I love public art exhibits and when there are almost life sized bears involved you can imagine I am all in.  Chris and I spent some time in downtown Hendersonville, North Carolina the weekend that we came house hunting and I was delighted to find that they had bears lining the street.  How can you go wrong with decorated bears?  After all I have shared all of the Dothan Peanuts here on It’s Just Life over the past year so why not share bears?

The day we were there I did not have anything other than my phone camera and the sun was blazing so my photos are not as great as I would like them to be but you will get the idea of how neat this art installation is.

I had fully intended to go back and stop downtown to take better photographs but guess what?  That is not to be because these bears are part of an amazing fundraising effort.   These bears are part of an annual auction that has taken place 13 years and this year the auction netted a total of $43,000 that will go to help support both the nonprofits and organizations linked with each bear and to Downtown Hendersonville to help continue this project. Brilliant, don’t you think?

Each year twenty bears are exhibited downtown and each year they are auctioned off during an October weekend.  Different people bid on the bears for different reasons.  Some want to support the non profit that it represents, some just like the bear and want to have it in their own yard and some purchase and donate them to area businesses for specific reasons.  Whatever the reason I think this is a brilliant fundraiser and I am already looking forward to next year.  I will have camera in hand and be ready to take better shots and get more details about each bear.

Everywhere I go the idea of creating art displays like this is catching on and I have to admit that I never grow tired of it.  From pigs to bears to dolphins to peanuts — I am a fan of art like this that brings art to public places where everyone can enjoy it.

Thanks to the article located here in Blue Ridge Now for tipping me off to the fact that this was a fundraiser and a yearly event.