NORWAY — At the Norway Maine Arts Festival on Saturday, a busy auction booth harbored treasures abound. Worn vintage rugs, mismatched furniture, a case of books exclusively about golf and a pair of silky red dancing shoes awaited admirers.
But there was no shouting out prices, and no one pulled green from their wallets. Instead, people stopped to sit and write, describing why they wanted an object in front of them.
It was what Cape Elizabeth-based artist Adriane Herman calls an “emotional value auction,” where people bid with written sentiments rather than money.
Participants give Herman objects they are ready to part with, or “release,” as she calls it, but that carry too much sentimental weight to assign monetary value. At a fair or other event, she lays out those items with anonymous notes from the owners detailing the stories behind them and why they are ready to give them up.
Bidders read those notes and write explanations for wanting to be the object’s next owner, often including personal stories of their own. Herman sends those (anonymous) bids back to the owner, who selects one that speaks to them.
Herman then hits the Maine roads in her van — or even in a U-Haul truck rental — to drop them off, or arranges for the new owners to come pick them up. Sometimes, she mails them.
Taking refuge from the bustling festival, Celia Lubin bent over and penned a letter to the owner of a framed poster of an obscure mid-1970s rock band. It starred the owner’s musical brother, Bill, who died of gastric cancer at 51 in 2006. The owner had recently inherited the poster from Bill’s widow.
“It makes me sad to look at it,” the anonymous owner wrote in their note. “I don’t see the iconic 70’s band photo pose; I only see Bill with so much ahead with his music and his life.”
Lubin said she wanted the poster because she’s a musician herself, and knows how many good bands are out there that will never make it big.
“I’ll probably never meet this person, but it’s a cool way to connect with somebody totally random,” Lubin said. “You see this kind of stuff in antique stores, but you never know where it came from.”
Herman said it is common for people to release items that dead family members passed onto them through the auction. It helps alleviate their guilt about wanting to get rid of the item, since there is no profit and they have heard from the person whose hands it will land in.
“It helps lighten the load for some people,” Herman said.
Lubin has released items for previous iterations of Herman’s auction herself, including a framed four-leaf clover, which went to a teenager who wrote that they were in particular need of good luck after being abandoned by family for coming out as gay.
This was the seventh auction that Herman has run after conceiving the idea almost 10 years ago. It first came to mind when she talked with Katie Worthing, executive director of the Yarmouth History Center, about the challenges of people bringing in heirlooms they want to let go of in a meaningful way, but that the center didn’t have the capacity to accept.
Herman thought the money-less auction would allow these unwanted objects to find homes with new owners who could sympathize with the lore behind them and elongate their meaning’s lifespan.
“It’s this idea of sharing more about yourself and your story, so there’s this public display of vulnerability,” Herman said. “But it’s anonymous, so there’s a kind of safety or comfort level.”
Some of the notes people leave explaining their objects drip with that vulnerability, like the band poster Lubin bid on. Others are more practical, and some are poetic or humorous.
One owner wrote that they chose to “relinquish” a scepter with a red, black and white checkered jester hat at its head at Saturday’s auction “because I have learned that true queenship is not measured by what I possess, what I conquer, or how many treasures I can display.”
Beth Francis wrote in a careful letter to the scepter owner that she wants to gift it to her ex-husband and close friend. She and her daughter, Candace Desrosier, think its essence matches his: “Gracious” and “upbeat,” even when battling colon cancer.
Herman has helped transfer ownership of more objects than she can count. She’s held auctions at the Topsham Fair, the Colby College Museum of Art, the now-closed Speedwell Projects gallery in Portland and other locations across Maine, plus one while traveling in Kansas City.
She said she relies on fairs and organizations she collaborates with to help get the word out, as well as using social media, sending post cards and asking people she knows if they have anything to release.
The red dance shoes at Saturday’s auction moved with the owner six times. They celebrated countless occasions dancing in the shoes, they wrote, but now has symptoms from long COVID that keep them from that kind of activity.
“While this pair of Perfect Red Shoes have brought me great joy, they have also spent the last several years patiently waiting for the next celebration,” the owner wrote. “The Emotional Value Auction is giving me the opportunity to accept my condition and release the (shoes) to someone who will dance the night away.”
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Madeleine Kaptein can be reached at mkaptein@metln.org