Here we are in full swing with our yearly events. The Whidbey workshop has come and gone, and Camp B. is just around the corner, then Silver Falls, and our year will be over. It all seems to go by very fast once it starts. Whidbey was a great success in spite of the wind and rain this year. There were lots of new faces, and they were eager to return again next year, so mark your calendars now. These events take a lot of work, and I would like to thank Dennis Jorum and Pam Winstansley for a wonderful job of putting the Whidbey workshop together, as well as the instructors Suz Gentiluomo and George Pratt for sharing their wealth of knowledge, and Alexandra Morosco for providing us with tools and stone which come all the way from Ventura, California. These events are a wonderful chance to get together with other crazy stone carvers and share our common passion. I hope at least one of these events make it into your lives this year.
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As for business, the Board has been working on the 2001 budget and many other issues. If you’d like to know more, contact me at: 360-579-1995 or lwhannell @yahoo.com. Now, on to more important matters. I just had the wonderful opportunity to accompany Gary McWilliams, of Stone Arts of Alaska, to the big gem and mineral show in Tucson, Arizona. Both Gary and Jim Tobin have written about this event in past newsletters, but like most things in life I enjoyed actually being there even more than reading about it. I was overwhelmed by the size of the event. It is spread over more than 25 hotels, inns, convention centers, and tent pavilions all over Tucson, and the Show Guide is 500 pages. So, I just wandered around trying to see as much as possible. Amazing large jade sculptures from China, exquisite carvings in semi-precious stone, and probably the fossils of everything that has ever lived. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’ll be processing all that I saw for a very long time. The other place we stopped on the way down was Art City in Ventura, California. The Tucson show was fun, but Art City was totally inspirational for this Northwestern boy. Tucked off in the corner of town between the train tracks and the car parts yard is a little oasis for those who love stone. The variety, the enormous sizes, the artistic display of raw stone, not to mention the sculptures being worked by various artists on site sent my mind into overdrive. I haven’t traveled for far too long, and this trip reminded me of how much we add to our possibilities when we expose ourselves to new ideas, people and places. I wish you all happy sculpting, but don’t forget to get away every now and then.
I thought that I would take this opportunity at the end of the year to thank all of you who have given of your time and energy to help keep this wonderful organization alive and moving forward. We have had new people step into positions that keep all of our events and symposia happening. (I will be updating the organization outline with contact names in the next issue.) I would also like to thank Meredith Earls and Becky Kosowski, who are both leaving the Board, for all of their wonderful energy on behalf of all of NWSSA. So, as the New Year begins it is up to all of us to look at where we can lend our hand to handle the many tasks that create enjoyable sculpting experiences for all of us.
We have two people stepping in to run for the two vacant Board positions, and we have existing Board members willing to run for another term, which gives us the same number of people running as we have positions open. So the Board decided to have the elections at the holiday party this year. With the same number of people running as there are open positions, the results are very predictable. So, just to give you all fair warning, I will be on a campaign starting in January to find more people to run for a Board position in next year’s election, so start getting your excuses ready because only the best ones will work.
I would like to take this opportunity to say how much our symposia and various workshops energize and fulfill my stone sculpting reality. For those of us not blessed to be able to sculpt as much as we want to, these events create their own little time warp in which we can totally immerse ourselves in a wonderfully different reality.
My time at Camp B was the last time I have had an opportunity to sculpt this summer, and I’m still enjoying the memory. Our various events all have a different flavor in terms of size, instructors, topics, hand tools or power, location, and time of year. I hope this variety allows everyone in this organization an opportunity to enjoy our common bond of stone sculpting.
Now that all of our major events for the year are over (except the holiday party), it is time to begin planning for next year. If there is something you would like to see happen next year, now is the time to get involved and let someone know. Contact the manager for the event, or talk with one of the Board members, and help make next year even better. Happy sculpting.
