The Amateur Owner

Sorry to abandon you all there.  NAN got in my way.

Moving on...in the past few weeks, I've been having sort of half on, half off discussions with many people about The Future Of The Hobby.  This tends to get people wringing their hands about youth showing, and I'll get there eventually, but I personally do not think that kids are necessarily The Future of the Hobby.

In the typical Natural History of the model horse hobbyist, you bought Breyers like crazy when you were a teenager (assuming boys and/or real horses did not take over) and when you got to college age, you Grew Up, sold your plastic ponies and joined the real world until you hit your 30s where you had money and time again, and hey, remember those Breyers?

Now, the natural history of the model horse hobbyist has undergone some dramatic changes in the past decade or so:

- it is less common for a person truly entrenched in the hobby to truly leave, or even take a hiatus on the scale that we used to.  College kids stay on board via the internet.
- it is easier to find local connections to encourage the obsession, thanks, again, to the internet.
- hobby activity is more stratified than it used to be, even though we fail to recognize this.  It leads to conflict among factions with different goals, as those different goals are rarely recognized.  Take showing at Nationals as an example--people whose goal is to show and win at Nationals is different than someone who gets a ticket and feels that the show should be as inexpensive as a local show.  We don't rate our shows based on goals or experience (I don't know that we TRULY have a base large enough to set up an A rate show circuit, but maybe its time to dink around with that idea)

In Region 10, we are starting to talk about Novice shows, and youth shows, and the amateur owner (AO) division.  I'm planning on getting into Novice and Youth in later posts, so for now, let's consider the AO.

I can recall showing my "roll my own" horses 15 years ago when New England Spring Expo had its AO division.  It was never very large, but it was often quite tough, and past AO entrants included people like Carlee Balling and Jen Timm (now Al-Biek.)  This was at about the same time that the Resin Revolution was in full swing, and you could have a body that you could slap any color you wanted to in fairly short order.  For a while, all my horses were my own work.  They were nice, but I don't have the talent or time to really be top notch, and I did flirt with the idea of selling my stuff (there are 2 of my horses out there--one was for sale at least recently, and I may go see if I can buy him back.  I know the other is in a black hole home.) in the end I decided I was not interested in that.

At the time, if your own work won an open grand championship, or a champ at NAN, you were booted from the division.  At the time, this was a smart rule, as it gave way for the next batch of up and comers.  Except NESE was the only show really offering an AO division, and it mostly died when NESE stopped.  I think NEMHC may have done AO for a while, but I don't think they have such a division now.

The AO idea did not really pick up outside of the region.  For a while, there was hearty debate on Haynet (yes, that used to happen) about how to split up custom and resin horses at shows, and most of the world felt that a Simple Custom division would suit the needs of people who wanted to paint their own...except it didn't.  A Simple Custom painted by Sarah Mink wasn't the same thing as one painted by me, even on my best day in the studio.  I sort of slid to buying other people's stuff once I went out of AO for a few reasons: there was no incentive for me to continue showing my own stuff in halter, as my stuff was now only going against stuff done by professional artists.  I had less time and more money to me, and this meant I could buy better things than I could produce.  I turned my creative mojo to performance set ups, which could be dreamed up and mentally worked on in places I could not wrestle with a visual problem. 

And here I am 15 years later, and I've gotten to the point where I am so picky about the resin blank I buy, I am not about to go and put my own paintbrush to it.  I suspect a lot of my other former AO's are in the same boat.

Now we DO have a new crop of people who are where I was 15 years ago, and the AO division has cropped up again at Windrush.  In a brief conversation with Kate (and feel free to chime in, Kate)  she feels that perhaps the accomplishment requirement should be dropped form the AO designation, and just leave it as a place for people who do not sell at all.  Back in the day, you often did morph into a sales force once you had stuff that consistently won, but obviously we've become more diverse than that now.  And I think it would work now, especially since everyone on earth makes medallions which are inexpensive and easy spots to practice without making a huge commitment, or having the anxiety that you might be "ruining" a perfectly nice resin.  People seem a bit more willing to torch up a plastic for the same reasons.

