Breyerfest, here we come!

My Facebook feed is full of people wrapping up packing details and hitting the road for Lexington.  Breyerfest gets underway this week.  I'm traveling Wednesday with my bestie, Heather Malone, and my plan is to live blog the trip since the whole cell phone experiment worked.  Plus, we will have an internet connection in the car, so there may be actual posting as we travel from NJ to KY over 12 hours.

I am showing at Breyerfest Live for the very first time this year, and find myself inexplicably nervous.  I don't know why.  I am showing a handful of CM Breyers, but maybe 2 have a real chance of doing much. I also discovered that I do not own a single Traditional CM Breyer that is suitable for performance.  I was shocked.  So I am showing OF performance.  That was where I earned my performance chops in the first place, and this year OF and CM performance are split for the first time ever (typically, they run together) and most of the people I think would give me a run for my money are showing CM.  I am debuting a few-several-new set ups, but this isn't unusual for me.  I've pulled that stunt at NAN before. With good results.

It would seem Breyerfest Live is the last super prestige show I have yet to conquer.  I've judged it before, so I know what it can be like.  And about the only reason I am showing this year is that it is no longer held in the horrible tent, but in a nice, truly air conditioned hall.

But why the butterflies?

Digesting BOYCC 6 weeks later

BOYCC ended up being an inadvertent test for using my cell to make posts.  Looks like it worked!

In the 6 or so weeks since BOYCC, I've had a lot of time to think on my experiences there.  Yeah, there was the show, with all its attendant ooooh and aaaaah photos.  I brought my very best across the country in a plastic tool box, and got my butt kicked hard (I am so glad I did not risk my Hagens.  Even I would have pointed and laughed at them on the table) but it was a deserved kicking.  I could look at the table and pretty much predict where I was going to place, and I was right about 90% of the time.  There was just amazing, crazy rare things there.

However, it is NOT the show I keep coming back to.

The entire weekend was structured to be the very best of what my friends and I used to call a Hack Session, where we would meet up for a weekend afternoon and work on customs and props over snacks and maybe dinner.  Lots of socializing and brainstorming.  BOYCC had a ton of social time built right in, and lots of food.  This helped me meet folks I hadn't known before, and to rekindle friendships outside of the typical hustle and bustle of Breyerfest.

I also got to exercise my creative mojo in ways I have not in a very very long time.  My first workshop was overglaze painting with Karen Gerhardt.  I haven't painted in about forever, so that was fun, and while overglaze is a bit finicky, I had good results without too much frustration.  Next up was a medallion sculpting class.  This was more intimidating to me, as I had rarely worked in 3D when I was doing a lot of artsy stuff, and I had NO IDEA what to do.  Everyone was doing horses, so I decided to NOT do a horse head, and instead, sculpted a reclining cat from behind.  I've been drawing a lot of cats looking over their shoulders of late.  I was very pleased with how this medallion came out, so when it came time to create a 2 part plaster mold for it, I was scared.  The medallion was done in a non hardening wax clay, and I know it could be destroyed in the casting process.  And I know that it wasn't "precious" it was still hard to let it go enough to create that mold.

The mold making process was more technical, and sort of suited to how I generally do stuff-- methodical, making sure measurements are accurate.  Very conducive to how this vet sees the world and work.  My mold was a success, and my sculpture survived the process to go home with me.

Yesterday,  the dry plaster mold arrived from Southern California, and with it, a pair of bisques of the medallion and a finished art glazed version.  I am amazed that I made this thing.  Joan Berkwitz, who organized and ran BOYCC with Adalee Hude, posted her part of the process on her blog so I will direct you there for photos of the finished work.

I do think I will pursue slip casting more of these, and firing them in such a way I could china paint them and use them as gifts.  The power behind just this idea is staggering to me.  This is why I do this.  It is not about NAN trophies, or cards, or arguing about what the ultimate goal of NAMHSA should be.  It is this being able to spend time with like minded women in creative pursuits that are related but not necessarily the same (my friend Liz La Rose once described performance showing as collaborative work, and she's right).  The other stuff is just small and not truly that important--this stuff will go on even when NAMHSA fails.

