Love and art at the Bow Wow Ball

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I was happily bidding on a very large oil painting of geese in flight at the Humane Society Bow Wow Ball on the weekend, almost cocky in the knowledge that even if I didn’t win the painting, at least I was driving the price up to help a good cause.

But then, as too often happens, the silent auction got personal.

I simply would not give in and let the other bidder win. Up and up and up we went, higher than the very geese we coveted, way, way up, way past how much I actually wanted the painting.

My opponent, a seemingly very nice woman, had an air about her that said she knew she had a space to fit this very large painting. I, on the other hand, have no spatial judgement, and had no idea if the painting – and we’re talking five feet high by a foot and a half wide – would fit in that bald spot beside my fireplace.

In any case, fate was not on my side – or maybe it was depending on how you feel about very large paintings of geese – and I did not win. As we topped the $400 mark, I came to my senses, reined in my ego and let the woman with spatial ability have her painting.

Then, true love struck. I spotted a bizarre work of art across the crowded room. It is best described as a grey curling stone with a brass flourish, about two feet long, sprouting from its top and opening out into a large fan. The artist cleverly named it "Metal Sculpture." See its picture on this page to fully understand why even its creator isn’t sure what it is, and yet I fell in love with it.

It says Manitoba to me, with its curling-stone roots and its jaunty brass fan that bounces on the Prairie breeze.

And as no one else, either with or without spatial ability, wanted it, it was a bargain basement $25.

And that says Prairie pragmatism more loudly than anything: I got a deal.