Art Auction Held At New Community Services Center
BY THOMAS COGAN

Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall (c.) congratulates SCS Honorees Eileen A. Auld, Citibank's Vice President, National Initiatives and Community Programs Director (l.) and Seth Bornstein, Director of Economic Development, Office of the Queens Borough President (r.) at Sunnyside Community Services' Third Annual Art Auction, October 26, 2006.

The new home of Sunnyside Community Services was the site of the organization's third annual benefit art auction in late October. The new place, at 43-31 39th St., isn't officially open, since SCS has not yet been granted a certificate of occupancy, but anyone who attended knows now that, whatever other uses might be found for the space that now houses the SCS, it is an excellent place for an art auction.

Bureaucracy has delayed the C-of-O, so SCS had to be granted a dispensation allowing it one night's use of the ground floor space, located one flight below the old SCS quarters. The C-of-O is expected soon, so in the near future an opening day ceremony attended by many who have already become familiar with the new place's broad and deep floor space, its glass brick lobby walls and the porthole windows in its entrance doors, will probably take place.

More than 40 paintings, photographs and other artworks were up for open auction and several others were sold via silent auction. Most of these were on exhibition for attendees to view in the first hour and a half of the evening, before SCS Executive Director Judy Zangwill asked everyone to have a seat and let the ceremonies begin. Before the auction itself, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and others lauded the evening's two honorees: Eileen Auld, vice president, national initiatives and community programs director at Citibank, which, along with Con Edison and Valeo Partners LLC, was a chief sponsor of the auction, and Seth Bornstein, director of economic development in the borough president's office. Preceding that was a remembrance of Luis Barragan by the SCS President of the Board Ronald Cavalier. Barragan, an SCS board member who specialized in children's education, died in a mishap in early July.

Auctioneer Ric Cherwin made the proceedings entertaining, and knew when to linger on one item and bring the bidding to a close on another. The bidding came mainly from three persons, notably bidder number 50, who identified himself as Shazam.

It was interesting to observe which of the artworks attracted attention and which were ignored or sold for a low price. Photographs were not the strongest of items; a photo from the Southwest by Edwin Cadiz and one from Chinatown in New York by Kitty Katz failed to draw bids twice, while a striking shot of a 1989 street ceremony in Dutch Kills by Audrey Gottlieb and a scene from Mexican family life by Mary Teresa Giancoli were both passed over once and then sold beneath their minimum bids. Yet "Wintersuite 01-24-04" by Tom Brydelsky, an enhanced photo of a meadow scene (with trees in full bloom, despite the title) sold for five times its minimum bid and two and a half times its stated fair market value, and "Tiepolo Sky at Dusk, Hunters Point", a photo by Louise Weinberg, got a nice price also, the Pepsi-Cola sign beneath cloud formations being seemingly irresistible. Other works that sold for good prices included Jacqueline Fogel's "Cityscape, 1983", a whimsical painting of Manhattan buildings and traffic; another painted Manhattan scene, "Fifth Avenue at Twenty-Sixth Street", by Roxie Munro; "Girl in the Woods", by the Midwestern man-andwife team of Bill and Renée Ledesma Hoover, and "Dancing at the Office Party", by Elinore Schnurr. "A Heart Worth Breaking", a print by Sunnyside resident Pat Dorfman, was successfully sold, too. At one point, Shazam got into a bidding battle with a trio of women over a matching set of table lamps. The women withdrew, but when Shazam bought the lamps for $350, he gallantly donated them to the women.

Eileen A. Auld, the first of the evening's honorees, is the daughter of Gert McDonald, longtime Community Board 2 member and a founder of Sunnyside Community Services in the mid-1970s. Auld was assistant district manager for Board 2 before moving to the Queens borough president's office under Claire Shulman. She became deputy director of economic development before joining the Police Department, where she was assistant commissioner, community affairs when Howard Safir, Bernard Kerik and Ray Kelly in succession were commissioners. She left city government in fall 2003 to work at Citibank in Long Island City, where she directs community relations for Queens. She is a member of many business and community organizations, including the Long Island City Business Development Corporation and the Queens Library Foundation.

Of Seth Bornstein, Borough President Marshall said, "There isn't a business in the borough of Queens that he doesn't know." He has been borough director of economic development for the past nine years, but his career began at Sunnyside Community Services. As a young college graduate in the late 1970s, he led a writing workshop for seniors at SCS. In 1979, he joined the Queens Economic Development Corporation to develop a certain commercial program, and stayed with OECD for 11 years. Then he lived for several years in his wife's native Nebraska, where among other things he wrote a local newspaper column about being a New Yorker among the cornhuskers. He and his family returned to New York when Queens Borough President Claire Shulman gave him the job he still holds, director of economic development. During his term, significant redevelopment has occurred in Flushing, Jamaica and Long Island City.