Portsmouth NH Homes Condos Real Estate

We were on vacation this summer in the mountains in western North Carolina.  My family has a cottage in the little town of Mountain Home, which is nestled between Asheville and Hendersonville.

While we were playing tourist in Hendersonville, we kept seeing all these diffferent bears around town - all decorated and in a variety of locations.  It turns out that we were lucky enough to catch the town of Hendersonville's "5th Annual CeleBEARation - Bearfootin' in Hendersonville".

 

"Bearfootin' in Hendersonville" is known as one of the premier art exhibits in the western part of North Carolina.  I can tell you from seeing all these wonderfully decorated bears that they are each a work of art. 

"Bearfootin' in Hendersonville" is a great community project that runs from the end of April until October 20th this year.  These are full size bears that are painted to depict different themes - some related to the businesses they're out in front of, some depict local scenery, and others carry messages about life.

The bears are sponsored by various businesses around the area, and are decorated by local artists in the area.  The bears are on display throughout historic downtown Hendersonville for everyone to enjoy.  They are really fun to check out - beautiful work by the local artists who did each one of these bears.

On their brochure, the bears are described as, "funny, thoughtful, silly, poetic, charming, artsy, and very bearable", and they are all that and more!

 

 

At the end of the "Bearfootin' in Hendersonville" display, on October 20th, an auction is held for each of these bears, with the a percentage of the monies raised benefitting local charities.  In the five years they've been doing this in Hendersonville, they've raised close to $110,000 that's all for local charities. 

Cool community project, huh?






I know Chicago does the cows each year, and if I'm not mistaken the monies raised for those cows goes to their local charities as well.  If we were to take on a project like this here in Portsmouth New Hampshire, we could use lobsters and/or a combination of lobsters and other native fish from the ocean.

Isn't this a great idea for a local community project?  I thought it was a really great idea, and a fun one that the whole community could get behind.  How fun to be able to stroll through downtown to view each of the decorated critters of whatever kind!  We had fun finding all the bears and checking out how they were decorated - took pictures of just about every one of them, too!

 

 

For anyone interested in doing something like this in their own communities, I'm sure the great folks in Hendersonville NC who've worked on this project would be more than happy to give you more details on their project, and how to make it successful in your own town.  Give them a call at 828-697-2022!

 

 

Here are more of the bears of "Bearfootin' in Hendersonville" - so many really fun bears to check out!  If you move your cursor over each of the bear pictures in this post, you'll see the name of each and what it represents by the artist who painted it.