Holiday cheer at the Bedford Hall fine art sale

A version of this story appeared in The Rotunda

On Thursday, December 3, Bedford Hall will host a fine art sale featuring the brilliant works of the talented faculty and students in the Longwood University Art Department. Professor Angela Bubash, the assistant professor of jewelry metalsmithing and crafts is running the sale. This is the first year that she is in charge of a project like this in her two years at Longwood, though she has been involved and in charge of fine art sales before at other venues. She was also the president, the secretary and the treasurer at her school’s arts organization when she was an undergraduate and during graduate school.

When asked about the art that can be bought there, she describes how “we have clay, we have metal and jewelry, we have stained glass, we have handmade books and we have some origami sculptures that…the paper class is making.”

She explained that this means she is able to represent “the best that we can offer here,” so all of it is “student effort and work.”

The art fraternity Kappa Pi will be helping with the event and are actually “presenting the holiday sale itself,” according to Bubash.

She has been working with her professional practice class on marketing techniques throughout the second half of the semester, primarily on advertising and professionalism. This is a great opportunity for them, as it allows them to get experience and “not only learn about these details, but also putting on a show and dealing with gallery relations and pricing and marketing and actually doing it.”

While Professor Bubash’s specialty is in metalwork, she will be overseeing the entire event, as it was her idea “to do this sale, and to work in [her] metals classes, and [her] stained glass class.”

She will also be in charge of production, because art students often do not learn how to price their work and make multiple copies of it to sell.

This is why having her classes collaborate on the event was critical to the event, as it would “help them learn a different aspect of being an artist,” to give them “a little bit more of a real world experience of what they might encounter when they’re done with school,” she said.

This way, they will know what to do when they want to sell their work or when they attempt to have their work entered into a gallery. This formula of hers seems to have worked very well in the past; students that have done well at her previous sales (mostly the ones at graduate school) have gone on to start their own businesses or studios or to teach art.

Some of the money that is made through the sale will be going to FACES, and some will be going back to the students themselves. The students will be needing the money for their senior thesis shows, so this sale will “be helping a lot of different people, and that’s exciting,” according to Bubash.

The event will start at 10 a.m. and will end at 8 p.m.