In terms of hobby growth, it really makes more sense to encourage the AO over youth or even novice.  The AO is a person who is invested enough in the hobby to not only show, but to create horses.  These are the people who are already supporting the hobby, at least on a local level, and really, model horse showing truly is all local level.  This is the person who is more likely to stay invested in the hobby and go to future shows, or even hold their own, and this is a person who should be encouraged to stay by giving them a spot to show their work against the work of others who are more or less on the same level.  Is it possible that a high caliber person who chooses not to sell might take over?  Sure, but I think that we are still a small enough community that, on a case by case basis, this person could be taken aside and asked to refrain from AO, assuming they don't take themselves out.  If it gets to be epidemic, then we need to think of a new set of standards, or perhaps, another division.

I do plan on discussing the issues of the Novice and Youth shower too, and I promise it will be in a more timely manner.

Distractions!

I actually did have An Important Post in the works, but its not done yet.  Mondays are my day to run errands, so I'm not really home to spend any QT with the computer.  I had planned on some.  And then the mailman brought me a Distraction.

If you are into performance, especially the DIY aspect of it, you really, really need to subscribe to Model Horse Performance.  I know, when I first heard about it, I was like "Well, I love the idea of a hobby produced publication, and yes, I am hardcore performance, but is a mag really sustainable?"  And then I ordered a sample issue, and it has so much potential.  They have a challenge every issue for tack/prop makers.  They have how to articles--the issue I got today included oak tag with patterns for an English saddle and a pad, as well as instructions for making both the English saddle, and a quilted saddle pad.  I can see that I'll be trying to make a few saddle pads in my future--its an easy looking project, its cheap, and it will be useful.  There is an ongoing series about how to carve saddles.  When I read the first issue, I felt like I could probably give it a whirl.  If nothing else, this magazine just gets me excited about doing stuff, and really, this hobby always needs things to get people excited and get them thinking.

Oh yes, lots of performance photo porn too.  It works for both the newb and the seasoned performance geek.  So go subscribe, or at least, pick up a sample issue!

My Important Post will probably bob up later in the week.  Lost is premiering tomorrow, so I can ssure you, I won't be around!

Housework!

I'm still working on getting a regular schedule for blog posts.  I think I'll be doing 1-2 a week, unless things warrant more posts.  Like BFest.  I have the blog set so I can post from my phone, though I bet those will be pretty short posts, but I can do photos.  The idea is I can live blog from a show.  Or BFest.  Or NAN.  No need for an internet connection.  Other than actual events, I probably won't post regularly on weekends.

If anyone out there does have something they'd like to post about beyond a comment, I am totally open to having guest bloggers.  Just hit up my email, or if you don't know that, leave me a note in the comments and we'll hook up.  Comments all go to my email for approval, so if you want to post contact info there and not have me publish the comment, I can do that.

I hope you enjoy my nonexistant Photoshop Skillz with my new logo above.  For some reason, I could not get text to appear on my image in PS (and FWIW, this is about the only thing I've USED PS for in the past, so I have no idea what I did to screw that up.  The image was in 2 layers that I merged.  I presume things went off the rails from there.)  I'd prefer the horses facing the other way, but I think I may get used to them. 

Well, that's all I got right now.  I think the next big show in the more or less area is the 30th MAR in March.  I would have loved to go but I am already trying to get off work that weekend to attend a wedding.  I know Beth and Ann usually go, anyone currently planning to head south for MAR?  Or are you all going to Marci's Draft/Pony show?

Speaking of specialization...

Well, my original intent was to dig up some photos to post today, but I overslept this morning, so that wasn't happening. And then I checked my email on break and this is what I found in my inbox from both Pour Horse and Velasquez Artistry:

Pour Horse Pottery, Velasquez Artistry & a myriad of other artists are most pleased that we will be bringing back BOYC in May of 2011! Yes, this is going to be BOYC, bigger and better than ever. So big in fact, we are giving it another letter- it will be BOYCC- the "Bring Out Your Chinas Convention!" BOYCC will run on a different format than your traditional show. We will have speakers, workshops and demos interspersed throughout the days, as well as a banquet dinner or two, and lots of other goodies and surprises. It will be a shiny weekend of ceramic immersion!


In order to help us prepare for BOYCC '11, we are planning a benefit day *this year* ! We are happy to announce, "Mud Day" 2010! This will be a more casual get-together for pottery pony fans; filled with games, food, a speaker and a workshop, but it will feature a little show- a "Teeny-Tiny Shiny Show," if you will! The date is set for Saturday, May 29th this year. More info can be found below. Class list & registration will be up & running soon!


