African art featured in gala for Northwest Center

LAKEVILLE — CMHA’s Northwest Center for Family Services’ annual benefit always offers something out of the ordinary: a night in the Caribbean, a classic 1950s-style school dance, even last year’s performance of a Gail Sheehy play with the late Jill Clayburgh in one of her last appearances on stage. On June 4, the Northwest Center fundraiser will take guests to Africa at An Evening Under the Stars On Safari, in what Priscilla McCord, who is in charge of events at the center, says will be the largest and most unusual gala yet.Under a huge tent — the largest she has ever had to rent, according to McCord — African crafts, textiles and sculptures from New York City’s Hemmingway Gallery will be displayed amid flowers from Kamilla Najdek (of Kamilla’s Floral Boutique, on Main Street in Millerton), who will feature the proteus (national flower of South Africa) and tall savanna grasses from Old Farm Nursery in Salisbury. Brian Gaisford, owner of Hemmingway Gallery, is both a businessman and a philanthropist. He organizes photography safaris to animal parks and sanctuaries, funds a school in Zululand and imports and sells art and sculpture from the Shona people of Zimbabwe, the latest African art to enter museums and private collections in the United States. All the work he brings will be for sale in a “duty free” shop and again on Sunday in a first-ever follow-up estate sale. Forty percent of Gaisford’s proceeds will go to the Northwest Center, because Gaisford thinks it’s “a terrific cause.”The gala will be held at John and Lisa Steinmetz’s Black Flag Farm on Dugway Road in Salisbury. Tim Cocheo of Number 9 Restaurant in Millerton will offer a menu of masala-encrusted beef, fish wrapped in banana leaves and chakala salad, a spicy South African dish. Salisbury Wines will furnish liquor and wine.Of course there will be a live auction, with top items including a Hemmingway safari, some African art, even a stay in a house in the south of France. And there will be dancing, with music from Swamp Yankee, the band led by Darren Winston when he’s not selling rare books at his eponymous shop in Sharon.On Safari will be at the Steinmetz’s Black Flag Farm on Saturday, June 4, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $150 per person. McCord says more than 225 have already been sold. Call her at 860 435-2529, ext. 114, to reserve. Event and auction updates are at www.cmhacc.org.Community Mental Health Affiliates owns and operates the Northwest Center for Family Services, which has offices in Winsted and Lakeville. The Lakeville office just completed a move from its longtime office at 315 Main St. (Route 41/44) to a new location just down the road, at 350 Main St. (Route 41/44).