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Three Snapshots from the Tampa conference
originally published in GASNews, July 1999

Snapshot # 1: It’s the first day of the conference and I’m sitting in the cavernous lobby of the Convention Center, which is the space that became the gathering point for people attending EXPO, Tech Display, the Education Center or lectures. I'm talking to Chuck Savoie, who I know from summer workshops and ACC shows but who has never been to a G.A.S. conference before. He’s here with his partner in the Tech Display representing their brand new company, Flying Colors, which is the first American manufacturer of color bars and frit. I'm catching up with Chuck on all fronts: new baby, new business, the search for assistants, the complexities of color chemistry. Chuck is widely recognized both for his Venetian-style goblets and for the brilliant colored glasses that, up until now, he made for himself I'm impressed with the entrepreneurial ambition that the new venture takes, but also with the restlessness that drives him to go beyond his secure niche as a top-end cup maker and take on another challenge. In about thirty minutes we've covered all the bases - home, work, tech, talk, the past - and it's time for him to work his booth.

Snapshot #2: On Saturday afternoon I'm in Ybor City at Dean James' studio, which has been transformed just for the conference from a no-frills production facility to our most spacious demonstration studio. I'm supposed to be the second assistant to Preston Singletary, who is making a fairly elaborate, precise encalmo vase from his Genie series. What I'm really doing is watching Preston and Boyd Sugiki work, and every now and then heating up color, taking pictures of the crowd and chatting with the other studio employees. Suddenly things start to go wrong. The temperature in the holding garage slips to 6OOº before anyone notices that it has run out of fuel and the piece that was in there - the top half of the vessel - has long fractures running the length of it. They scramble to replace the tank and in doing so spike the temperature up past 1200º and the shattered piece begins to slump. I glance over at Preston, who is working on the other half of the encalmo and looks concerned. What happens next was the most amazing save that I've ever seen, as Preston makes a new collar, picks up the slumped and shattered piece and somehow or other welds it hack together and reshapes it; And joins the encalmo, lip to lip, finishing the piece with superior aplomb.

Snapshot #3: The last presentation of the last day is the Young Artists lecture, a slide presentation by four emerging artists who have been out of school for five years or less: Boyd Sugiki, John Miller, Jennifer Williams and Ken Ikushima. With varying degrees of nervousness, they show their slides and tell their stories and it is one of the best presentations of the conference. They are just beginning to hit their stride as artists, and the slides they show- include the false steps, dead ends and evolution that lead them into their current work. Not only was that work outstanding but they also provide insight into their sources, inspiration and techniques. It's a compressed, time-lapse demonstration of the maturation process. Remarkably and perhaps luckily, all of them are working daily with glass: two of them are assistants in the studios of mid-career artists, one is working high-volume production and one, after teaching for a year as a sabbatical replacement, is building his own studio. After their hour has concluded, I gather up their slides and bring them to the front of the room. They are besieged by students with questions, gallerists with business cards, and old friends with congratulations.

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