Art as Guessing Game at Upcoming Mystery Sale

Art lovers, get out your calendars and cancel all appointments between next Thursday and May 13 because there is a good chance you could snap up an April Gornik or Charles Waller for the bargain price of $20.

 The Springs School Mystery Art Sale will return to Ashawagh Hall this year after a hiatus in 2016. Organized by the school’s art department and a committee of parents and faculty, the sale raises money for the school’s Visiting Artists Program.

It has a simple premise: Artists — famed, aspiring, students, or dabblers — submit original 5-by-7-inch pieces of work in a variety of mediums, which are then displayed anonymously and sold for $20 each. The signatures are hidden on the back and only revealed after the sale is over. Approximately half of the 1,200 pieces expected will be by professional artists.

Beginning next Thursday at 4 p.m., anyone can walk in and pick up a trophy for $20.

In the past, the school has raised $40,000 from the sale, prompting Lucas Hunt, a professional auctioneer who will preside over a live auction at the sale on May 13, to call it “one of the greatest fund-raisers ever.”

According to Colleen McGowan, who teaches art at the school and is the coordinator of the visual arts program there, all proceeds go directly to the school’s Visiting Artists Program, an art enrichment initiative for kindergarten through eighth grade that pays artists to visit the school and funds art-related field trips for students.

“It’s a really nice circular thing here, a closed loop. Money from the community is going straight back into the pockets of the community. We help artists who live out here as well as get students excited about the possibilities of art and maybe even become successful artists themselves,” Ms. McGowan said.

For Alex DeHavenon, who teaches art history to the school’s seventh and eighth graders, the importance of keeping art alive in Springs is key.

“It’s great to teach students about the historical heritage of art in Springs from Jackson Pollock to Willem de Kooning but it is equally important for them to learn that the contemporary art world is still vibrant in Springs, with many great artists still living here.”

The idea for the event originated with Sara Faulkner, an artist from the United Kingdom who moved to Springs six years ago with her family and has two children at the school. In London a few years ago, Ms. Faulkner had been invited to the Secret Postcard Sale at the Royal College of Art, where attendees can bid on anonymous postcard-sized works by creative megastars such as Yoko Ono and Sir Paul Smith as well as rising talents at the school. The event, which still continues, attracts art lovers from all over Europe, many of whom camp outside the building the night before.

“Springs is like a modest version of that,” said Ms. Faulkner. “We are very conscious of the price point and we want this to be enjoyed by people in our community who don’t normally get a chance to visit an art gallery and appreciate all this great work.”

This year, there will be an added cultural twist. Forty pieces of student artwork from the Angela Landa Elementary School in Havana, Cuba, will be added to the sale. Irena Grant, a parent of a Springs eighth grader, was in Havana in February when she met Richard Robert Diaz, an art teacher at the school. Mr. Diaz told Ms. Grant about the school’s dire shortage of art supplies and lack of technology.

Upon returning to Springs, Ms. Grant spoke with Ms. McGowan and others at the school, and before long, a deal was struck. Mr. Diaz would provide artwork created by his students to be sold at the Mystery Art Sale, in exchange for the art materials he needed.

“We are taking them a variety of special art supplies, which the Golden Eagle artist supply store generously helped us with. I am also taking a laptop, as they don’t have one, and the art teacher is very eager to have his students go on virtual tours of the world’s museums and galleries,” Ms. Grant, who traveled back to Cuba with another parent this week to collect the student art, wrote in an email.

In Springs, the popularity of the Mystery Art Sale has forced the special committee to devise a plan to detract trained art hunters from swooping up the big names, leaving nothing for the amateurs still waiting on line. As a result, this year each person will only be sold three dots, each for $20, to be placed on their chosen pieces.

“If they want to buy another three dots, they’ll have to go back to the end of the line,” said Ms. McGowan, adding, “and last year the line went all the way from Ashawagh Hall to the General Store.”

Ultimately, the project’s team (who have pledged not to buy or provide insider tips) hopes that people will appreciate the entire body of art and not simply focus on what’s famous and what’s not. As collectors say, buy what you like. Even if you do not bag a big name, you could end up going home with a big name of the future.

The deadline for submitting artwork has been extended to tomorrow at 5 p.m. Instructions can be found online at springsmysteryartsale.com.