The collaborative efforts of several dedicated volunteers and SAMA staff has finally culminated in the mind-blowing program for the American Mosaic Summit – Seattle/Tacoma ’13! We appreciate your patience while we finalized this highly anticipated program during the past few weeks. We are working hard to ensure the process of registering in the SAMA Store (12 noon EST Dec. 9th) will be the smoothest yet! And now, without further ado… a special message from our Hosts, Richard Davis and Kelley Knickerbocker…
Dear SAMA Friends,
In September 2010, ten Pacific Northwest SAMA members gathered at my (Richard Davis’s) house to discuss the possibility of hosting a SAMA conference in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Now we’re getting ready to register for that very conference! We’ve had a great time planning for your arrival, and have come up with some exciting new approaches to activities and schedule. Here are the highlights…
2013 Conference Host Committee Co-Chairs, Richard Davis and Kelley Knickerbocker with SAMA Operations Manager, Chris Forillo
Since many of you arrive on Tuesday, we’ll begin the Mosaic Marathon that evening so you can jump right into the camaraderie and fun of executing Lynn Adamo and Mark Brody’s great design for the South Puget Sound Boys and Girls Club. To see the design and learn how to volunteer, click here.
Rather than just one local mosaic tour, there will be two mosaic tours (Tacoma and Seattle) and a tour of the Spectrum Stained Glass factory. Kelley and I have had lots of fun discovering our local public mosaics, and I think you’ll agree we’ve found some winners! Click here for descriptions, schedule and pricing.
The Education Committee has put together a 2-day Educational Program for Wednesday and Thursday that will knock your socks off! With more topics and instructors than ever before available at the American Mosaic Summit, we don’t know how you will choose!
Fast food restaurants are scarce within a 5-minute walking radius of the Tacoma Convention Center (TCC), and we don’t want you to lose out on precious class time foraging for midday food, so Soup/Salad/Sandwich Buffet lunches will be available at the TCC Wednesday thru Saturday. We will also tuck a listing of alternate dining options and restaurants into your registration packet at check-in for the days you may want to venture out and explore the neighborhood. There are mini fridges in every room of the Hotel Murano for those with specialized diets or anyone who wants to stock up midday or late-night munchies!
The Welcome Mixer and 6th annual Mosaic Art Salon will be held in one of the TCC’s beautiful atrium lobbies. This will be the perfect night to chill and reconnect with friends after two intense days of workshops and the opening of the Vendor Marketplace in the TCC’s Exhibit Hall earlier that afternoon.
Toyoharu Kii, SAMA 2013 Keynote Speaker
We are very excited to announce that the Conference Presentation Program on Friday and Saturday will spotlight an international treasure of the mosaic art world. All of us at SAMA are incredibly honored to have Toyoharu Kii from Toyko, Japan as our 2013 Keynote Speaker and the first invitational contributor to Mosaic Arts International. Rounding out our stellar presentation line-up are Karen Ami, Lillian Sizemore, Jo Braun, Erin Pankratz-Smith, Patricia Marin, Jennifer Kuhns and Laurel True.
We know from past conference evaluations and from being frequent conference goers ourselves how important the social events are to your conference experience. Friday night’s private Mosaic Arts International (MAI) opening reception at the Museum of Glass will be out of this world: imagine full access to the amazing mosaic works in MAI as well as to some of the glass world’s most significant offerings, all in one beautiful venue.
Did you think we’d bring the conference to the Northwest and not have a closing party/event of some kind? Not on your life! Kelley and I look forward to the Saturday evening SAMA closing event all year, and we’ve planned a great one for you and for SAMA in 2013. We’d like you all to join us first for a delicious, full-service dinner in the Murano’s ballroom. This fundraising dinner for SAMA’s General Operating Fund is a separate line item on your registration. We’re going to pull out all the stops to make this a great night for you, so you can expect a DJ and dancing, a cash bar, and some wonderful prizes for you to bid on. Come eat, drink, and dance the last conference night away for a great cause!
When NCECA visited the Seattle area this year, you couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into a local ceramics exhibition. There were over 75 of them simultaneously! While mosaics haven’t quite reached that level of saturation, each year our members do work hard to turn up the volume of mosaic exposure, producing regional, small group and solo exhibitions around the country. Taking our cue from NCECA, we’ve seized the opportunity to enhance your conference experience and turn up the volume of mosaic art available for public viewing in the Tacoma/Seattle area next spring. In addition to what promises to be another incredible MAI, and our members’ Mosaic Art Salon, there will be two mosaic exhibitions brought to you by Northwest SAMA members. The first is a non-juried show featuring Northwest mosaic artists in a gallery just six blocks from the Murano, and the second is an invitational show of mosaic artists from the Americas in Seattle’s historic International District (both are included in the mosaic tours). We hope you’ll get to see all four of these shows – and come away richly inspired – either before, during, or after the conference program.
Okay, we’ve done our part, now you all head over to the SAMA store (at 12noon EST on Sunday, December 9th) and register for the conference, okay? We so look forward to welcoming you to the Pacific Northwest in April!
Richard Davis and Kelley Knickerbocker
Tacoma ’13 Conference Host Committee Co-Chairs
