ASIFA East Auction 2011
On December 20th ASIFA East hosted our biennial animation art auction. The auction funds go towards supporting our festival and cover the cost of using The New School space as well as sandwiches and wine that we all enjoy afterward, and a toast to the coming summer and year in animation. This year’s selection of artwork had especially wonderful pieces. The turn out was not huge but made the whole event somehow more funny and intimate. Cheers go out to Jerry Miller for being an exception host and auctioneer.
The hot ticket item of the night was most definitely Dan Haskett’s Little Mermaid character drawing of Ariel. Haskett is Ariel’s original character designer and had worked on a number of Disney features.
The next big seller was a title card for the Rocko’s Modern Life episode “An Elk for Heffer”. Congrats to Alisa Stern for snagging that gem, Rocko’s Modern Life was a favorite Nicktoon of mine.
My favorite purchase of the night was a cel from ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ from 1984 directed by R.O. Blechman. This cel was inked/drawn (not sure) by Tissa David. Also I love that I picked up this ‘Kakania’ cel from 1989 that was so generously donated by Karen Aqua’s husband and partner Ken Field. I wanted to take home a bit of animation history as well as a piece of New York and Indy animation. Films made by hand are such a rarity today that owning a cel or original drawing is such a treat.
By the time we made it through the whole catalog (over 40 pieces!), it was already past 9 PM, everyone packed up their treasures and made them as waterproof as possible to head out into the light rain. When it was all said and done, the auction had raised enough to support our festival and awards ceremony for another two years. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported ASIFA East and very special thanks to all the folks who donated so many gems of animation history.
All my photos of the event are available on our Facebook group Friends of ASIFA East. If you have any photos of past ASIFA Events feel free to add them to our albums or email me at asifaeast.mailinglist@gmail.com
