Painting Event Raises over $26,000 for Kus-kus-sum

The 2022 Paintings, By The Numbers event, sponsored by Odlum Brown Limited, was a fun afternoon with lovely people and great art. We sold out of all our ART DRAW and SPECTATOR tickets the Thursday before the event, raising over $26,000 for restoring the Kus-kus-sum site!

We were very lucky to have the artists themselves, Ken Kirkby and Nana Cook, attend the event. They graciously allowed participants to take pictures with them and the art received. Ken and Nana said they had a great time and also shared their gratitude for everyone supporting the Kus-kus-sum project.

The event started calmly as people arrived, ordered drinks, and mulled over artwork. There were many hard decisions to make and some participants created colorful spreadsheets to help them narrow down their choices. Things heated up as we got closer to the draw. Finally, it was time and participants waited with bated breath as we called the first name. Marty Douglas was lucky number one and he took home the much sought-after painting, “Summer’s Color”, by Nana Cook.

We wish we could have given everyone their first choice, however, that would be a different, potentially less exciting, event. We are sending out a special thank you to the participants who were chosen last – you may not have gotten your top choice but you helped make the event a success and create habitat for fish and wildlife in our community.

We also launched our 2022 Sponsor a Salmon initiative at the event and had some of the recently painted salmon on display. *You can sponsor a child’s wooden painted salmon to go up on the fence at Kus-kus-sum for $25. These salmon are created as part of our estuary education program with School District 71.

Project Watershed would like to thank all those involved in making this event a success! By sponsoring the event Odlum Brown Limited ensured that all funds raised through ticket sales can go towards the project. 40 KNOTS graciously hosted the event in their enclosed patio and Hot Chocolates donated chocolates for the guest gift boxes. Bryan Walwork took photos of all the artwork for the catalogues and website and Anne Franklin captured photos of the event. Pod Creative helped create the catalogues, design elements, and social media posts and captured footage of the event. In addition, we had a team of volunteers help set up all the paintings, run the event and tear down afterwards.

All the event photos were taken by Anne Franklin and the video was captured by Pieter Vorster of Pod Creative.