Mud Day 2010:
http://www.velasquezartistry.com/boycc1

Well, damn.

I doubt I can make Mud Day at this point (we're already planning a CA trip later this summer) but look at BOYCC in 2011!!  Speakers, workshops, demos!  Like an ACTUAL convention.  I think I might plan to go out to that (I presume there will be separate registrations for the show and the stuff--if not, there should be!) since I doubt I'd ever fly with chinas.  Though I did figure out a way I might be able to get my half dozen CM Glazes into a duffle as carry on.  So maybe.

Its so exciting to be a live show enthusiast.  Really.  People moaning for the good old days are missing out.

So anyway.  Hopefully photos next Wednesday.  If I get my act together the way I hope.

Getting Smaller to Grow Bigger?

Skye and I went to dinner after Windrush, and Skye was pretty adamant that the hobby needs to think hard about going back to holding shows in homes, and start being more specialized. She'd had a lot more fun at that show than she'd had in years. I agree, somewhat, and here is sort of how our discussion went.

I'm not sure that holding all shows in homes is going to be a viable thing. Not everyone has the space. I've got a more or less finished basement that I could host a small show in, but I think I could have 10 people, max. I also do not think I could pull off a performance show in my basement (unless, maybe, it was limited to a single discipline) due to my space constraints. Even at Kate and John's, parking was an issue. Not everyone is going to have spouses or roommates that are as supportive of the hobby either.

However, given the financial crunch everyone is feeling these days, a free show space, even a small one, is a huge advantage when planning a show, especially a new one. A hall around here can run from $100 a day to nearly a thousand, depending on if you've got a friendly fire hall or a hotel to deal with. You don't really have a time limit on a home show. I've been to shows where the staff is literally breaking down tables as you are packing up your stuff, and when you are showing custom glaze china, this is a really scary proposition. Perhaps going small and having more frequent shows is the more healthy thing for the hobby right now. Certainly, "free show space" as opposed to "hundreds of dollars out of pocket before you have a single entry" is more palatable to a new showholder.

I do think that shows are going to have to specialize rather than try to serve all comers. I know back when I started showing, most people were showing OF Plastic Breyers. Stone didn't exist. Few people had chinas, and the whole hobby ceramics movement didn't exist. Neither did the hobby resin movement. There were customs, but most people had one or two (and nearly everyone had one or two). There were not enough different types of horses to support different divisions like we have now--customs and OF showed side by side in performance (and I can recall discussion about if it would be worth splitting the OF and CM for the first NAN!) and if there were chinas, they showed with the Breyers, and usually beat them. Sometimes the customs showed with the plastics too. Now shows are at least split OF and custom. OF is probably split into china and plastic, but plastic might be split by manufacturer too. Customs may be shown with artist resins, but maybe not...and then there is custom glaze china. And performance. In order to support the number of judges you need to cover all these divisions, you need to have a big show, so you need to rent a big place. It has to be a big deal--time, space, and personnel--to be viable.

Specializing shows, if its by media (all china, all plastic, all custom) or by breed/type (we've had a sport horse show, a stock horse show, a pony show, and there is a draft/pony show scheduled for later this spring) can be smaller. You can have a more varied class list (Shetland, Welsh, Other UK, Gaited ponies and so on, as opposed to the typical UK/non UK split seen here) so you have more classes that are smaller, and therefore faster to judge. You don't need a large staff to run the show. Since you're already planning a small event, you can plan on using a small space. I'm toying with an Arabian only show as a result of this discussion because I think that is the one breed everyone has a few of, and would be willing to bring out. If the class list was split out--say Stone Arab stallions, Breyer Arab stallions, Breyer Arab Mares, Stone Arab Mares, Plastic Geldings, Foals under 6 months, Foals over 6 months, Artist resin stallion, AR Mare, and so on...you could have 2 dozen halter classes that could be full, but not 30 horses deep, and use entry fees to pay for lunches and maybe trophies or something, instead of a big hall that you have a time limit on.

Another benefit of specializing shows is you could have more of them on weekends next to each other, and they need not eat each other. I realize that none of us can go to shows every single weekend, no matter where they are held, but if show holders co-ordinate, they could serve different populations of showers (say, OF plastics and china, groups that rarely cross lines) on different consecutive weekends. Two or more shows could occupy the same space at the same time, much like China Buffet and NEMHC do. A huge do it all show every month is just not a functional model any more for most show holders or showers. We've outgrown that paradigm, possibly even at our national event.

