Seattle Glass Overdose

[Rich Samuel]

Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience. (Not to be confused with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, also local.)

https://refractseattle.org

Heads up: If you've wanted to see Lino's Seattle location, it will be open to the public from 11 AM to 4 PM on October 17 - 20.

[Max Epstein]

Lino's gallery was another mind blowing experience, and the staff is excellent.

[Greg Vriethoff]

Originally Posted by Rich Samuel

https://refractseattle.org

So, based on the video this will be a pumpkin-making festival?

[Rich Samuel]

I'm surprised GAS is involved. It kind of looks like this might have been intended to undercut the GAS conferences. Maybe they should have titled it "Gas-X!"

[Pete VanderLaan]

It stuck me that when the GAS Conference was held in Seattle, we had remarkable turnout, at least for that first tech section which I was in charge of. I rarely attend a GAS confab but have never particularly noticed that the Corning ones were really well attended by Seattle beyond the people doing demos. GAS is now, and pretty much always has been a student organization. It is one dimensional in that it exists to create conferences. It certainly has terrible auctions particularly when compared to the Pilchuck event.

[Shawn Everette]

Originally Posted by Pete VanderLaan

It certainly has terrible auctions particularly when compared to the Pilchuck event.

Do you really thing that glassblowers will pay top dollar for someone else's glass?

I used to go more regularly, but as you've said, it's kind of one dimensional. It's a great place to get together with old friends, and really offers little else for the professional artist other than a place to pick out supplies in person. The tech stuff seems to have some merit, but the other panels always seem to boil down to "why don't people take glass seriously"? Norfolk felt like a particular step backwards for me.

[Pete VanderLaan]

The bidding audience I've seen at GAS are not usually glassblowers or slumpers although Bullseye did it's best to juice the membership with warm stuff. Many blue haired women I noticed, all hanging on Marvin when he was still alive. At one time, it did have an educational function but has long since been displaced by You Tube for technique. Craftweb displaced much tech material.

The donated work was usually marginal and sometimes downright embarrassing as people donated their very own knockoffs with out any finesse. Nominally, that auction brought about ten cents on the dollar.
I go to Corning for GAS and I do that for the museum and library largely.

[Max Epstein]

Over a million $$ in glass was sold in St. Pete I believe....

[Pete VanderLaan]

That's certainly a lot of money and uncharacteristic of a GAS auction. Where did you get those figures?

[Shawn Everette]

Yeah, that seems like a moon shot.

I've generally only donated when I've received a scholarship, don't like to regularly devalue my work with people looking for a deal while being "charitable". Generically I've always avoided the live auction so it's interesting to know that the blue hair's are/were present.

I may have to try and give nceca a whirl. Have several mud chucker friends that regularly attend, and I've been more enamored by what I've been seeing out of clay recently. And their fees don't seem as absurd, that vat on Sweden kills it.

[Pete VanderLaan]

well, was that an auction for GAS, or for Pilchuck and are those numbers remotely accurate? I'm not clear and I pay almost no attention to it. That's a huge number for GAS.

The only time I've given to one of those auctions, John Bartell bought the piece at full retail which surprised me as it wasn't cheap. There was only one other person that year to do that, Dinah Hewlitt. Otherwise it all went at .10 on the dollar which is embarrassing for the artist and inevitably you will hear the buyer crowing about what they had to pay. It's not just true of GAS auctions, it's a problem everywhere. I will get requests from groups I never hear from and never hear from their members. The underlying message is "You don't have any investment in the piece anyways." So, it sells for nothing, poorly promoted and the charity gets next to nothing as well. It's an all around loser.

[Shawn Everette]

The numbers are a question for Max to verify, but from what I've seen I'd be hard pressed to believe that there's $1mil in glass at a GAS auction. Pilchuck is a different story, but from what I've heard even they've been down since the recession. The downturn may have waned somewhat, but a lot of money has shifted away from the arts when it comes to charitable contributions. Serving the under served is the new hot topic, it's easier for some to roll that into their programming.

Penland seems to do a good job keeping up the value at the main auction, even the session ones tend to do well. With the session auctions at Pilchuck it seemed like they got everyone too plastered to bid. Plus, that crowd was always younger.

I'll donate in the right instances, but it's usually small items that actually go over value for local or back home events. When you have the only shiny item around it's an advantage.

[Rich Samuel]

To get decent, or even wildly high, prices at charity auctions you need to be in cities with "old money." It's always been my experience that those people enjoy competing with each other and don't mind spending big bucks to "play." Here, you see lots of collusion (that word!) between bidders to keep hammer prices low. I now donate strictly to those non-profits I'd support with cash otherwise.

[Kenny Pieper]

An interesting new facet to the G.A.S. auction is with the demos. They auction the piece while it is being made.
It for me was quite distracting to be making a piece and have it being sold at the same time.
I think it did raise excitement and thus the price of the piece. Most of the demo pieces that I heard of went well over suggested retail.

[Mark Rosenbaum]

Originally Posted by Kenny Pieper

An interesting new facet to the G.A.S. auction is with the demos. They auction the piece while it is being made.
It for me was quite distracting to be making a piece and have it being sold at the same time.
I think it did raise excitement and thus the price of the piece. Most of the demo pieces that I heard of went well over suggested retail.

Sold before cold!!!! Always a crowd-pleaser!

[Pete VanderLaan]

So what happens if it gets dropped?

(Deep discount?)

Great scam though.

[Rich Samuel]

Bob Carlson used to do these at the Pratt auctions. Low and slow bids until the sand mold was broken away. You really need similar sudden dramatic moments to make this auction technique work. A fast Blomdahl inflation, a Rich Royal spin-out, etc. get the bids moving.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Something in the back of my head is reminding me that Pilchuck held an auction in Florida not that long back. Is that a false recollection? One million seems like an awful lot of money for GAS.

[Max Epstein]

Sorry guys, that number is not from the GAS auctions but they could certainly be helping themselves out.

Over a million is what I heard sold between Habitat, Imagine buying work from artists, etc.

[Shawn Everette]

That makes way more sense. If they were pulling in a million a conference, they shouldn't be requiring the hosting city to fork over that much.

[Pete VanderLaan]

That confirms my suspicions as well. The quality of the work in the GAS auction would not reach those kinds of numbers at full retail. It really is "B" team kind of stuff if you're thinking about serious prices.

If they really had sales like that, you'd really be hearing about it.

[Pete VanderLaan]

As I've considered it, 1,000,000 would not be all that great if the material auctioned was top notch. I don't have a clue about the pedigrees but they would be higher end. I do think the big kids galleries have had a love/ hate relationship with the Pilchuck auction. It's not that big of a pond.