Marilyn Sunderman art, other items offered to public

Sometimes, you just gotta clean house.

Sedona Arts Center is conducting a sale of several dozen Marilyn Sunderman paintings from her collection along with works of other local artists in the Special Exhibitions Gallery. They will also be selling no longer used equipment, furnishings, stage props, kitchenware, tools, art supplies, canvases, paper, paint, frames, old computer equipment, shelves, chairs and bags of costumes used in the center’s productions.

“We’re selling off all of the items we no longer need that we’ve accumulated over 50 years. We’ve had them stored in our barn,” said Kelli Klymenko, marketing and event coordinator for the center. “It’s going to be a nice, big garage sale for our center.”

The public is invited to benefit from the sale that will be Friday and Saturday, July 29 and 30.

“We’re going to hang all of Marilyn’s work in the gallery. There are more than 100 pieces, most quite large,” said Vince Fazio, director of the school. “The money will benefit our scholarship fund and our education programs. We’re trying to get more money into our scholarships to allow more students to attend our classes.”

Sunderman’s works will be priced to sell, as will everything else, he said.

Sunderman was a Sedona painter who traveled around the world and painted wherever she went. Many of her works are large, but there are several smaller pieces as well. All are filled with light in vibrant colors and strokes. Flowers, doors and archways are common themes. One work is an unfinished self-portrait. Sunderman once lived in Hawaii and several paintings reflect that period.

Sunderman painted portraits of many famous people like John F. Kennedy and Golda Meir. Her paintings are included in the collections of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sen. and Mrs. George McGovern, Gov. and Mrs. Edmund Brown and the Nelson Rockefeller Collection.

Sunderman died Dec. 8, 2000, at the age of 65. She bequeathed a large number of her works so they could be sold as an effort to inspire and promote art and artists in the community.

“There was a Marilyn Sunderman Foundation. Eventually they decided to turn the foundation over to us to administrate the sales,” Fazio said. “It was given to us to promote the arts center.”

Many people have benefited from previous sales of Sunderman’s artwork, including nonprofits in the form of scholarships and grants, Executive Director Mei Wei Wong said.

“Marilyn was very much loved by this community, and we very much appreciate the benefit we still receive from her,” Wong said as she looked at some of the paintings stacked around the art barn. “She was also a poet and an author.”

As Fazio and Klymenko walked through the barn pointing out items that will be included in the sale, they discovered even more items like a gong, lights, some dark room equipment and at least one enlarger.

“There’s a lot of miscellaneous stuff. You don’t know what you’re going to find that you’ve been looking for in this sale,” Klymenko said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun and people are going to find some great deals — maybe go home with a real treasure.”

The Sedona Arts Center sale will be in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and the Art Barn in Uptown on Friday, July 29, from 7 to 11 a.m. and Saturday, July 30, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, call 282-3809.