Doll auction to benefit recycling center, arts alliance

Tickets are on sale for the Saturday, Nov. 12, “Hello Dolly!” fund-raiser for the Valley Center for Recycling Solutions and the Valley Arts Alliance.

Doors at the Palmer Moose Lodge open for the event at 6 p.m., with Brad Webb to begin the auction at 7.

Tickets purchased at the door are $40 per person or $75 per couple. They are available online (valleyrecycling.org/helloDolly.htm) for a 25-percent discount.

Thirty dolls will be auctioned. There will be entertainment. Hot and cold hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served; the Moose will have an open cash bar.

Mollie Boyer, executive director of VCRS, said it will be a fun event, as well as a fund-raiser that benefits the two organizations. The artists will be there, and are encouraged to dress like their dolls, which, Boyer admitted, could be a challenge for some of the artists.

While art and recyling may not seem a natural fit, Boyer said the doll project is a great partnership. It takes some of the hundreds of dolls donated to VCRS 10 years ago and gives them a new lease on life, thanks to the talents of local artists and the efforts of VAA.

And, Boyer said, it is just the sign of more art to come. The new VCRS center opens in December and she said it will be a nexus for art and recyling.

“This will explode,” Boyer said.

Boyer said the Hello Dolly event will be repeated for at least the next two years with the same model doll.

That’s good news for Norma Thigpen, one of this year’s artists, who said she’s already thinking what she’ll do in 2011.

Also at the auction will be a doll Boyer calls “Le’achait Ann, the landfill waif.” She was found by volunteers who cleaned up the recycling center’s land on Oct. 10. The land, adjacent to Mat-Su Borough Central Landfill, gets littered with items that migrate from the landfill. Boyer said among the trash was what was once a lovely brown-eyed porcelain doll. Instead, she’s dirty, covered in leaf debris and and her clothes are beginning to disintegrate.

“She speaks to what we’re trying to do here,” Boyer said.

The Palmer Moose Lodge is at 1100 Cobb St.

-Vicki Naegele