2025 Gathering of the Guilds, It was a Great Show!

The 2025 Gathering of the Guilds is now behind us. It has been a long journey to the show that Martin Kagan started a year ago. It really took a village to pull this off. It may surprise many people that this was a big leap of faith by the PNWS board. We committed more than 50% of our annual budget and a large number of volunteer hours to make this happen. The feedback I have received says it was well worth the investment. We did not make a pile of money but we did build community, provided exposure for many artists who had not shown with PNWS and displayed our work to a new audience. There were so many people in the organization who put their heart into making this a great experience. Leslie with her expert, welcoming management, Marlena with the demo booth, Karen, Marlena and Parris completed the difficult jury work, Jennifer and Alisa with the digital slide show, Russ building the gallery, Alisa and Mary creating promotions and social media buzz, Phil managing 101 challenges of the gallery, Bob and Bill managing the financial aspects and so many more volunteers I missed.

We should all be very proud of our gallery and booths. We received so many positive comments from fellow artists and the public. People commented on the variety of the art work in the gallery and took their time wandering through the gallery and booths.

The show set-up, operation and break-down was really smooth. I have to give Marlena a call out for managing the volunteer schedule which was the engine behind the show. She had some bumps but smoothed them out and made it look easy.

The demo booth was so very professional with every detail done to perfection. It was complete with demo schedules places to display work artist profiles, contact into and photos. I heard a visitor say they had just come from the demo booth and was totally impressed with the high quality of the demonstration going on.

The digital slide show was fun and it was entertaining to hear members reminisce. It added meaningful depth to the gallery by showing members at work.

As if all our art was not enough, Alisa inspired an International Sculpture Day parade. About 10 members donned costumes and paraded through the show and out into the atrium. It was smiles all around and members of other guilds said they want to be informed next year so they can participate. We may have started something big!

Start planning for 2026. The show will be a the Oregon Convention Center April 24-26.

Please take a few minutes to fill out our 2025 Gathering of the Guilds Survey

 

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