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Simon Griffis, executive director of the Ashford Hollow Foundation

The Ashford Hollow Foundation—founded by the late Larry Griffis, Jr. and stewarded by his children—has given the city’s arts community many great gifts in its 40 years. The Griffis Sculpture Park was the first and remains the largest sculpture park in the country; the foundation’s Essex Street complex has been a cradle for organizations like Hallwalls and CEPA and for artists like Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo. Furthermore, the foundation has earned a flawless record for party-giving, to be perpetuated at Saturday’s Flash party, a benefit for the foundation and a hell of a good deal. The $35 ticket buys you beer, wine and food (including offerings from the Bijou Grille). The fabled Ifs play 8-10pm, followed by a DJ spinning tripped-out platters from the 1960s. The aesthetic is, in fact, swinging and psychedelic, according to Mark Griffis: “It has this mid-1960s, Peter Sellers, happening look to it,” he says. Janet Reed and her dancers will take to platforms in full go-go mode, descending into the crowd throughout the evening to bring the dancing to the people. There are three bars, multiple hangout spaces—and you’ll take home a sculpture made from your own sketch, cut from sheets of steel by some of the very students in the educational programs the proceeds benefit. The foundation offers hands-on arts education at local high schools, at Essex Street and at Boys and Girls Clubs in the city’s most disenfranchised neighborhoods—and takes their students out to the sculpture park in the summer. “Ninety-seven percent of these kids have never been outside their neighborhoods, so this is an incredible and unique opportunity,” says Simon Griffis, who won the Baird Award last year for the foundation’s work with at-risk kids. It will surely be an incredible and unique party as well.

Saturday, November 11 from 7pm-midnight. Essex Arts Center, 30 Essex Street (883-2066). $35 presale

(www.1077thelake.com, New World Records, Terrapin Station), $45 at the door.