing stature and positive word
of mouth from our guest authors, Daina was finally able to land a
coup. One of her all time favorite authors, Sheri S. Tepper, had
finally responded back to her author reading invite letters and had
expressed an interest. There was only one small catch, she
wanted to talk to 'the one in charge' and gauge her comfort level
before committing. I agreed and my phone number was
sent off for her to call when convenient. When she called I was
still in bed, though had been awake for a while so when I answered
the phone in my bedroom I didn't embarrass myself with sleepy mumble
talk. We had a good getting to know each other chat and she
decided she would definitely come and wanted to know what dates were
available. Before the age of common cordless phones, I put down the
phone handset in the bedroom and went to my calendar in the computer
section of the apartment. I picked up the phone there and told her
of the dates and she picked one and it was set. The call concluded,
I hung up the handset by the computer and went to the bathroom for my
morning pee. Once done I left the bathroom to realize the bedroom
phone was still off the hook... and I hoped against hope she had
quickly hung-up and not heard me do my business!
Bit by bit, boxes of artwork were arriving and collecting in my
apartment, with each new one Daina and I opened it to discover what
new pieces had arrived. All were varied in style & medium and we
thought we were going to have a great selection, although a bit
smaller in quantity than we had originally assumed.
The Friday before Sheri's arrival was my day to take the bus to the
Savings & Loan bank to pick up the key to the basement meeting
room. When I arrived, they told me this was our last time as the
bank was going out of business. Was somebody else taking them
over who I could get the room from in the future? They didn't
think so. This was a problem as we had intended to have the art
auction there the next month and now I was finding out we had no
location to have it in. Further, this had been the place the club
had been meeting at for over half a decade and all the members knew
it, now I would have to scramble to find a new location and then hope
people could find it. I put all this worry aside, though, and
concentrated on our next meeting, the following night.
I would take the last bus of the day to the Saving & Loan
location on Saturday and then, after the post meeting dinner, get a
ride home with one of the members. This had usually become Daina
since we had built-up a close friendship over the past few months.
The problem was the last Saturday bus to that end of town arrived
forty-five minutes before the meeting and so I was there in plenty of
time to open up the meeting room and set-up the flyers' table, the
guest table, and the chairs and dividers, but then I had thirty more
minutes to myself until the first club members arrived.
This time, though, Sheri was early as she wasn't sure what the
driving time would be and we had a half hour to chat. Based on
Sheri's books, Daina had theorized and told me that she must be a
young Emily Dickenson style recluse who toiled endlessly on her books
alone in a little, darkened apartment somewhere. But it turned out
that Sheri was more of a ranching grandmother who had embraced
writing once her children had grown. I also noted that I had a
history of people coming up with fun assumptions about me that also
didn't pan out. I admitted I hadn't read any of her work myself
but that several of the club members were huge fans and were thrilled
that she had come for the night. Then a few minutes before the start
of the meeting, the club members began to drift in and I excused
myself to go and greet them and have them settle. After a few
minutes more to wait for any stragglers, I introduced Sheri who had
already been seated at the table and the meeting commenced.
When having guest authors the most common routine was for them to
read a selection from a work of theirs, typically the newest book,
and then spend the rest of the time fielding questions from the
audience. But a few times the author had a different idea and Sheri
wanted to talk about how she was inspired by her story ideas and how
she liked to show the impact of them on people. Then for the next
twenty or so minutes she used me as her unwitting foil: I
don't know if I had said something before the meeting to irritate her
and she had decided to 'put me in my place', or if she had always
intended to pick someone as a stand-in and I just happened to be the
first one that came to mind. But she went through a series of
example societal questions and assigned me with the undesired opinion
that she could then contrast against to explain her own thoughts of
the matter. They were like: As I thought women should be anchored
by a physical chain of less than thirty feet in length to the kitchen
and only have a mat on the floor to sleep on, she felt
that things should be different. The only example I still
remember the exact details of was: As I thought prisoners on death
row should be gassed to death on a random day while the prisoner was
sleeping in their cell, she felt...
At first I felt the need to defend myself and say these
examples of 'what I believe' really weren't what I believed,
but soon I realized that she was just using me as a convenience and
not intentionally trying to mislead people about my beliefs. I just
calmed down and accepted it with a huge smile... or was it a
grimace?
