To the editor:

Many, many thanks to you and your staff for printing the picture of “Old Fisherman” and story about our Indiana Heritage Arts Exhibition and Sale.

So far, we are so pleased with the turnout; we think over 200 people attended our Friday opening reception on June 10. (It’s hard to get a count with no RSVPs, but we know by how much food was consumed). Best of all, we have sold 20 paintings.

We also awarded on July 2 a prize of $500 to artist Dan Bulleit and his painting “Morning Reflections” because the public voted his work their show favorite. He was also juried into the IHA show in 2015.

We take a low commission on the sold paintings to encourage artists to enter the show. Most galleries now take more than 50 percent — not a high incentive to keep painting.

Not only that, we have a permanent gallery inside the Brown County Art Gallery that we rent. We display now some 16 permanent paintings (some are at West Baden’s popular gallery) and we also display on a rotating basis paintings for sale to our member artists. All our proceeds go to funding another show and keeping our gallery open: a daunting task we begin again literally on the heels of our show closing July 2.

So your support and that of your newspaper office keeps alive art for everyone — a goal we, the all-volunteer board of directors, feels is more important than ever before.

With grateful appreciation,

Letty Newkirk, IHA board of directors

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