CHS auctions off painted violins

The auction is at chsorchestra.org/auction.htm.

By: Rachana Dixit | The Daily Progress
Published: February 16, 2009

The Charlottesville High School Orchestra has found a new way to recycle some of its unplayable violins — turning them into works of art.
In the coming days, the orchestra will wrap up its first painted violin fundraising project. Local artists took 12 of the stringed instruments and put whatever they wanted on them, from paint and beads to feathers and watch faces. The violins are being auctioned online until Wednesday, and the funds will be used to help pay for two of the orchestra’s trips this year.
“These are really extraordinary works of art,” said Laura Thomas, the orchestra’s director. “And I hope I end up with one.”

The violins have been catching people’s eyes all over town, with many of them having been displayed for a few weeks in stores on the Downtown Mall.
Terri Gable, owner of Studio Baboo, had a violin in her window done by Charlottesville High School art teacher Judy McLeod. McLeod’s instrument displays a grapevine, which was crafted using beads from Gable’s store, and Gable said she had customers coming in just to get a closer look.
“They were really delighted with it,” Gable said. “It was kind of nice having it here.”
Local artist Drew Adler has a love for acoustic instruments, but before this fundraiser, painting a violin was territory that he had not yet ventured into. Now his violin displays a daytime Venetian gondola scene on the front — with the Doge’s Palace on the left because it was where classical music composer Wolfgang Mozart stayed from time to time — and a nighttime scene of Carnavale on its back.

Adler said painting on a curvy, three-dimensional object proved to be challenging, but he would do another one.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Adler said.
The painted violin has become a national and local phenomenon, with the Charlottesville University Symphony Orchestra participating in the same fundraiser last year.
“It was really a successful fundraiser,” said Jenny Ackerman, the high school orchestra’s booster president.
Ackerman said the CHS orchestra had the idea to do the project last year, but raising money for its two trips this year — one to Baltimore with the string ensemble and another to Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the full orchestra will compete with other groups from around the country — has become increasingly important.

The trip to Myrtle Beach, with 130 participating students, costs roughly $450 per person, and the Baltimore trip has a total price tag of at least $4,000.
“That was really our goal here, to lighten the load on the families,” Ackerman said. “It’s a strain on people’s pocketbooks.”
Thomas said because this fundraiser is so labor intensive, it is unlikely that the orchestra will do this project every year. But 12 violins in disrepair have so far been saved, and Thomas said this fundraiser would probably come around every two to three years.