Patrons at the April 13 Boys & Girls Club benefit auction at Healdsburg’s Villa Chanticleer should not be blamed for feeling a bit lost or stuck in a déjà vu moment.
After rubbing their eyes for a few moments they will realize the 5-foot tall Canada Geese on the over-sized canvas painting that night is truly the same painting they remember hanging for 24 years on a wall in Ralph’s Bistro on the Healdsburg Plaza.
Why it will be on view at the Villa auction that night is a long and twisted story but someone will be buying it for charity and looking for a wall big enough to hang it on. The fabled painting is one of many live auction items expected to fetch in excess of $150,000 in bids and sponsorships to support the club’s summer camp and other programs for Healdsburg and Geyserville youth. The Boys & Girls Club charity auction each year evokes old memories of Villa auction scenes dating as far back the early 1980s. Toasts are offered each year to past auction chairpeople, like Neil Cronin and Kent Mitchell, both deceased. This year’s event chairperson, Elise Bulger, has enlisted several vintage volunteers, including Jim Dadaos, Bob Durler, Parke Hafner, Whitney Opperman, Rick Stafford and others.
This year’s theme is “It’s a Fiesta” and will feature the live auction, dinner, a margarita bar and a baile folklorio performance by club members. Besides the infamous goose painting, celebrity chef dinners, Hawaii and Mexico trip packages, library wine case lots and other donated items and services will be part of the auction. Tickets are $100 per person and available in advance from the Boys & Girls Club of Central Sonoma County by phone at 707-528-7933.
Whether it fetches the top price for the evening or not, the oil on canvas painting of the two Canada geese is sure to draw top bragging rights and win the “most spirited” bidding contest. Many former Ralph’s Bistro patrons still feel a bond to the painting from days of sipping Ralph’s martinis or sharing his warm thyme bread balls or a plate of 1,000 fries under the gazing geese. The painting was hung by bistro owner Ralph Tingle when he opened the small eatery on Plaza Street in 1992. It was painted by his friend Ingrid Antony of Snowmass, Colo.
When Ralph’s Bistro was in its closing weeks in 2014, a frequent martini patron, Jack Anthony, made on offer to purchase the painting for the sake of preservation. Ralph and Jack haggled over a price (it wasn’t cheap) and the painting has been in Jack’s private possession until very recently.
“It had ended up stacked against a wall in my garage and I was afraid I might stick a shovel through it or something,” Anthony recently told this newspaper. A few months ago the unnamed, 90-inch square painting gained a new home at the Vanity Salon, owned by Jennifer Cadd and located in the Vineyard Plaza shopping center. Anthony is a salon customer and friends with Cadd. He suggested her blank wall in her reception area was a perfect spot for the birds. The pair moved the large canvas, making a precarious haul with a borrowed pickup truck.
But Anthony had other ideas at the same time for the painting.
“The Boys & Girls Club has always been a wonderful organization that me and friends have supported for many years. I contacted Elise (Bulger) and we agreed I would donate it (painting) to this year’s auction. I think it will raise quite a bit of money for the club,” Anthony said.
Besides Anthony other major donors this year include Hafner Vineyards, Opperman & Sons, Big John’s Market, Tri Star Automotive, Gondola-Kinne Insurance, Baci Restaurant and several Healdsburg wineries. The evening’s dinner is being prepared and served by Ken Rochioli and his KR Catering crew.
For more nostalgia, Anthony is also donating the two cut-out, hand-painted geese feet that were mysteriously hung below the painting on Ralph Bistro’s wall. Artist Antony’s original painting did not have feet on the geese as they appeared to be standing in deep snow. An anonymous prankster taped the feet to the bottom of the painting where they remained for two decades, except when Antony came to Healdsburg to visit her friend Ralph.
The feet were removed during her visit and hung again when she returned home to Colorado. The painting remains on view at Cadd’s salon at 1077 Vine St., Vineyard Plaza.
