A beary good cause

The inaugural Adopt A Bear charity auction, to be held at Sircuit on June 13, is still a few weeks away, but if you want to bring home a bear of your very own, it’s time to start saving your pennies.

It’s probably a good idea to clarify that the bears on offer aren’t of the human kind -” they’re stuffed teddy bears, albeit decked out in all manner of leather and fetish attire, so they better resemble their human, homo counterparts.

The bears were the brainchild of Wayne Nicol from Lucrezia and DeSade, who tested the waters during last year’s HiBEARnation events.

-œLast year, Southern HiBEARnation rolled around, and it was an event [Lucrezia and DeSade] had never really done much with before, he told Southern Star.

-œWe’ve been involved in all sorts of community groups, but never something with the Bears, so we sourced these four smallish bears and I dressed them up.

At one of their events they auctioned them for $500 each, which I was amazed by.

-œThis year, the guys from Sircuit came up with the idea of making it a more focused event. I went barrelling ahead with it and I’ve created 12 individual characters out of these 12 bears.

This year’s dirty dozen are larger and more detailed than the four Nicol previously created, each coming with its own personals profile to reflect the diverse group of real-life gay men who fall under the broad umbrella that is -˜bear’.

More detail meant more man hours, and Nicol found the bears consumed much of his free time.

-œIt took a hell of a lot more time than I’d anticipated, I have to say -” around 200 hours all up, he said.

The bears required constant love and attention -” there was hardly a day when I didn’t do something with them. But they started to look so amazing that I didn’t care how long it took, I was really enjoying the process.

The bears will be on show at Sircuit from June 10 before being auctioned off on June 13, with proceeds going to PLWHA (Victoria) Emergency Distress fund and the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard. Nicol will be happy to see his creations go to good homes, but he admits to a twinge of sadness as well.

-œI was not a teddy bear fancier at all. They were never something I embraced -“ until I started working on them, and I really grew to love them. It was actually a strangely sad day when I had to hand them over!

info: Adopt A Bear, June 13, Sircuit. Visit sircuit.com.au