Sold! Redux Art Center prepares for its annual online auction

Supporting your local arts is only a bid away.

Redux Contemporary Art Center's third annual eBay online auction starts Sunday and will be going, going, gone on July 23. Nab coveted items and services from local donating entities. All proceeds will go to programs at Redux.

"It's all stuff you would love yourself or you would give to someone else," said Kyle LeGette, Redux's director of development.

She hopes to raise at least $10,000 with this auction. That goal has a good chance at being reached with the number of items, and their values, being higher than previous years.

"There's such a huge variety; there is something for everyone," said Karen Ann Myers, executive director at Redux.

While all items and services up for bid are from local companies, bidders are not limited to the Charleston area. Holding the auction online at eBay opens it up for a national audience, exposure and bidding competition.

"It reaches a national audience and opens up our ability to fundraise on a national level," LeGette said. "Everybody shops on eBay. And it's nice to do an event that's not actually an event and have to get food donated and wine donated. This is something we can administer ourselves."

"It's an event people can enjoy in their pajamas at home, eating popcorn in front of the TV," Myers added.

It's also an event bidders can feel good about.

"All that money is going to help our education and outreach programs. They benefit every person at every age," said Myers.

"We're a unique organization in the sense that what we offer to the community, we're the only ones doing that. Our mission is that we are dedicated to the education and presentation of contemporary visual art," she said.

"We're an education center, a studio space for artists and a gallery. It's rare you find those three components connected, and they're all together here and they help each other."

Redux is a nonprofit gallery, performance, education and studio space dedicated to promoting contemporary art through free public exhibitions, film screenings and artist lectures.

In support of emerging artists, Redux rents studio space and access to printmaking and photography studios.

Housed within the 6,000-square-foot warehouse are two galleries, 14 private artist studios in addition to a full print studio, darkroom, woodshop, the Redux Stage, classroom and film-screening area.

"And we're giving kids access to the contemporary and the visual arts that they would not ordinarily have," Legette said.

In addition to their paid public education classes, Redux holds outreach class for local after-school groups such as the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, YO Art! and Girl Scouts. These free classes are offered year-round.

Students under the age of 18 who demonstrate a financial need also can be eligible for scholarships for classes and workshops.