CMG Knut

This pretty CM Glaze Knut is part of the Other Pony class. 32 entrants!

BOYCC on the wind down

Today is the last day of BOYCC, and the show is sort of starting to roll, a bit late. The plan for the rest of the day is to finish up the CM Glaze stuff, and then head back to Pour Horse for lunch and a mold making workshop. On Friday, one of the workshops was to make a medallion and we'll be making simple molds of these medallions that we get to take home. I also did a china painting workshop that included some samples of paints, so I could take my mold and make some medallions and paint them. My medallion isn't something that I'd consider selling, but it certainly would be a nice giftie type thing for friends and family. I also made a pin and a tile in the china painting class.

This has been a lot of fun...the show is really de-emphasized.

I would love to see more of these immersion type weekends. I've toyed with doing a performance oriented thing, that would include a trip to the Horse Park of NJ for combined driving or something, but I have yet to work it out. I do wonder if the hobby is really ready to take this step. We constantly look for ways to grow, and focus so much on kids, and I am not sure that's the right place to look to the future. If it never rises about plopping a plastic horse on a table, those kids aren't sticking around anyway.

I'll likely ruminate on this more as I fly home tomorrow. And better pictures when I get home!


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Creative stuff from BOYCC

L to R: My medallion, china painted pin and tile. I'll be making a mold for the medallion later that I get to take home. So some of you may get china painted kitties as gifts in the future.

Lirico Lirico Lirico...

Many Liricos in the American OF Spanish class...stunning!

CMG Toot Sweet

Roundabout in resin

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Swag Bag Coffee mug win

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Bring out your CHINAS!

I wrote the original post somewhere over Denver, impressing the hell out of my seat mates on Southwest 829 yesterday, but it apparently posted to an alternate dimension and is no longer available to me. Even the draft is gone!

So I'll recap.

I'm currently tucked into a very swanky resort in San Marcos, CA, very much on east coast time, waiting to start day 2 of the Bring Out Your Chinas Convention. When the concept for the event was announced, I was very excited and HAD to go. Yes, there is a show, but I keep forgetting its there, its so not the focus. What IS here is 4 days of china horse/hobby immersion. Workshops that will take you from sculpting to mold making to glazing, repairs. Lectures on china painting, European ceramics, and photography. And yeah, there is a show that is structurally a bit different than what is typically done, and tempting enough that I packed a dozen china horses (including a half dozen one of a kinds) into a plastic toolbox and flew cross country with them.

When I arrived yesterday, I was picked up at the airport and whisked away to the home of both Joan Berkwitz and Pour Horse, where participants were working on tiny bisque horses that they painted and detailed yesterday. Those horses will get fired this weekend and then go home with their creators. I wish I'd arrived in time to play, too, but there was ample time to visit and eat and hang out and do all that hobby stuff we never quite have the time for at Breyerfest, with its intensely dense schedule.

I am very much looking forward to today's schedule. The resort is gorgeous, and I'll have time to go jog and snag breakfast before the conference part begins today. I really think this sort of thing it where the hobby needs to start pointing itself--relying less on a show that is going to be confusing the the newbie and more on educating ourselves with our own experts who can take the non model world and interpret it to what we want to get done. We, as a group, tend to lean on the crutches provided by real horse activities that we often fail to see that what we do is unique unto itself and not quite like anything else. We should be celebrating this. BOYCC is doing just that.

More as the weekend rolls--I am hoping that I have my mobile set up so I can directly post grainy cell phone pics here as the real ones will have to wait until I get home to download them!

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Potpourri

So, the wonderful Breyer History Diva blog supplied me with a list of this year's Breyerfest Special Runs (as in, those that are attainable--not raffle horses, or auction horses!) and where I usually find myself wanting one or two, this year, I want FOUR.  I either need to buy 2 tickets, or be prepared to spend on the secondary market.

What's tickling my fancy?

Under the Sea, a clear blue plastic Bluegrass Bandit.  I have a disturbing love for blue horses, and the translucent ones.  I do not think I care a whit about the mermaids.

