SNAG Conference Review

Well, I haven't really written too much on the SNAG conference as it had some slightly awkward and off-puting situations involved. It started out horribly, and had be second-guessing my decision to even go right off the bat. To let all know, Vince and I are all good. I've told the entire story of the incredibly unlucky occurances that happened leading up to the trip far too many times, so I won't go into that topic on here. It's neither here nor there, and it is in the past. If you must (which I promise, besides Vince and Amanda, no one must) talk to me about it to clear the air, feel free to approach me.

Anyway, to move on with the description of the conference itself. The first day (Wednesday), I really didn't arrive at the hotel until about 9PM, so I missed everything that day. I checked in (to a very awkward and irritating welcome) to the conference, then I went to my room where I paniced myself to sleep. The second day, my roommate Rickson Salkeld arrived. I had previously made friends with Rickson through Crafthaus where we had some great deep and intellectual conversations, which only continued at SNAG. We went on a gallery hop leading up to the exhibition in motion. We went to the Menil Collection, which I thought was the most impressive. There was a massive collection of surrealist work from Dali, Picasso, Tanguy, Lam, Magritte, and loads more. It was amazing to see the ranging works of a style that I find so influencial. They also had a small room called Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision. This room contained many odd items that were owned and/or collected by surrealist artists.



This room was amazing to see because of the collection of native masks, as well as French theatre masks.

From there, we went to the exhibition in motion which Rickson was part of. This was very entertaining, though I wasn't the largest fan of the space used. The Houston Museum of Fine arts is absolutely beautiful, but it wasn't as visually impressive of the Exhibition in Motion in Philadelphia. But considering how unconventional this type of event is, it worked out fine.





After that, I ended up at dinner with Rickson, Brigitte Martin, Michelle Pajak-Reynolds, and some others. It was a great night with a lot of philosphical artistic talk. It became one of the most perspective-changing nights of the trip.

The next couple of days, I went to every lecture, demo (makume), and presentation that I could get to. I also met up with a local friend of mine from high school for lunch. On the final night of the trip, we had the normal final dinner. Passing the torch, raffles, dinner, dressing nice, socializing, dancing, drinking....Not my things. I ended up outside chatting with a friend that I made days earlier named Phrog. Phrog is a tattoo artist from Austin. After talking for a few minutes, his friends (also attendees of the conference) called and wanted to have some drinks. They invited me to join, so I did.

It ended up that Phrog and his friends were Steampunk jewelers. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a practicioner of the Steampunk style, and have actually been the recipient of a grant to study Steampunk metals. I ended up at an underground Steampunk rave! That was great for my research. So I'm going to end this post with some pictures from the rave.

See you space cowboy......