Smaller shows that don't run a whole day also give room for other stuff--the "farm tour" we got at Windrush, time for seminars (which people in Region X finally appear truly ready for without needing to have them in conjunction with a show) and the like. I'd LOVE to do a model horse retreat--no need for competition, but rather we can have judging clinics, critique performance set ups before having them go live, or possibly hash out what we actually do want as a written set of rules or judging guidelines for our hobby (rather than soley relying on rules for live horses that don't truly serve what we do well.)

So what up guys? We've been experimenting with more specialized shows for a few years now, and the changes NAMHSA made a few years ago really do open us up to all sorts of novel formats. What's your region doing, and where do you see the hobby going?

Windrush Winter Warmup

Yesterday I attended the only model horse show I've ever been to in January. It was hosted at the home of Kate and John Cabot, who graciously welcomed Region 10 into their home for an old fashioned model horse show. Kate and John have a LARGE house, that accommodated about a dozen showers, four judges, and a few significant others for the day. Showers hung out on folding chairs and couches at card and coffee tables, and the two show rings were in the dining room which had lovely natural light for most of the show. We were limited to just artist resins and customs, but there were separate divisions for them, and the classlist was split in ways that allowed for fewer apples and oranges type classes than you might see at a typical show in this region. It was small...some might even say intimate. We had a hot lunch, there were snacks and drinks all day, and we got to spend the day in slippers.












And it was ROARING fun. Seriously. I did not feel like I was at a model horse show all day at the end of it. There was none of that midday after lunch OMG is this the Bataan Death March feel that I get some days. I think part of it was that the group was small enough that instead of everyone sitting in groups of 4 with their usual posse, we all interacted with each other all day long.



Steve even made a new friend.



Sharon Mossey showed off her new Eberl Grace, finished by Steph Michaud,and this was about the only model horse photo I took. I went with good intentions to take pictures, and got bored with it in a hurry. Perhaps I'll change my mind when I go back into albums and scan for hours at a time. Anyway, this mare was gorgeous.





It was not a performance show, but I did bring my new blingy tack by Sue Bensama Young. Viva Las Vegas got to show it off. This sapphire halter went nicely with her Stock Breed Champ rosette, hee hee!



One silly photo of Fraley draft horses. I think Al, the Punjabi, is going to get bitten.



We were also treated to a view of Kate's horse room, which she calls "The Vault." She has these gorgeous built in cabinets, with lighting, glass shelves, and glass doored fronts. It was like looking at a museum exhibit. Once the shelving for the chinas and various vehicles are up, I hope Kate does put up small descriptions of the horses with some of their history. Wouldn't it be fun to organize "farm tours" of our collections?

Skye and I had a great conversation at dinner on our way home about how much fun this show was, and how some of its innovations could be used in the Region to help keep showing accessible and fun while allowing it to continue to mature. I'm saving that for a post later in the week. Make sure you check the Facebook page for some more photos Linda took!

Welcome!

I had hoped to actually get this blog rolling January first, but the holidays, the new job and all that other stuff life tosses at you got in the way, and I didn't. Then I was driving home from the first show of the season (already!) and my brain was just full of things and suddenly I remembered I'd set this up, and really, it was time to go with it. I do keep a personal blog, and a lot of model horse stress got dumped there(recall the PlayDay Scandal of 2005?) and really, most of my family Does Not Care about my in depth analysis of the model horse hobby. So it is time to split it out to people who Do Care.

What I am hoping to do here is talk about upcoming show trends, live showing issues in general, shows I attend, and I will get nostalgic for older shows and my own collection in general. I think I am talking to the seasoned live shower, but newbies are welcome too--there is a Live Show 101 blog that might be better for getting the whole nuts and bolts of showing. I won't for example, be discussing how to get ready for your first show, or how to enter one, but I will be pondering how to make judging a more serious pursuit, or how might change to better suit the needs of the 21st century hobbyist.

Eventually I might even tell the joke behind the blog's name. Its one of those "you had to be there" things.

I do not have the email feed set up just yet, but I will do that soon, if you're the sort of person who would rather get posts in your inbox than via your favorite RSS reader (I am a fan of the Google Reader.)

On that note...look for a post on Windrush Winter Warmup in a few hours!