Wolf auction raises more than $30,000 for Advance Abingdon

ABINGDON, Va. – They were howling like wolves in their evening wear Friday at the Martha Washington Hotel and Spa, where about 100 of Abingdon’s social elite gathered for a public art auction that raised more than $35,000.

The event ended the saga of 27 painted wolf sculptures that were stolen, returned and taken for joyrides during months of display around town, but somehow all arrived safely at Friday’s benefit.
More than $30,000 was raised for Advance Abingdon, the town’s Main Street organization, and more than $5,000 for other causes.

“It talks about Abingdon and it proves that you can put public art on the streets,” said Gary Kimbrell, president of Advance Abingdon, who chose wolves for the project because of their connection to a town legend about wolves in a cave that now sits behind a house on Main Street.

“I think that the wolves have proven, with … 8,000 maps [of the wolves’ locations] being distributed, that they’ve gotten people walking the streets of Abingdon looking at art,” Kimbrell said. “They are whimsical, they’re jokes in a way, but they prove that if you put art in a community, people are going to come and look at it.”

Kimbrell said he’s looking forward to exhibiting more public art next year – perhaps trains, for their connection to the town’s history and the Virginia Creeper Trail; the details have not yet been decided.

The top-selling piece Friday was a pup named Abby, short for Abingdon, who was painted with depictions of the town’s skyline and its leaders and brought $2,700 in the auction.

Earlier this year, Abby and one of her fellow wolves ran off together overnight; after a passionate plea for their return and a promise not to press charges, the two appeared one morning outside the Washington County Public Library.

Penny Hite, the artist who painted Abby, tells the story of the “trauma in her youth” that Abby suffered.

“Abby was one of the ones who was stolen, she was returned at the back of the library, sequestered for a time at the town offices and chained to a mailbox securely because of her wayward attitude,” Hite said. “Someone tried to steal her again, but was thwarted by a long chain and a lock.”

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