Kathy Glowatski from Weyburn and her daughter Krystal Glowatski have teamed up together and have started a Facebook group called Art Feeding Families to raise funds for the food bank. They are calling on artists to donate a piece of work to them to be auctioned off on the page in exchange for donations straight to the food bank of their choice.
The page was created on Saturday is already a huge hit with almost 400 likes/followers.
Krystal gave us an insight on how this all came to be and more details on how to enter/bid.
“The idea came last weekend while I was sitting at home in Vancouver and my mom (Kathy Glowatski) was sitting at home in Weyburn. We were watching and reading the news constantly like everyone else, and feeling great overwhelm, fear, and uncertainty. We were hearing how people were losing their jobs, and the worry around that in how folks were going to feed their families. Also on the news were feature stories about the food bank(s) across Canada and how they were calling for donations, as they were experiencing high demand.
My mom and I have both always been very artistic and have used that creative energy many times in our lives to deal with stress, and to help work through grief. Just recently, we lost my grandma (mom's mom) and we painted for days as a family, starting to heal together in that process. So we just started talking about what we could do - we've both always been naturally inclined to want to help others, so we started brainstorming. That's when we came up with the idea of selling our art somehow to raise money for the food bank.
The next morning (Saturday Mar 21) we got up and got at it. We started a page called "Art Feeding Families" on FB. This page calls on artists and bidders from literally anywhere. We called for artists to contact us to donate their work, and we called on folks to bid on these pieces - emphasizing that no bid is too small, as we know everyone is feeling financially restricted (plus, for every $1 sent to the food bank, they can buy $3 worth of food, as they buy in bulk with monetary donations).
As of this morning, we have auctioned off 10 items and have raised over $250.00 thanks to the generous donations of our bidders and the hard work and creativity of our artists. And we are just getting started!
We have even had a celebrity donor - Casey Affleck (you might know him from the Ocean's movies, Interstellar, Gone baby Gone, etc.). He makes original baseball bats out of ash and maple on a lathe, and has donated that and one other item coming up for bid soon. The baseball bat will be closing for bids this Saturday.
We are looking for almost any type of art you can imagine. So far, we've had paintings, ornaments, personalized song, crochet, signed books by best-selling authors, knitting, wood working. We will accept any art. Now is NOT the time to be modest, but a time to use your talents to raise money.
We ask that artists contact us on our FB page to let us know of their interest. All we need is a photo of the item and brief description, and we will take care of the auction part.
Because the mail system is likely to be burdened right now (a lot of folks are home and probably online shopping for essentials), we won't be sending the pieces until things calm down. Once that happens, we'll ask our artists to send their piece in the mail to the winner, COD (which means the winner will have to pay the shipping - no different than online shopping).”
Check out the Art Feeding Families page at https://www.facebook.com/Art-Feeding-Families-112528843713802/?modal=admin_todo_tour
