PCA Convention Dearborn MI.

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The PCA Convention held in Dearborn, Michigan from May 15-18th is over and we returned home finally arriving on Monday 20th. Dearborn is the home of Henry Ford and the Ford Automobile Company, many of the attendees at the conference arrived early on Tuesday, and a trip was organised to the Henry Ford Museum was organised for them, Sue and I was taken to the Habitat Gallery which was fairly close by.
The Habitat gallery was a real eye opener, huge works of art were prominent, although over the top for my taste, many exhibits were of overly large sculptures and installations, but it was a small musical instrument of Davide Salvadore that really caught my eye, other works by Giles Bettison, Raven Skyriver and Bertil Vallien stood out as well and a nice composition by William Morris priced at $250.000,00 also stood apart from the rest.

The convention was interesting and the talks illuminating, especially the talk on murine and its history, one of the best talks I have heard in all the time I have been over there.

The demonstrations were all held at the Flint Institute of Arts hot shop, brand new and shiny clean, with a large auditorium for the collectors and public. All the demos were filmed and shown on two large suspended monitors.

The artist demos were chaotic as usual with everyone trying to get their preparation work done at the same time, the public doesn’t seem to notice, as we are all professional and have many years of understanding how it all works.

Sue and I made a filigree footed tazza with a central murine cane of a Ford Model T, as all this town is Ford manufacturing, this was surrounded with laurel leaves.

A collaborative demo with the extremely talented artist David Graeber followed where Dave had made a Marvin the Martian murine upstairs in the flamework studio and incorporated this into a tumbler. Now for those who don’t know Dave, he has been trained by Paul Stankard for many years to the highest of standards and is one of Americas top artists in his field.

After the demos we had a short time to view the glass exhibits, and walking down the corridor I saw one of mine, then another, 4 in total, a donation from a collector, and I never knew. Time was short and didn’t manage to see all the glass but from images I’ve seen from other attendees this is quite a nice museum to visit for glass enthusiasts and well worth the trip.

Sue and I attaching the central section.
The finished piece. PCA Convention 2019 Dearborn, MI.