RiverArts will celebrate its 4th Annual ArtsAlive: A Feast for Your Senses on Saturday, March 19 from 6:00 to 10:00. Bring your friends and family and join the fun as Chestertown RiverArts honors the creative artistry of our local chefs at its annual fundraiser. Local restauranteurs will vie with artistic hors’doeuvres and individual members will compete for the most artistic dessert in a tantalizing culinary arts exhibition.
Sandra and Neal Jackson dressed for the 2014 ArtsAlive: Viva Italia.
ArtsAlive is RiverArts major fundraiser every year and always a happening party with live music, a dinner buffet, open bar, and a silent and live auction that offers many fun experiences for families and adults. Guests can bid on a fishing charter, a party for 20 at JR’s Pub with a pianist and appetizers, a cooking class with chef Steve Quigg at the Kitchen, a wine tasting party, a Louisiana seafood boil, a paella dinner, a river and garden dinner, a Bucks County tour for six, popular bartender Jeff Maguire to tend bar at the bidder’s event and about 40 other items. Parents looking for imaginative, new experiences for their children and grandchildren might bid on a painting class, a pony riding lesson, a tour of St. Brigid’s dairy and beef farm where they can milk a cow, or a photo shoot.
As RiverArts programs and activities have grown over the past four years, so too have their expenses. The community has benefited from RiverArts’ growth including bringing the Clay Studio into town and opening KidSPOT every Saturday with free creativity activities every Saturday for children and their grownups. First Fridays bring in over 400 guests to view the openings of new exhibitions. RiverArts depends on their annual fundraiser to be able to sponsor these programs.
Originated in 2012, ArtsAlive that year celebrated the recent merger that resulted in RiverArts and the completion of renovation at the current location and featured selected members dressed up as well known artists or a subject in a work of art. Jonathan Chace sported a head bandage and Van Gogh jacket painted by his talented wife, Evie Baskin. The 2013 ArtsAlive had an Italian theme with food and décor to match. Members Sandra and Neal Jackson chose a historic costume for the affair and bartenders sported black and white striped shirts with red ties, gondala-style.
Zane and Nancy Carter and Susan Hostetler wearing leis at the 2015 ArtsAlive: A Night in the Tropics.
Last year’s gala brought us to the islands and Hawaiian shirts and leis were the predominant attire. Some brave souls even came out in shorts on a cold, snowy evening. ArtsAlive 2016 will celebrate many of the programs that RiverArts has brought to this community and will highlight the creativity in all of us including a
competition of local chefs to make the most artistic hors d’oeuvres. Attire will be casual and eclectic as always encouraging guests to demonstrate their own personal, creative style.
The 2016 ArtsAlive is Saturday, March 19 from 6:00 to 10:00 at the Chesapeake Room of the Rock Hall Fire House. Tickets are $100 and are limited to 200 people. You can put together a group of friends and buy a table of 10 or you can buy one or two tickets and find someone to sit with when you arrive. Tickets are available online at https://ChestertownRiverArts.org or by calling RiverArts at 410 778 6300.
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