New Haven Independent

With strands of metal beads dangling through his hair, troubadour and retired physician Bill Fischer (pictured), with decked-out mannequin at his side, auctioned off a precious item on the Eli Whitney lot: A sapling Chestnut Tree, to be planted and named after its buyer, along with a stone from the foundation of the museum’s 1803 forge — to sit upon and catch chestnuts, or ponder as the tree grows. Auctioned along with the tree: A sketch by Alexis Brown, daughter of Eli Whitney inventor extraordinaire Bill Brown.

Pizza came thanks to the Big Green Truck — a wood-burning stove mounted on wheels (built with Bill Brown’s help); pastas and meats from Doug Coffin; sweets from Moka/Koffee?, which are owned by Bill Brown’s daughter, Melissa, and her husband, Duncan Goodall. The Goodall’s daughter, Lorelei (pictured) sat mesmerized by one artistic piece: A strand of swinging beads attached to a bungee cord and suspended over a mirror.

Rachel Smith worked hard to boost the auction price of her father Evan Smith’s invention: a glassy head adorned with colored beads and filled with pine wood shavings. He’s a cabinet maker. His kids are enthusiastic Eli Whitney campers. Rachel, 10, racked up the sales price to hundreds of dollars. “It’s good to see a lot of great minds at work,” she said of the exhibit/auction. All money goes to Eli Whitney.

Among the crowd milling around perusing the inventions were Frank Mitchell, architect Barry Svigals, Andy and Polly Fiddler, Martha Ventura and a host of other big names in the arts world and not.

One high schooler had a big spark — Tyler Nighswander, a freshman at Hamden High School, got the idea to built this electric piece: when you stick your hand next to it, glowing plasma rushes up between two parting chains, zapping back and forth between the metal until it dies.

This year’s auction — the 12th — was boosted by a crew of Yale Architecture Students who came due to an unusual impetus: A drunken driving charge one of them accrued while weaving on Kansas state streets. To compensate, the unnamed budding architect (not pictured) is logging in 100 hours of community service at the museum. He recruited his friends for the show. They showed up in force — an unusual sight at this event — and with eight rockin’ entries.

One of the students, Joyce Chang, stole the show by raising $700 for her beaded chair (pictured). “We all got really excited about the project,” she said. “The material is so architectural. Some of us just abandoned all other schoolwork and got really into it.” Fellow student Chris Beardsley painted a Mona Lisa (pictured) onto hanging strands of beads.

“This year is extraordinary — something about the chains, they’re beautiful, they’ve drawn a passionate response from a lot of artists,” said Bill Brown, looking around the room. “The question is, ‘When is inventiveness indulged? Where is it encouraged?’” The auction shows “a real hunger to take stuff and twist it around and do something with it — that’s what makes people so excited about it.”