I’m honored to serve on the Board of the Edmond Senior Community Foundation. This year’s art auction benefiting the ESCF was held at Oak Tree, a beautiful venue for this kind of event. I’ve photographed wedding receptions at Oak Tree and the photos are always gorgeous. They have a great, wide entryway that’s just awesome.

Paintings were lined up along the walls and on tables and on the floor from wall to wall across a couple hundred feet of space. The middle, larger painting below is by one of my favorite artists, Vittriano. We have a big canvas in our living room of his painting “The Singing Butler” which is likely the most popular painting of our era. I’m sure you’d recognize it if you saw it.

Oak Tree knows how to put out a tasty spread and the staff are always great.

Did you know that Mickey Mantle was an Oklahoman? I should have realized this, considering that his statue is downtown by the ballpark and that we have a nice restaurant after his name by the ballpark downtown, too. There was some cool baseball memorabilia auctioned off, too, including this baseball signed by the legend himself. I think that’s cool and I’m not even a baseball fan.

I’ve only been to a few auctions, but it’s always a lot of fun. This lady got into a bit of a bidding war with a couple of others for a Thomas Kinkade painting. It started out slow and got going pretty well before it was over. Auctions are pretty exciting. It’s fun to see everyone laughing and smiling and having a great time while buying wonderful art and supporting a great cause.

Nathan Gunn came to support the ESCF Art Auction by bringing and donating one of his awesome paintings. I couldn’t stay to see how much it went for, but I’m sure it was a good amount. This picture doesn’t do it justice (that’s hard for a photographer to say, but I’ll admit it =). Nathan, you have the whole art thing down, my friend. Even the look. Check out more if his impressive work at NathanGunnArt.com, including his recent painting of Adrian Peterson, star OU Football running back.

My brother-in-law, Levi Heard, helped with the auction since he also serves on the Board of the ESCF. I like how this shot captures most of the room, and even the action of Levi getting the next painting ready. It’s a photograph, actually, of the Beatles, I believe. There was so much cool art there.

I had a newborn (our newest, little baby “Storie“) waiting at home for me, so I wasn’t able to stick around to see this one auctioned, but it looked amazing.

Here again is the infamous Nathan Gunn with his arm candy. =) As you can see, everyone had a great time. I didn’t even realize it, but it turns out that Nathan Gunn is a good friend of one of my brothers-in-law, Titus. I think they have Bible studies together on a regular basis.

More good times being had.

Just recently, it seems that Blogger changed some setting, so now I can only upload 2 photos at a time. Anybody know how to work around that so I can upload 5 at a time again, or even more? This 2 at a time business is wasting a lot of time!