Jasmine, the Weather Girl.  I am going to conga the crap out of this mold, I can feel it.  I'm already looking for a nice, simple repaint on one.

Hansel and Gretel, a mom and foal pair of Black Forest ponies by Birgitte Eberl.  In Classic scale.

Spun Gold, an as yet unnamed mold in 3 unnamed "Gambler's Choice" colors.  I missed out on the last Gambler's Choice at BFest and I sort of regret that, as I love the idea.  If its a Mesteno, I will reconsider this.

Going to be a rough year in Kentucky for me, thank goodness I won't have the madness of NAN before me, with the tempting treats in the tack and props area that crop up in NAN years.

In other news, I have been working on catalogging my colletion for a while now, and have FINALLY gotten to the point where I have a hard count on the OF Breyer plastic end of the world:

Traditional scale: 386
Classic scale: 66
Little Bits: 25
Stablemates 88

Total: 565 !!!  I had no idea it was THAT many--I've been putting the number of horses in my collection around 7-800 for several years now.  Looks like that needs to be adjusted UP.  Wonder if I've broken 4 digits yet??

Now onto the Stones, OF china, customs, Artist-resins (painted and not), tack, props....oh and getting it all photographed and uploaded to the Collecting Blog. But at least the Plastic Breyers are all tucked in their own spredsheets.

Finally, last weekend, Dave and I cleaned the basement.  During this, I found many amusing photographs (like those vet school pictures from 1993)  Here's one I wanted to share:

This would have been taken at the fall version of the Kaatskill Classic, 1994.  My first overall championship, earned by my Misty's Twilight "Freudian Slip."  This was my killer show horse in those days, when I was still a hardcore OF performance shower.  The CM overall was won by Rick Clark, but I forget that particular horse--its a custom he did.  Rick did these neat horses that he painted in car paints. It was damn near impossible to rub that paint.  I have one that is a bright red Running Black Beauty--I mean, he is candy apple red.  Does anyone know what's become of Rick?

Collection Contemplation

I am feeling a little blue about the live show universe at the moment, for a couple reasons that I can't discuss right now.  I am planning a trip to BOYCC and that now appears to be in jeopardy for reasons I am less than thrilled with, and in general, the attitude out there has just not been great.  So, I thought that maybe its time for a post that goes back to why I love this hobby so much I am willing to get involved with it at its ickiest national levels.

I have a large OF Breyer collection.  It is not, despite my husband's belief, the largest group of OF Breyers ever.  I doubt its even top 50 in the northeast.  Its not chock full of old goodies, but I do have every horse from my childhood collection, and happily for them, I took to thinking of them as a collection in my early teens, so many are in nice shape.  In the early 80's I was already starting to try and organize them in notebooks or on index cards, tracking both their Collectible Object Qualities and their Horse In My Imagination ones.  I was still under 100 horses at this point, even counting the non Breyer models that I had (have).

Back in those days, I lived in north Jersey and buying horses involved a trip to the Rockaway Mall.  There were 2 toy stores in the mall, KayBee Toys, who  kept an example of each horse in stock unboxed on a shelf so you could pick them up and look them over before selecting a new in box horse.  They would sell the shelf example if that was the last one they had (how I got my #62 Saddlebred Weanling, the first horse I purchased knowing it was already discontinued.)  There was also Michael's Things For Fun, a more sedate toy store than KayBee.  They had a quarter of an aisle dedicated to Breyers, tan and brown picture boxes facing forward, and a good selection to pick over.  There was also a Child World close by, and this was my Breyer Horse Nirvana--in my memory, there was a WALL of Breyers, floor to ceiling!  Every model ever!  I feel like I spent hours standing in front of that wall trying to decide between horses.  The one battle I recall was agonizing over a Bay Shetland Pony and a Honey Sorrel Shire...and I still do not have a single Shire in my collection!!

