Volunteer Event Opportunities
Along with manning the art gallery each week, we also need helping hands during these annual community events. We love our volunteers and couldn’t share in these events without them.
We hope you’ll find a few that sound like fun and join us. We would love to fill your days with these activities!!
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Learn About Being a Curator, Monthly Intake
Hancock County Arts tries to bring wonderful exhibits to our gallery to share with Hancock and the surrounding counties. Each month, during Intake, we need help registering the artwork and hanging art. At the end of each exhibit, we need help as the artists arrive to pick up artwork that hasn't sold.
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Vawter Art Exhibition Intake
The first Saturday of each June, we receive the show entries at the gallery from noon until 3 PM. This is an exciting opportunity to meet the artists and get the first peek at the entries coming in. As a volunteer, you will check off the entries on our spreadsheets as the pieces are presented. Incoming art is hung on the walls, grids, or tables until formal staging is complete.
Vawter Plein Air Event
Vawter artists may participate in our plein air painting event running throughout the day. Volunteers are needed at the reception tent to sign artists in; present them with participation bags filled with paints, treats, maps, etc.; and give assistance with directions to some of our county iconic painting sites. Volunteers will then receive these completed pieces at 3 p.m. back at the tent where the art will be on display and for sale. An "Artist Social Hour Celebration" will be held at the tent at 3 p.m. At day’s end, these art pieces will be brought to the gallery for display in our workspace room at the rear of the gallery. These pieces may be hung on the grids available there.
Vawter Artist Reception and Award Presentations
The Vawter grand reception is held on June’s second Friday in the Living Alley Tent from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Volunteers are needed throughout the afternoon and evening to set up the reception tent seating and tables, man refreshment areas, and greet guests.
Portrait Society of America A Face For Radio Event
This is becoming an annual event, held in August. Portrait Artists from surrounding states join Hancock County Arts artists to welcome Radio Personalities. The Radio personalities sit for 4 hours for the artists to paint. The volunteers who can help us will receive the early brunch and the lunch available to everyone participating that day. The event develops more each year.
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Chocolate Walk
The TwentyNorth Gallery is a stop on the annual Chocolate Walk held the second Friday of August. Volunteers are needed to greet guests arriving at the gallery. Each participating chocolate walker (approximately 300) will receive a chocolate treat. It’s a fun night of giving out chocolate and welcoming guests into our gallery.
ChalkFest
The annual ChalkFest is held the second Saturday of September. Volunteers help with outlining and numbering the chalk squares on the concrete surfaces designated for this event. Chalk bags need to be assembled prior to event.​
Volunteers register participants at the event and direct them to their assigned location. Volunteers also monitor the “for fun only” space for those who wish to be creative with chalk but do not wish to compete. You might even be tempted to join in the fun.
Auction and Gala
We are bringing back one of our events: the annual auction and gala held in February. Volunteer opportunities abound for this event. Collection and solicitation of donated items begins weeks in advance. Once items are secured, they are delivered to the gallery where they are catalogued and photographed for online bidding. The auction closes. The items are then made available for winning bidders to pick up at the gallery the week following the auction. Volunteers are needed in the gallery during these pickup hours.
Riley Festival
Volunteers are needed in our booth during Riley Days where they will distribute materials; welcome guests into the gallery; and even show off their talents by painting, creating art, playing music, etc. if they desire. It’s a great time to meet the community during this four day event.
Jack-o-lantern Festival
If carving pumpkins is more to your liking, we need volunteers at the annual carving workshop held at the Riley Gardens, 250 W. Main Street, in Greenfield, on the Sunday prior to Halloween from 2 to 5 p.m. Volunteers are needed to assist carvers with ideas, techniques and--often times--just encouragement. Volunteers may carve a few of their own, too. Plenty of laughs and pumpkin goo abound. This is a family friendly event, so expect a few seeds in your hair when you leave.
Some families bring their entries to us for the Carving Competition. Thus, we need volunteers to register the jack-o-lantern entries as they are delivered to us from 5 to 7 PM. The pumpkins are then numbered and placed throughout the Riley Gardens space.
The Jack-o-lanterns are lit nightly from 7 to 9 PM all week prior to Halloween. Volunteers are needed each evening to light the pumpkins, greet guests and extinguish the candles at 9 PM. Lizabuth’s Kitchen is open to guests each evening with treats, fun decorations and voting for the People’s Choice Award.
Artisan Shoppe
Member vendors bring wonderful one of a kind creations to the gallery as our last fundraising effort for each year. The vendors agree to price their items to cover a 30% commission coming to the gallery. We open our gallery many more hours, from Black Friday through mid-December, for sales to visitors. We will need every volunteers help to meet and greet everyone coming to the gallery during these additional hours. You will take payments and record the items sold. A bonus is you get first choice of all the items!
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Christmas Tree Festival
If you love Christmas trees (and who doesn’t?) join us in the fun of soliciting trees to decorate the gallery during the month of December. Businesses and not-for-profits and invited to display a tree in the gallery decorated to represent their organization. The gallery has extended hours during the month when we welcome guests to visit and participate in various events. It’s a great opportunity to increase awareness for these organizations plus it allows our gallery to be aglow to visitors and even those driving and walking by our window front. We even have donated trees which we offer to organizations who would like to participate but do not have a tree. Thus we set up the tree and they decorate it.