Anyone who’s ever stumbled upon a hidden gem in the Thrift Shop has experienced the thrill of finding treasure amid the stacks of books, games, clothing, kitchen utensils and other odds and ends. The annual Chicken Alley Art Show, set for this Sunday afternoon and now in its sixth season, offers customers the opportunity to purchase the finest art and craft items culled from the shelves over the past year. The proceeds from the event have grown from $3,000 to $40,000 in five years, with all earnings benefitting Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.
Sandy Pratt and Dolly Campbell, manager and assistant manager of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services Thrift Shop, are cutting prices in an attempt to clear as much merchandise from the store as they can. They need to make way for the yearly Chicken Alley Art Show.
The event, in its eighth year, was conceived by Olga Hirshhorn, whose late husband Joseph Hirshhorn founded the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
The ninth annual Chicken Alley Art and Collectibles Sale is this Sunday, August 15, from 1 to 5 p.m. under the tent at 38 Lagoon Pond Road in Vineyard Haven.
At this popular summer sale, the Thrift Shop is transformed into an art gallery extraordinaire, with oil and watercolor paintings, drawings, collages and prints by artists well-known and unknown. Vintage clothing and jewelry, as well as collectibles of all varieties, are snapped up in this once-a-year sale.
Nestled among the framed paintings and portraits on display at the Chicken Alley Art and Collectibles sale, which was held on August 15 to benefit Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, a large poster stood out for its bright yellow background, bright red lettering, and striking image of a pouncing tiger, claws and teeth bared.
It was a 1940s Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus poster, and a rare find among the similarly unique items that made up the show.
In this age of free range chicken-raising, throw an egg in the air anywhere on this Island and odds are you’ll hit a fellow chicken farmer, one might think a reference to a place called Chicken Alley speaks of some storied Shangri-la where golden eggs roll freely from the barnyard.
Reality, however, speaks to a place of no chickens but plenty of golden eggs, metaphorically at least.
“What do you think of this, Olga?” asked a woman, holding out a black and white photograph. Olga Hirshhorn sat in a canvas director’s chair with her name written on the back in a small corner of the Community Services Thrift Shop during the Chicken Alley Art Show on Sunday. Mrs. Hirshhorn, well steeped in art after a life spent among friends with names such as Picasso, Dali, O’Keefe and deKooning, smiled over the crowded masses filling the art show she helped found.
Every August I look forward to the Chicken Alley Sale at the Vineyard Haven Thrift Shop. For 10 years, Olga Hirshhorn has organized, supervised and advertised her pet Vineyard project and her hard work and imaginative impulses have been richly rewarded. The Chicken Alley Sale has made hundreds of thousands of dollars for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and given hundreds of people a chance to snatch up a vast number of donated items, proving the theory once again, that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
