GALLOWAY – “It’s all about the volunteers.”

That’s what Absecon Education Foundation President Daren Dooley said Friday, Jan. 24 at An Evening with the Arts at the Noyes Museum of Art here.

The event, the education foundation’s biggest fundraiser each year, features the work of artists who donate both their creative time and the result of that effort to a silent auction.

Artist Carly Yoast-Broomhead of Egg Harbor Township is one of the people who has contributed for a number of years.

An art teacher for Absecon students in grades four to eight, she is also an adjunct professor at Richard Stockton College.

Yoast-Broomhead was raised in Vineland. Her first teaching job was as a maternity leave replacement in Brigantine in 1996. She has been teaching in Absecon since 1997.

The acrylic painting on canvas that sold at the auction, “Faunce Landing Sunset,” was created the week of the show. Yoast-Broomhead said she started by taking a panorama photograph.

“I took it home and worked on it for two nights,” she said. “I do mostly acrylic.”

While earning her master’s degree in fine arts, she worked mainly with ink on paper.

“I would do photo transfers onto paper,” the artist said. “There you just paint onto the photo.”

Ink on paper went the way of the dodo bird as the process, which involved transferring a Xerox-ink photocopy to paper with acetone, became increasingly difficult to accomplish.

“Eventually, there was only one Kinkos in Philadelphia that had the right kind of ink,” Yoast-Broomhead said. “That’s why I always go back to acrylic on canvas. You can always find that.”

She said she enjoys the challenge of teaching at a level where, for students, taking art is compulsory.

“I try to connect everything we do with something they’re learning,” she said. “Or they can bring their own interests into the projects.”

Her husband, Robert Broomhead, teaches seventh-grade language arts at Absecon’s Emma C. Attales Middle School.

“He wrote a children’s book that I illustrated, ‘That Thing Up Against the Wall,’” Yoast-Broomhead said. “We hope to find a publisher and have a table with that book here next year.”

Dooley pointed out that the two volunteers who were taking tickets were district Superintendent of Schools Jim Giaquinto and business administrator Tina Davisson.

“Jim’s the education foundation’s executive director, and Tina’s the treasurer,” Dooley said. “Without volunteers we wouldn’t be able to pull off an event like this. All the fundraising – it’s a group effort by all the foundation members.”

The Evening with the Arts was a different sort of event, he said.

“It’s a night where we all get together and we feature local artists who donate their artwork,” Dooley said. “We have about 150 people here. Last year we were able to award over $22,000 in education grants. That’s impressive.”

The guests roamed the museum, where food and drink stations were easily located in a party atmosphere.

The artists, who made themselves readily available, were all local or had close local ties, Dooley said.

“We have a lot of teachers,” he said. “The support we get from the teachers is amazing.”

He said teachers form the biggest grant application demographic.

“They submit formal applications with program descriptions,” Dooley said. “We have a grant committee that reviews the applications. Then they go to the board of trustees, who vote. It’s a rolling process, though most programs start at the beginning of the school year.”

He emphasized that anyone can apply.

“We are very proud to be supporting the Eagle Scout project of Matthew Chubb,” Dooley said. “He’s rehabbing the running trail around the schools and installing fitness stations.”

He praised having a good synergy with the community.

“We’re volunteer-driven,” Dooley said. “We get a lot of support from the community.”

Other artists exhibiting at the Evening with the Arts were Ted Bolich, Bill Parker, Marie Arleth, David Seals, Jessie Stackhouse, Brett Paul Steelman, Mark Weiss, Mae Townsend and Virginia Campo.

See photos