After that period of being her foil, she opened things up to
questions and then I think she finished with a short reading. The
meeting was done and I thanked her, the audience clapped and some
moved up to the table to ask for signings while the rest of us
touched base on who would be making it to the after meeting dinner.
Sheri was invited to join us, and sometimes authors did, but as she
had a long drive home she bid farewell and the meeting broke up. All
and all it was a great time and Sheri was the talk of the table as we
ate.
At the start of the next week I only had a few days to live on the
phone and try to find a new meeting place for the Art Auction
before I'd have to send out the monthly newsletter that would be my
only chance to notify club members of the new address for the day to
come. As the original meeting room had been at a bank, I called all
the banks in the phone book but none of them offered a meeting room
any more. One of them explained to me that they had once gotten tax
credits for having such 'community rooms' but once the tax credit had
been phased out, the banks had discontinued offering the rooms over
time. I was stumped and had to find somewhere fast!
I remembered the club house at my mother's mobile home park and it
was a nice place and so I took the bus there and walked into the
office and said ''Hi.'' They remembered me from a few years earlier
when I had used the club house to tape a radio drama and they
apparently weren't aware I had since moved out of the park, just
as I'd hoped. I asked if I could reserve the club house in a
few weeks for an art auction? As nothing else was scheduled for that
day they said I could. The monthly newsletter was finished with the
details & a quick map and then for those artists who said they
would come in person to set-up their artwork, I quickly mailed them
letters of the last minute change of address as well.
Finally the day came and I believe I roped in Jeff and his truck to
help me get the pegboard and stand supplies to the club house and
started to set it up with the help of Daina. Daina's car was used to
get the artwork from my apartment to the club house in a few runs
while I worked the pegboard. Typically it would be set up as flat
panels against the walls of a room, but given that we didn't have
enough artwork to fill up that much display space, I instead decided
to assemble the peg board away from the walls as a zig-zaggy pattern
making many little corners where an artist's work could be displayed.
As I was working, one of the artist who came to feature her own work
brought her husband and once he saw how I was setting up the
pegboard, he immediately accosted me and told me I was doing it all
wrong. I assured him that I had a plan in mind but he assured
me I didn't have a clue and would have to take everything
apart and do it right. I declined and that seemed to surprise him,
that I was not taking his unquestionable advice, and then left
in a huff already declaring the auction a disaster.
The pegboard assembly finished, Daina and I then debated about whose
artwork would hang in which fold. For the artists there in person to
hang their own work, we gave them first choice. For the center of
the display area we moved a few tables from the dining room of the
club house into place at the center to display physical pieces of
artwork which couldn't be hanged. Once all was sorted through and
hung up, all the exposed peg board was evenly filled and made a fine
display. I wish someone had taken a picture of it for me.
The artist's husband came back to me and apologized for not trusting
my judgment and told me he thought the resulting display looked
great.
One of the first lessons I learned when hosting club meetings was
the problem with empty space. It was always better to have a
confined space with twenty people packed into it than a large space
for fifty people with only the same twenty people. The closer things
were, the better the energy level. In the case of the meeting room,
it had some mobile diving walls I could use and would set up the
table and twenty chairs closely together, placing the dividing walls
just after the chairs to give an impression of a smaller room. When
more people came than expected, I'd move the dividing walls back a
bit and add another row of chairs, sometimes two. For the
auction, by using the zig-zaggy pattern for the pegboard setup, I was
able to have it significantly away from the walls and hide a third of
the room's space without it being apparent. The result was a cozy
space that was filled ensuring a better energy level as people milled
in and out.
The auction went pretty well, about a quarter of the items sold, our
guest author Ed Bryant was a great Master of Ceremonies and the
awards given out for various reasons met with the approval of the
attending members. While I couldn't afford to buy anything for
myself, one of the pieces of art wasn't Science Fiction or Fantasy
themed at all, just a simple painting of two brown bunnies under a
bush. Its color combinations matched the choices my mother had made
for her mobile home and so I decided to buy it for her and took it to
her that night as the auction was winding down. She was taken aback
as it was probably the first gift I had bought her in many-many
years. But I was so thrilled with how the auction had gone I
wanted to spread that feeling around and was glad I could bring a
piece of it to her.
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