November 1, 2011 — The Virginia Arts of the Book Center will hold its annual "Raucous Auction"on the numerologically significant date of 11-11-11 from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Items to be auctioned include many printed posters, or "broadsides," of poems and writings, produced at the center by faculty, students and visitors at the University of Virginia; a course at the Rare Book School; tickets to a Live Arts performance; and artwork from the recent project, "Postmark."

Bidders can enter the auction site through the Art Box, a shop located at 2125 Ivy Square Shopping Center. The suggested donation is $11 or a purchase that benefits the book arts center.

The Virginia Arts of the Book Center, part of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, brings together a community of artists and booklovers devoted to exploring books, paper and printmaking and to promoting the values of the humanities through appreciation of the arts of the book, visual and verbal literacy, creativity and the fostering of traditional and contemporary skills.

The center operates a working studio and print shop, with a printer-in-residence, currently Garrett Queen. Individuals can join the press group, and community members can also gain access and training in printing, printmaking and book arts.

The debut of the center's "Postmark" project – a collaborative print set of postcard-influenced art made by its member-artists – coincides with the auction and the postmark date Nov. 11, 2011. The pieces are described on the website as a 4-inch-by-6.5-inch expression of "the temporal, spatial and emotional displacement we experience beneath the glossy veneer of a postcard."

The project honors the idea of the U.S. postal system and its "mystery of distance, place, communication, memory and nostalgia," wrote Kevin McFadden, chief operating officer of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and liaison to the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, on the center's website.