By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
With the pandemic strong as ever, Brave Heart Volunteers have brought back their buoy fundraiser for a second year.
The buoys – now on display at the Island Artists Gallery – were hanging up downtown for most of the summer.
Now, they’re part of an auction taking place through next Wednesday, Sept. 1.
Artist Pat Kehoe – who designed two buoys for this year’s auction and who led a Zoom workshop on painting buoys earlier this year – thinks the moment surrounding this fundraiser is one in which people are thinking more about what they value.
“I think that COVID has made people think more about what’s important and where they want to spend their money,” Kehoe told the Sentinel. “I think people have been more supportive of the buoy auction this year than they were last year.”
A buoy painted by artist Libby Stortz hangs in the Island Artists Gallery today. More than two dozen painted buoys on display at the gallery will be auctioned to raise money for Brave Heart Volunteers. (Sentinel Photo)
But it’s not just the cause that is attracting bidders.
“We’ve had a lot of visitors who’ve been really interested and want to know if the buoys can be shipped,” Kehoe said.
This includes a woman who was visiting from Washington state and noticed the buoys.
“She knew about (the auction), she saw (the buoy) while she was here, and she’s on it,” said Michele Friedman, board president of Brave Heart.
Friedman said the buoys can be bid on in an auction setting, or can be bought outright for $1,000.
And the buoys aren’t just traveling to new homes: Kehoe said that former Sitkan Libby Stortz painted her buoy at home in Arizona, before shipping it back to Sitka for the auction.
“She painted it down there and then mailed it back up when she was done,” Kehoe said.
Friedman said the fundraiser has already raised some $12,000 – almost twice as much as it brought in last year.
She hopes the auction will allow for people to learn more about the organization.
“I think there are a lot of people who know what Brave Heart does, but there’s a lot of people who really don’t know what Brave Heart does,” Friedman told the Sentinel.
Most known for the Brave Heart Bowls fundraiser, the organization provides support to those who need companionship because of loneliness, illness, or grief, as well as support to those who are at end-of-life.
“The money that we are trying to raise, yes, it does go to supporting our two staff and keeping everything going,” Friedman said in an interview. “But it really is about the work that we do.”
And the fundraiser also serves as a beach cleanup effort: in another life, the hard plastic volleyball-size buoys were commercial fishing gear floats. When they come loose, the buoys sometimes wash up on Kruzof and other nearby islands.
Kehoe says that even though the fundraiser has its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, she can tell people would like to see the event happen again next year.
“I see one of my neighbors is already collecting buoys in their yard,” she said.
To view photos of all the buoys and art in the auction, visit braveheartvolunteers.org and scroll down on the home page.
