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ATTLEBORO -- Mim Fawcett, the new executive director of the Attleboro Arts Museum, says to come to the museum dressed in your best "funky formal" attire Saturday and prepare for a colorful evening.

Why? It's the Attleboro Arts Museum's 15th annual Benefit Art Auction - considered one of the city's social highlights each year - starting at 7 p.m. in the Park Street galleries.

"It's a very lighthearted, high-spirited event, and each auction ticket includes wine, beer and a light buffet," Fawcett said. "We're going to have live music when the doors open, by Peter Williams, pianist/composer."

The highlight of the night, of course, comes when original works of art, including ceramics, collages, drawings, jewelry, mixed media, paintings, photography, prints and sculpture, go up for auction to the highest bidder.

The artwork is donated by local, regional and national artists, and will be accompanied in both live and silent auctions by a variety of items donated by other museum supporters. Many of the artists will be at the event. Proceeds from the auction will help the museum continue its exhibitions and diverse programming throughout the year as well as its overall promise of delivering arts for everyone, according to Fawcett.

Fawcett said there are about $50,000 worth of items being auctioned off, which bidders have also been busy viewing online and in the gallery as well over the past three weeks or so.

There are about 125 items in all, of which 70 or so will be auctioned live for the second consecutive year by auctioneer Robin Starr of Skinner Inc., a premier auction and appraised firm.

"Judging from visitors to the gallery as well as board members who have lived through several art auctions, there seems to be a feeling where the level of the work is higher, the variety is greater and the enthusiasm is stronger," she said.

Contributing artists

One of the local contributing artists to this year's auction is Marcey Buchakjian of Attleboro, an art educator and working visual artist, newly moved to Attleboro this summer from New York City.

Buchakjian holds a master of fine arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, was a museum educator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and currently teaches art to young children at Moses Brown School in Providence as well as ceramics at the Attleboro Arts Museum.

She will have two portraits in the auction, one of which is a lithograph titled "Cazzy" after her family cat, and an oil painting titled "Gail" after a friend from college.

Both pieces were created in 1994, during her undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College.

Buchakjian also creates installations in fiber that are connected to issues of family and identity, and has her work exhibited at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Md., and The Swartley Gallery in Englewood, N.J. She says is just as happy to have her work exhibited right here in Attleboro, however. "The Attleboro Arts Museum is a treasure trove in the middle of town - a place that supports both established and up-and-coming artists," Buchakjian said. "The work donated for the auction is a wonderful example of the richly diverse cross-section of working artists in the area."

One of the regional artists who will be contributing to the auction is Karole Nicholson of Cumberland, R.I., who for more than 30 years has been exploring various expressive mediums including ceramics, collage, watercolor, and hanging sculpture.

"My art is an interpretation of nature and subjects that surround me," Nicholson says of her work. "I experiment with color and materials. The excitement builds as each painting evolves."

Nicholson is very active in the Attleboro Community, and has exhibited her work at several venues, including the Attleboro Arts Museum and its area community galleries, as well as in Colorado, Florida and Rhode Island.

Nicholson will be donating a 21- by 25-inch pastel painting titled "Dancing on the Plate," which she did this past spring and discusses as follows.

"I enjoy painting from the perspective of looking down into a bowl or plate of luscious fruits or vegetables. It seems only natural. Often the negative shapes that surround the subject matter are as playful and interesting as the subject matter itself. "Dancing on the Plate" was just plain fun to work on. I was pushed to use vibrant fuchsia and orange in the shadows to emphasis the lightheartedness of this still life painting of pears."

Another regional artist is Nancy Cusack from the Boston area, who is a professor at Massachusetts College of Art, and whose work is represented in private, corporate and institutional collections.

Cusack will be contributing a mixed media piece consisting of an oil monoprint with colored charcoal and conte crayon, titled "The Tablets."

To create such a piece, Cusack goes through a process of several steps in which the work begins as an oil monoprint, uses several plates and employs drawing marks layered over the dry print. The background plate the passes through the press several times, building thin layers of color and a separate plate for the tablets is then inked. There is also text on the tablets, which involves more work and adds to the meaning of the piece for Cusack.

The title of the piece references The Old Testament, according to Cusack, who says the piece is also connected to her Open Bokk Series, recently exhibited at the museum.

"The notion of the Open Book is loaded with meaning for me: metaphorical, concrete and complex" she said. "Several of the images connected with this series are starkly minimal, in tone and content; others densely layered with marks. This piece falls into the latter category. Many of these marks are actually excerpts from letters, composed as part of the work and not intended to be sent or even to be read. They are a way of saying the unsaid."

Janette Sears can be reached by phone or fax at 508-222-2442 or by e-mail at janette@janettesears.com