SWEET!heart

In case a few of you are curious, we did great at the SWEET! fundraiser this past Friday night (see the pink banner at right). Even though I did this event and the Pies Project in tandem, I'm leaving up the banner for the animal lovers awhile. Thanks to all who already made their donations- from near and far!

The lesson here is, the arts are everywhere--in every one of us. So, David and I now own "The SWEET!heart," at least that's what I'm calling it. It fits perfectly in the space above our dining room where since we moved in we'd been saying we needed art or sculpture of some kind.

Muralist and Oakland Animal Shelter volunteer, Lynda Dann lovingly made this for our event and we had an impromptu live auction of it. The Oakland Animal Shelter is part of OPD, but FOAS exists to have funds available to help animals with emergency, often life-saving operations- kind of similar to the work of San Francisco General Hospital, only for animals and not with the trauma center aspect- though we do get some serious stuff coming through the door.

Being the winning bidder was very personal for me in a number of ways. I'd worked on PR for the Hearts in San Francisco Project (which benefited the General) and some of the artists involved in 2005 and 2006. The most fun I had was for artist Adele Shaw's heart- who took the pages of Shakespeare and covered her heart with them and a tea cozy. A year later, she proceeded to knit a wardrobe for the heart. Yes, that's boat rope she used to make those garments! And the bikini was stolen in 2006 one night, never to be found again. Probably the biggest bikini anyone has ever made.

Ironically, I also modeled some of my Pies Project idea around an "online version" of Hearts in San Francisco. I met Lynda sometime last year or the year before as a Shelter volunteer. It's funny to have known which heart she did for the project back then and then meeting her in 2007.

With the heart, I also got a ridearound opportunity with OPD- a chance to go out with an officer and see the town! A fascinating, potentially blogalicious experience.

Here is SWEETheart sitting in our dining room perch. From the kitchen (which is up a half level from the living room), you can feel the love coming up over the room from it.