Painting sale will benefit Art on the River

The Art on the River Committee got something more permanent than what organizers had bargained for when they contracted with Traverse City artist Tess Tobolic for the 2016 show.

Tobolic was supposed to do chalk art for the event, said Trina Kern-Avedesian.

"She asked me if she could do a painting," Kern-Avedesian said. The organizers' reaction, she said, was: "That's even better, because we get to keep it. It won't be washed away by the water."

The committee won't be keeping the painting much longer, however — it plans to auction the large canvas in May and is selling prints of the painting in several sizes to raise money for this year's Art on the River, June 10 and 11 in Port Huron.

The committee paid for Tobolic's work with a $5,000 grant from the Community Foundation of St. Clair County.

"She brought an 8-foot by 4-foot canvas, took it off the trailer and did this in two days," Kern-Avedesian said.

The painting shows a perspective of the Black River looking east with multiple yachts and sailboats crowding the Port Huron Yacht Club side of the river. The Pere Marquette rail bridge towers in the background.

"The reason I wanted her to do that is because of all the controversy about the train bridge coming down," Kern-Avedesian said.

The yacht club, which has owned the property since December 2011, has wanted to remove the train bridge so it can develop the property at the mouth of the Black River.

Kern-Avedesian said Tobolic, who is a medical illustrator, did a wonderful job with the painting.

"She went beyond our wildest expectations of what we thought this was going to be like," she said.

She said the prints of the painting will be on sale, ranging in price from $60 to $125. Information about how to order a print will be available on the Art on the River Facebook page and the Art on the River website at www.artontheriverph.com.

Mark Paul John, who is known as the Freedom Artist after creating paintings of firefighters raising a flag at Ground Zero in New York, will be the featured artist at the 2017 Art on the River, Kern-Avedesian said. People will be able to watch over his shoulder as he works.

"He wants to do the (Fort Gratiot) lighthouse with one of the military ships, the Bramble, the Greyfox or the Hollyhock, coming in from the lake," she said.

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.
If You Go

Art on the River will be June 10-11 on the north bank of the Black River west of the Port Huron Yacht Club.

The organizing committee in May will auction a painting of the Black River created by artist Tess Tobolic.



The committee also is selling prints of the painting. For more information, visit the Art on the River website at www.artontheriverph.com or the event's Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ArtontheRiver/


Resource: http://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/local/port-huron/2017/01/18/painting-sale-benefit-art-river/96709878/