Bosom Buddies: The exhibit will be on display in participating downtown Excelsior retailers from July 16-24. To vote for your favorite art bra, attend the Excelsior Girls Night Out event on July 16 or July 23 from 5-9 p.m. The winner will be announced at the Relay for Life of Lake Minnetonka on Friday, July 24.
When: The event will be held outside on the track at Minnetonka High School, 18301 Highway 7. It kicks off at 6:30 p.m. on July 24 and runs until the next morning.
What: Luminaries line and light the track throughout the night. They are donated in honor of loved ones who survived cancer, are currently battling cancer or who lost their battle. Rev. Kenneth Ehrman, pastor at the Minnetonka United Methodist Church, will be the featured speaker at the welcoming ceremony. Food booths, massage stations, casino games and karaoke will take place throughout the night.
To participate: There is still time to put together a team to participate in the Relay for Life event or to make a donation. Go to www.relayforlife.org/lakeminnetonkamn for more information.
By Kelly Westhoff
An unusual art exhibit is going to be taking place in Excelsior. Colorful bras will be hanging up all over town.
The bras were designed and created by community members who submitted them in support of the Lake Minnetonka chapter of Relay for Life, a fund-raising event for the American Cancer Society.
The "Bosom Buddies Art Exhibit" will be on display inside stores up and down Excelsior's Water Street from July 16-24.
On Thursday, July 16 and again on Thursday, July 23, women who attend the Excelsior Girls Night Out events will be given ballots and asked to vote for their favorite art bras. On Friday, July 24 the winner will be announced at the Relay for Life event.
This is the first year that Relay for Life of Lake Minnetonka has organized the Bosom Buddies exhibit.
Organizers hope the art bras will draw attention to their event, encourage more people to attend and ultimately raise more money for the American Cancer Society.
"This will be the seventh year we've held Relay for Life here in the Lake Minnetonka area," said Linnea Fitzpatrick, who is one of three chairpersons of the event.
The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and is held outside on the track at Minnetonka High School. Teams solicit pledges and then take turns walking the track throughout the night and into the next morning.
Food booths, massage stations, casino games, karaoke and more will run during the entire event, which is open to the public.
"Our goal for this year is to raise $75,000," Fitzpatrick said. Last year the event raised $62,000. In a previous year, however, it raised $78,000.
"The money goes to the American Cancer Society and helps fund research for all types of cancer," she said.
The event's organizing committee came across the idea for the Bosom Buddies exhibit while doing research online for successful cancer fund-raising events.
A group of quilters in North Carolina had created art bras and raised money through their display.
"We thought the bras were something different and creative that could interest and involve a lot of people," Fitzpatrick said. "Lots of the people who are regularly involved with Relay for Life here in the area have personal histories dealing with breast cancer."
The final day for bra submissions passed in June. Each bra that came in was submitted with a $10 donation. In total, 23 bras were submitted.
Teri Sapienza of Eden Prairie submitted a bra to the contest. She created hers in honor of her mother-in-law, who died in 2001 after a struggle with an aggressive cancer of unknown origins.
Sapienza has been participating in the yearly Relay for Life of Lake Minnetonka event since losing her mother-in-law.
When she learned about the Bosom Buddies call for artful bra submissions, she immediately knew that she wanted to participate.
"Like a lot of Depression-era women, my mother-in-law saved everything," Sapienza said.
"One of her biggest collections was of buttons. She kept all those extra buttons that come with clothes. She had buttons that had belonged to her mother and her mother-in-law before her," Sapienza said.
After her mother-in-law's death, Sapienza asked if she could have them.
"This project seemed like the perfect use for those all those buttons. It was something fun to do and it's a nice tribute," Sapienza said of her desire to create an art bra.
Her final creation is a bra entirely covered with buttons from her mother-in-law's collection.
Sapienza used every colored button in her mother-in-law's collection. The only ones left over, she said, were those that were white or ivory.
Handling each button of the collection was like participating in a treasure hunt, Sapienza said.
"There were so many beautiful buttons. Some were real works of art. There were carved ones, metal ones, cloth ones, real mother-of-pearl ones. Some were huge, and it was fun to try and imagine what sort of garment those had been on," she said.
Sapienza admits she lost count of the number of buttons it took to make the bra, but said it was at least "a pint's worth."
She also lost track of the number of hours it took to complete her creation, but estimated she spent about 25 hours on the project.
In fact, she had so much fun creating her button bra that her daughter, Alison, age 19, also decided to make and submit a bra to the contest.
"Alison wanted to make one because I was making one," said Sapienza. "She didn't want to buy anything to make hers, so she used her creativity and whatever she could find around the house."
"She used a green bra, her brother's old soccer shoes and some soccer cones to make a soccer mom bra. It's not the World Cup, it's a C cup," Sapienza said with a laugh.
"Alison wanted her bra to be in tribute to all the moms who carry on with their every day lives, and do it well, all the while struggling with cancer," Sapienza said.
