It’s not to late to win an authentic, handmade Lakota star quilt through the Cheyenne River Youth Project®. Raffle tickets will remain on sale until Wednesday, December 24, and the 26-year-old, not-for-profit organization will hold the drawing for its two winners on Friday, December 26.
Instead of raffling off a single quilt, as it has in previous years, CRYP is offering two quilts in the 2014 raffle. Ticket-holders have a chance to win a distinctive, queen-size Lakota star quilt that mimics a dramatic graffiti mural by acclaimed Minneapolis-based artist Peyton Scott Russell. Peyton, as the artist is known professionally, created the original piece of street art this year.
Bonnie LeBeau, a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member, hand-crafted the graffiti-inspired quilt for the raffle. Bonnie Sachatello-Sawyer, executive director of Bozeman, Montana-based Hopa Mountain, donated the second quilt.
According to Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director, all funds raised through the raffle will benefit the youth project’s new Waniyetu Wowapi (“Winter Count”) Art Park, which was formally dedicated at the CRYP campus in September.
“We’re hoping to raise $3,000 to support this exciting free public art space in our community,” she said.
Garreau noted that the public can support this important fundraiser in three ways: buy tickets, offer to sell tickets, and help spread the word by telling family and friends and by sharing raffle details through social media..
Tickets are $1 each or $5 for a six-ticket packet. To purchase tickets, send cash, checks or money orders to: Cheyenne River Youth Project, Attn: Art Park Star Quilt, P.O. Box 410, Eagle Butte, SD 57625. You also may pay online here. Simply click the “Donate Now” button in the navigation bar, and put “Art Park Star” in the notes section when paying with a credit card. Do not write the word “raffle” anywhere in the payment.
To sell tickets, please send an email to Tammy Eagle Hunter, CRYP’s youth programs director, at tammy.cryp@gmail.com. She will send as many tickets as you request; they come in books of six. Once you receive your tickets, along a quilt photo and information sheet, you will be responsible for selling those tickets. All tickets need to be turned in by December 24 so CRYP can conduct the drawing as planned on December 26.
“This year’s raffle is especially exciting for all of us,” Garreau noted. “Not only do we get to send authentic, handmade Lakota star quilts to two lucky winners, we get to join forces with our friends and supporters around the country, and around the world, to support the new art park.”
The Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park is a free, safe, public art space that allows community members and artists — residents and visitors alike — to express their own unique voices and life experiences through graffiti art and traditional painting.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities.