FAQ | Behind the Scenes | Auction Schedule
Bidding Policy | Sponsors | Press Release

Best Laid Plans for This Year's Goose Egg Auction

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 8, 2004
CONTACT: Cynthia Keith
802-785-2077 (w)
802-649-2625 (h)
open.fields.school@valley.net

NOTE: We can provide high-resolution digital photographs of any of the eggs on our website. Contact Nellie Pennington (nelliep@sover.net or 802-765-4227) for more information.

How much would you pay for an egg? Ten cents? A quarter? Well, how about $500? Or even $1000? It sounds crazy, until you realize the eggs are as big as your fist, and painted and signed by award-winning artists. And every one of them is eggceptional, from the wood sculpture Eggret (whose body is the egg) to the felted Eggsistentialist (reading a book titled "No Eggsit"). There's something here for every type of art colleggtor and appreciator of the eggcentric!

These eggs aren't in your local supermarket, of course. They're on sale at Open Fields School's Fifth Great Goose Egg Auction, to be held Saturday, May 8, 2004 at the Hanover Inn's Hayward Lounge in Hanover, New Hampshire. The public viewing runs from 9:00 to 11:00 AM. Doors will open again at 1:00 PM and the bidding begins at 1:30. Here you'll find dozens of painted, sculpted, and otherwise amazingly decorated eggs created by artists, authors, cartoonists, and other personalities from all over the country and across the sea.

Many of the egg artists are award-winning book illustrators, including local luminary Trina Schart Hyman. Her egg is a portrait of Little Red Riding Hood, from her now-classic Caldecott Honor Book. Other Caldecott medalists in the Open Fields' auction include Ed Young, Emily Arnold McCully, and Ted and Betsy Lewin.

Among the cartoonists are both Ed Koren and Roz Chast, of "New Yorker" fame. Well-known author/illustrator Leonard Everett Fisher painted a wide-eyed Don Quixote. Will Hillenbrand, much praised for his mixed media illustrations, really mixed his media with a textural frog resting on a lily pad made from a compact disc. Prolific non-fiction writer/illustrator Gail Gibbons tackled a slippery subject in Snake Dance, while Steven Kellogg honored the election year (another slippery subject) with his Eleggtion Most Fowl. Other contributors include Robert Sabuda of pop-up book fame, author/illustrator David Macaulay, and beloved children's book creators Ed Emberley and Eric Carle. Howard Dean even signed a couple of eggs!

Local artists are well represented, too. Barbara Newton's "Post Pond" depicts a scene from close to home, and Carol Egbert contributed two beautiful decoupaged works, "Spring" and "Fall Sky." Hanover High School art teacher Elizabeth Greene's "Conception" is a stunning ceramic work, while Norwich author and illustrator Susan Milord concocted an intoxicating "Eggstra-Dry Martini." Isobel Cochran from Hanover offers a Monet-like "Waterlilies," and Lyme's John Stadler has graceful bears encircling his work "Polar Tai Chi." Open Fields School is represented by several alums, including Hanover High senior Erica Layton, and Ross Whitlock, a student at Thetford Academy.

And these are just a few of the more than 100 eggs and artists represented.

The eggs will be revealed in all their splendor at the Opening Exhibit, free and open to the public, on Friday, May 7th from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. If you just can't wait, you can view many of the eggs right now by going to the Open Fields website at www.openfields.org. Many of the eggs are also on display during the month of April at the Hanover and Norwich public libraries and at the Norwich Bookstore.

Absentee bids will be accepted at the website and at the Opening and Preview. Live phone-in bids during the auction will definitely get things boiling. More information is available at openfields.org or by calling the school at 802-785-2077.

Perennially popular, and always eggciting, this event is the largest fundraiser for Open Fields, a small, independent elementary school founded in 1971 in Thetford Hill, Vermont. Rolled out every two years, the Great Goose Eggstravaganza has earned as much as $18,000 in just three hours of spirited bidding, with eggs going for as little as $25 and as much as, yes, $1000. It is a tribute to the eggcellence and creativity (and sense of humor) of Open Fields that it can attract such a gaggle of locally and nationally famous artists to regularly cook up an egg for this auction.

But it's not who these people are so much as what they do, which is something quite wonderful: transform a simple egg into a beautiful, creative, and often humorous objet d'art eggstraordinaire. Please visit the website, come to the preview, leave an absentee bid, phone in a bid, or -- better yet -- come to the auction in person and take home an egg, prepared just the way you like it.