I just got back from the show and I have to say it was THE BEST show I have ever been to. The work was so good it was scary. PF members did very well with Joe Hudson garnering the gold along with Jason Whitman, Lou Masses and many others. My Taxi dio got me another Silver and I got someone to commission me to do my Zoot Suit Riots dio.
Many Europeans were there in person or by pieces represented including Kostas Kariotoles from Greece, Christien Petite and Phillipe Parison from France, Adrian Bay, Alan and Marian Ball, Ludivico Carrano from Italy, Mike Blank and many others who's names right now escape me.
Christien Petite was made Grandmaster and rightly so as his work has been consistently outstanding over the last few years. I got some really great tips and tricks from some great masters inlcuding Greg DiFranco (who had a retrosepctive of all of his work from the sixties to present day), Ron Tunison, Bill Mercklein and many others. I had a three way conversation on scratchbuiding/sculpting with Phillipe Parison and Ludivico Carrano which was pretty interesting considering none of us spoke each others languages very well but through drawings and a smattering of English/French/Italian we all managed to get our points across. Both Phillipe and Ludivico had marvelous scratchbuilt pieces with Phillipe explaining to me how he airbrushes 54mm figures!!! Just gorgeous stuff.
Ron Tunison and Keith Rocco put together a tremendous lecture on work they both did for a new Civil War museum where Ron did the life sized bronze of a bivouac at the museum entrance and Keith had done the huge museum display murals.
And of course and of you who know Tommy Osbourne will not be surprised to hear that he WAS AS INSANE AS EVER!!
I did not shoot pictures but many did and I am sure more goodies will be revealed by other attendees who post here. All I can say is if you did not make it you missed one of the better shows in quality and quantity of work shown, attendance and vendors present. There had to have been close to one thousand entries from over one hundred and fifty competetitors.
Now I have to go do some modeling!
