Oh, brother, where art the art?
The annual Celebrity Battle of the Brushes came off without a hitch again at Burlington Memorial Auditorium last Friday, and a sold-out dinner crowd partied and dined as they watched five local legends try their hands at reproducing paintings by famous artists, all to raise money for the Art Center of Burlington.
“We are only able to do this because of our incredible board of directors, my tirelessly hardworking staff, our army of giving volunteers, and this community, who continue to ensure that ‘art pops’ in Burlington,” ACB director Elizabeth Pappas said of the Nov. 18 event.
What it was
This year’s theme, Pop Art, was revealed to the artists just minutes before the painting began, and each artist-coach team picked a well-known painting to emulate. Each celebrity painted on a 20×24-inch canvas onstage in front of a live audience.
The refreshments
Food was good and plentiful — a collaboration of Bent River and the Broadway featured shredded pork street tacos with pico de gallo, cilantro and lime crema; bratwurst sliders with kraut and IPA mustard; Polish sausage skewers loaded with peppers and onions and served with IPA mustard, and Buffalo or Asian chicken wings.
Everyone present had access to a full bar in the lobby, manned by the invincible David Kroll, assistant director of Burlington Riverfront Entertainment.
The combatants
The teams were Alec Cornick with coach Jeri Sparks, Jason Hutcheson guided by David Garrison, Kim Staub schooled by Janet Hachmeister, Mike McCoy nursed by his granddaughter Norah Bell, and Mike Ripple, who was his own worst critic, even with the expert help of Jessica Kirby.
And that is the order in which they finished auctioning off their fine art efforts.
The evening began with music by Eric Pettit Lion; the band provided excellent artiste-watching background music, with nearly perfect sound reinforcement, smooth vocals, and some very tasty steel guitar by Chris Robbins.
Pappas came out to introduce emcee KC Fleming, and it was time to parade the art teams to the stage.
McCoy came dressed as a gangster in pinstripes, a white hat and red tie. “The Gangster” was his moniker.
Ripple tagged himself “Royale with cheese” in a black wig, looking a bit like John Travolta with a nasty hangover.
Cornick as “Flip-Flop” paraded in his slider thongs to the Blue Swede “ooga-chukka” version of the BJ Thomas hit, “Hooked on a Feeling.”
Staub’s team was “Iowa vs Illinois” with Staub in Hawkeye sweater and coach Hachmeister in Illini colors.
Jason Hutcheson was dressed as a Ringling ringmaster, apropos of his tagline, “The Great Showman,” with David Garrison trapped out as a lion tamer from a Warhol nightmare.
The battle
And the paint-slinging began. Artists squinted and twisted and drank wine and daubed and dabbled. The audience partied.
Hanging art on the stage included Andy Warhol’s psychedelic Marilyn Monroe, a jittering Keith Haring image, and a cartoon panel by an artist unknown to the Burlington mob.
Fleming auctioned off a blindfold that Great River Heath Foundation exec director Jason Hutcheson had to wear for five minutes while painting.
“This is horrible, this is horrible. I am not an artist,” Ripple mumbled as he stared forlornly at his efforts to reproduce the same painting Cornick was whipping out with ease.
Fleming scored $100 from a patron who wanted to have Ripple’s pro Jessica Kirby assist McCoy for five minutes. Then former ACB director Tammy McCoy paid $250 to have her friend Vivian Anderson paint with her favorite artist team, Staub and Hachmeister.
“I majored in graphic design,” Anderson said. “I had no idea what she was drawing, then she showed me a picture on her phone.”
The Hawk Eye was not privy to that image.
McCoy’s trainer, granddaughter Norah Bell, smiled when someone asked her about Grandpa’s chances of winning with his rendition of Andy Warhol’s classic Marilyn Monroe.
“He’s got a little bit of a chance here,” Bell said, laughing. “Hopefully he’ll get third. I’m aiming for third.”
As real estate maven Kim Staub worked on her rendition of … whatever it was, one observer asked her how painting in front of a crowd compared to selling houses.
“It’s a lot harder because I don’t know what I’m doing here, and at least I know what I’m doing when I’m selling a house,” she said with a wry laugh.
Malaysian native Dao Lim, an engineer at the Winegard Company, moved to Burlington a few years back. Someone asked Lim if there was anything like the Celeb Battle in Malaysia.
“No, this very unique. I’ve never seen an event like this before. Everything is very casual,” he said, then admitted he had a favorite artist on the stage.
“I think Jason is secretly an artist,” Lim said with a chuckle.
Just prior to the auction, last year’s winner, Dr. Michael AbouAssaly, gave his practiced family opinion.
“Jason’s art is right on point, but I think he finished a little too soon,” AbouAssaly said, his tongue clearly distending his cheek. “He needs to go back, re-examine, do a few touchups.”
AbouAssaly said whoever bought Hutcheson’s painting might want to get him to show up later and do a little refurbishing.
“It just needs a little touching up, but overall, it’s a good effort,” he said with a scholarly scowl.
Someone asked the good doctor to critique McCoy, the hospital’s new CEO.
“It’s apples to oranges, a whole different style of art, really,” AbouAssaly said. “Overall it’s well done … before, he was a fellow physician-colleague, but now he’s my boss, so I have to say I like his painting the most.”
AbouAssaly said he admired Hutcheson’s confidence.
“I was up there, like shaking, and you’re like, ‘OK, that’s it; drop the brush,'” he told Hutcheson.
“But you can’t do anything else to it!” Hutcheson objected. “Every time I touched it, I messed it up. So we just gotta call it good.”
The two men were standing in the middle of the Auditorium, and as they looked up at Hutcheson’s painting away on the stage, the artist suggested it was better that people look at it from that perspective.
“If you get too close, we’ve got some nose problems and some chin problems,” Hutcheson said. “But from a distance, with people standing in front of it, it doesn’t look too bad.”
“From 200 feet away, it looks perfect,” AbouAssaly agreed.
The auction
The painting stopped after two hours and the artists began auctioning their masterpieces. Ripple handed out prizes including Bees Bucks and his psycho-Travolta wig, then told the audience his painting was a donut.
“It’s not barbell weights by some jock,” he said.
At the end of the auctioning, the team of Cornick-Sparks took home the bacon with the highest bid: $5,100.
“This is always a fun event to attend; it was more fun participating,” Cornick said later. “I had a great time. More importantly, it was an amazing night for the Art Center. Congrats to them for making this such a successful event.”
Hutcheson-Garrison placed second at $3,400, Staub-Hachmeister third at $3,000, McCoy-Bell followed with $2,000 and Ripple-Kirby came in last — but still raised money for the Art Center with a whopping thousand dollar bid.
Oddly enough, only Ripple’s masterpiece will be on display at the Art Center this week, as the other four buyers absconded with their goodies.
“They all took their paintings! I only have the Ripple painting!” Pappas lamented.
McCoy dubbed the event a great crowd for a great cause.
“I had so much fun painting for the first time, with the direction of my grand-daughter artist,” he said before thanking Pappas and BRE honchos Kroll and executive director Mike O’Neil. “Elizabeth, Mike, David and their staffs did a great job, and I appreciated the opportunity to embarrass myself while having a lot of fun doing it.”
Pappas said she and her staff were “completely blown away by the overwhelming support of this great community.”
“The celebrities and artists brought their A-games and knocked it out of the park,” Pappas said.