On the day I am thinking about now though, I was unable to convince my mother that I needed a trip to Child World, and KayBee was picked over, so I was in Michael's pondering what to get, and on this fine fall afternoon circa 1983, I decided to lay my hard earned five bucks on a dapple grey Proud Arabian Stallion.  It took a long time for me to arrive on this choice, and selected the sealed box carefully.  I was not allowed to open my horses until I got in the car, and I remember sitting in the front seat of our grey Cordova, breaking open the plastic sealing the box and taking the lid off....and seeing a horse that did not look like the tall grey horse on the picture box.

WHAT!

I was SERIOUSLY taken aback by what was before my eyes.  This horse had a black mane, tail and legs.  The picture on the box DID NOT.  What sort of nonsense was this.  I was disappointed for a while, but eventually this horse, who ended up with the name Roger Moore (there was a serious James Bond thing going on at home, and the horses got some unfortunate names via osmosis) became a favorite.

When I began to meet with other hobbyists, I learned that my PAS was something unusual.  I took him to my first real live show ever in 1991, and a complete stranger walked up to me as I unboxed my show horses and offered me a hundred dollars for him.  Which, at the time, was an insane sum to me for a plastic horse. I said no. Several times.  Stranger told me to let her know if I changed my mind.  Still haven't.

I still take him out time to time--he's got very nice haloed/peacock spots that do not show up in that photo.  And as wonked out as he is anatomically (he really looks more like a giraffe than a horse)  he still holds a place in my heart, and he is still "herd leader" in my imagination.

Weather Girls

My intention for this bog was to be about showing for showers.  Unfortunately, my work schedule and the local show schedule can't quite seem to get it together :(  Between this, and my current hobby activities (I am president of NAMHSA, and it seems that when I get near the Board of Directors, sparks have to fly.  Prior to that, I helped to run NAN last summer.) this poor blog has suffered quite a bit.

I do more model horse pondering than I probably should on my personal blog, so last night it occurred to me that maybe I should push that here,as that was one of the original intents.  So here we go.

Despite being entrenched in the showing end of the hobby, I find I have been amazingly out of touch with the collector end.  Thank goodness Breyer sends me email, or I may have missed out on the Weather Girls. I participated in the Treasure Hunt the first year it was done, because I HAD to have a pegasus.  What perked my interest this year was the idea of a "Rainbow."   I have no idea what this is going to be, but seeing as how the other three horses' colors are suggested by their names, I am really hoping for some color freakshow.  Yes, its true.  I show the highly realistic, but dangle a blue horse before  me (stars, lighting up, making sounds all earn bonus points) and I become putty.

Anyway, I think they are nice.  They are smaller than the picture I had in my head, but I suspect that f I started measuring, they would be like 14 hand Arabs instead of the giant, supersize Arabs were are used to in "1/9" scale.  I like their trot, though its really a moment of suspension, which may foil any performance plans that are trying to hatch out (I so totally want to turn this into a show hack or some other such performance event I know next to nothing about)  They all stand.  Hooray.  I like the colors--the palomino is deep and metallic.  The dark grey is a deep, steely thing.  The pinto, being dapple grey and tobiano is slightly over the top for my personal taste, but its a complicated thing that is well done.

And I want one of these in bay.  And chestnut.  Suppose I must wait.

I am intrigued with the idea that these are "going into the vault" for a few years.  This will make the run a bit more valuable in the short term, as I imagine some of these are going to be purchased to make customs.  They are kinda sorta special runs, given that they are in that limbo between a true SR and a RR--a "regular run" produced for a limited time. Its possible they may be more uncommon than some "real" SRs.  Any time customizers want to lay their hands on an OF that is perceived as "special" that makes people sort of panic about them.  I figure each on that gets a coat of primer makes the one on my shelf that much more desirable/rare :)

I also got an Enchanted Forest in this shipment, as I already adore Newsworthy, and doing him in bay, hello!  And then he got added into the line and almost instantly discontinued.  Huh?  Anyway, he is cute, but mine has box rubs on his flank and elbow. Disappointing--its been a very long time since I had a horse with box damage, and my other 2 Newsies (white and silver) were fine.

Who else has them and what do you think?