Murray State's Department of Art & Design hosts an annual holiday art auction, but this will be the first time the auction returns to an in-person format since 2019. Austin Carter speaks to department chair Christ Lavery and artist and professor Cintia Segovia ahead of the fundraising event.
"The Murray State University Holiday Art Auction is a grassroots effort from the department," Lavery says. "We feature work from all the faculty and area artists as well as our students. The students are the direct recipients of the scholarships. Students volunteer or donate to the art auction, and they receive a scholarship in kind."
"We typically raise between 10 to 11 thousand dollars at the event, which is extremely helpful," Lavery continues. "It does support many of our students throughout the semester and throughout the year. The other big component of this is the community-building effort. It really does bring all our faculty together, students, as well as the area community."
Segovia, a local artist and Murray State assistant professor of Photography and New Media, has three featured pieces in this year's auction. "Two of the pieces are photograph collages that I started in 2020. The world was so uncertain that I wanted to create beauty, so that is my exploration after not having anything to print because I didn't have a printer."
"The third piece is about [María de Jesús Patricio] from the Nahua indigenous group. She was supported by other indigenous groups in Mexico, which is unheard of. They invited her to run and represent them. Her contribution was to bring the voice of indigenous people to the forefront in a country where there's a lot of racism." Segovia says her third piece aims to highlight the political hurdles that were set in place to sabotage Patricio's electoral run.
The MSU Holiday Art Auction will be held on Friday, November 11th, in the Clara M. Eagle Gallery in the Price Doyle Fine Arts building from 4:30 to around 8 or 9 pm. There is a special auction preview event for attendees 21 and older from 4:30 to 6 with refreshments from the Big Apple Cafe. At 6 pm, registration for the actual auction begins, which is for all ages. The auction begins at 7 pm.
"That's the big, fun part where everybody gets in and starts bidding for all of our items," Lavery says. "It's a party. I think that's the best thing to think of for this art auction. It does get pretty exciting at times with the bidding. Bidding can go pretty high up there. I hope that people will bring their wallets and give us lots of money for our students."
The art auction is free and open to the public.
