Letter from June Callwood

This is the twelfth Art with Heart auction for Casey House Home Hospice, and the event has become the biggest fundraiser in the Foundation's repertoire. To date, $2.1 million has been raised for the Home Hospice program which supplies nursing care, support services and referrals to the homes of hundreds of men and women with HIV/AIDS.

Curators say that this has become one of the most important art auctions in the country, which speaks, of course, to the expertise of the selection committee and the quality of art. Not counting this year's participants, almost five hundred artists have provided pieces of extraordinary range and creativity. Some nine hundred works have been sold to date, many of them to collectors who are regulars at the Casey House auction.

James Lahey, a most distinguished artist, has donated his work every year since Art with Heart began. This year he is allowing his work to be reproduced as a Limited Edition, a very successful undertaking launched in 1999.

It meant a great deal to the Art with Heart auction that Matthew Teitelbaum allowed Casey House to use the glorious Walker Court of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and agreed every year to be the Honorary Chair of the event. He is Honorary Chair again this year, and we thank him for that, but renovations to the AGO required a move. The auction will take place in the handsomely restored Carlu at the corner of Yonge and College.

Karen Mills and Bruce Lawson co-chaired this Art with Heart with their usual verve and good judgment. Bruce did this while holding down his day job and doubling as the interim Executive Director of Casey House Foundation while a search committee endeavours to find another person as fine as the much-missed former ED Jim Bratton; a tough job. The co-chairs have worked hard to make this auction the best, and so have the many committees who gallantly attended planning meetings in the hottest summer in half a century, and the splendid Casey House volunteers who staff the auction, and the fine people on the Foundation Board of Directors.

To all the Art with Heart gang, a heart-felt thanks.

June Callwood
Founder and Honorary Director, Casey House