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Cascade Aids Project Auction, Artists raise money for a cause

Every year since 1990 CAP has hosted an art auction and party to raise money to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and provide services to those infected and affected by HIV in our community. Portland's art community first organized the event, and they remain the backbone of the Art Evening and Auction today. The event has grown over the past two decades from a small affair to a cornerstone event on Portlanders' social calendar. The Annual Art Evening and Auction now encompasses over 225 works of art and well over a thousand guests.

Created for the CAP Auction

Created for the CAP Auction
Sold $500

Greco-Roman myth

The hare represented romantic love, lust, abundance, and fercundity. Hares were associated with the Artemis, goddess of wild places and the hunt, and newborn hares were not to be killed but left to her protection. Rabbits were sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and marriage—for rabbits had “the gift of Aphrodite” (fertility) in great abundance. In Greece, the gift of a rabbit was a common love token from a man to his male or female lover. In Rome, the gift of a rabbit was intended to help a barren wife conceive. Carvings of rabbits eating grapes and figs appear on both Greek and Roman tombs, where they symbolize the transformative cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Celtic Myth

Eostre, the Celtic version of Ostara, was a goddess also associated with the moon, and with mythic stories of death, redemption, and resurrection during the turning of winter to spring. Eostre was a shape–shifter, taking the shape of a hare at each full moon; all hares were sacred to her, and acted as her messengers.

Christian Interpretation

As Christianity took hold in western Europe, hares and rabbits, so firmly associated with the Goddess, came to be seen in a less favorable light — viewed suspiciously as the familiars of witches, or as witches themselves in animal form. Numerous folk tales tell of men led astray by hares who are really witches in disguise, or of old women revealed as witches when they are wounded in their animal shape. Hares were also associated with madness due to the wild abandon of their mating rituals. The expression "Mad as a March hare" comes from the leaping and boxing of hares during their mating season.