Andrian's (late) AC report
Andrija Popovic
Yes, it is my much delayed AC report. I needed a few days to digest
everything that happened. Overall, I think AC improves vastly every
year. It may not be noticable to everyone who attends, but from the
inside a lot of thought and time is taken to make sure we don't make the
same mistakes as the previous year. Of course, some things we have no
control over but... I digress.
Thursday, June 29.
After much packing and preparation, I was ready for the drive up to King
of Prussia. My trunk was overflowing with supplies (breakfast bars and
SoBe drinks), along with my camera, my laptop, two mostly empty
sketchbooks (One for general subjects, the other for adult works), and a
suitcase full of stuff.
The trip went surprisingly well despite one major delay. Just outside of
Baltimore, traffic stopped DEAD. On the shoulders, county and state
police wizzed by. Turns out, a few miles ahead there was a 'barricade
situation.' It took about half an hour before it was resolved and
traffic started moving again.
I arrived at the hotel around 1:00 and checked into my room. After
getting cleaned up and taking a quick nap, I headed downstairs to make
contact with the rest of the art show crew. Peter had just arrived, but
Dale and the others had already begun sorting the pipework. After
helping Peter unload his car, he let me know that the others wouldn't be
back until around 6 or so. Apparantly, we had not been given all the
pipework we needed from Philcon and had to rustle up the rest.
So, I headed on over to Operations to get my badge. Afterwards, I would
check and see if my roommate, Caprica, had checked it. Guess who I
bumped into at Ops? Turns out as soon as she checked in, they put her to
work sorting badges. We got our little staff tags and headed up to the
room to unpack.
After getting caught up on each other's lives, we decided to head out
for dinner before catching up with the rest of the Art Show staff. We
went to the Applebies (sp?) beside the mall and were shocked by the good
service. The waiter actually asked us intelligent questions about the
con and we did our best to play "Furry's Embasadors."
While we ate, we peeked through the con book. I yelped in delight when I
found they had published my short story! Even better, the illo that went
with it was a beautiful kitsune picture by Conrad "Lynx" Wong that fit
the story perfectly. I thought I couldn't get more hyper, but then the
death by chocolate arrived. :)
Around 6, we headed to the art show again and started setting up in
ernest. We could only get part of the show up and running because we
would not take posession of the room where the adult art show was held
until around 10. No matter. We worked our little butts off while making
fun of the 'coaches' next door.
Someone had not adjusted the speaker system so we heard the lecture from
next door, clear as day, and picked out where they'd stolen their ideas
from (everywhere from Amway to Robert Heinlein, apparantly).
As ten neared, frustration set in. We had not recieved the rest of the
materials and, even if they were there, we couldn't get into the room.
The coaches had run over their time. Luckily, there was an all-staff
meeting in the Dealer's room that we got to attend.
More staff meetings should be hosted by men like Dr. Conway. :) Not only
did we get introduced to the rest of the staff (a big thing for us,
actually. When you work the art show, you sometimes wonder if there is a
con outside the lines of bidder registrants...) and heard many stories.
Including long, explcit warnings about a certain cretin we've already
discussed on this newsgroup.
Around 11, a gentleman came in, asking for volunteers. When we asked
why, he said the art show materials had arrived and the room was open.
Who needs volunteers when the entire art show staff leaps to it's feet
and heads to the loading dock.
Construction wasn't finished until around 1:30am. Unfortunately, we had
to forgo the art show staff meeting to clarify proceedures due to the
abovementioned factors (we will have on of those some day, dammit! :)),
but it was a good day's work and we passed out satisfied that we were
well ahead of last year.
Friday, June 30th.
It was cardio-vascular exercise day! Much of Friday is still a blurr,
but I spent most of it at accellerated speed so it's understandable. The
morning was spent checking in all the artists as they moved into their
bays. This year we were literally swamped by people wanting to show off
and did not have enough room (The Adams Mark, I'm told, will easily
satisfy all our space requirements).
Check in, believe it or not, is one of the nice parts of the Art Show.
It can be rushed, yes, and it does get stressful at times. But it's also
the point where everyone starts clicking together as a team. As always,
we wished we had a bit more on-site prep time to get schedules set, but
circumstance didn't allow it. Still, I got to check in many artists and
see many interesting works of art.
The variety in the art show surprised me. We had everything from
cheesecake to three-dimensional work to Cubist paintings to some really
funky interactive pictures. Oh, and don't forget the black-light art. :)
There were too many works to just choose one as a standout, but Paf's
"Guardian" caught a lot of attention. We didn't realize how much until
later on...
I did get out of the Art Show for a little while, but I'll run that
story down in another post...
To Be Continued...
--
Andrija Popovic
vu...@erols.com
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