Finally! Great read Jen, thank you. (still wondering about that Josh Faught though. Is this the first year the Betty Bowen was offered to somebody outside Washington State?)

HuskyQuaker: I just took a look through this year's book, "Betty Bowen Award: Thirty Years," and while I don't know all the artists, from reading their backgrounds I can answer the question in a couple of ways. The one thing I do know is that Marie Watt, winner of the award in 2005, lives in Portland (and did at the time of winning the award), so Faught is not the first non-Washingtonian to win. That said, Watt may be the first. The overwhelming trend of the past was that artists were selected who had already shown in Seattle, and the vast majority of those lived in Seattle, with an even larger majority (perhaps all of them) living inside Washington state.

I, for one, am glad that the award has been opened up. Faught was a bold choice—he hasn't shown in Seattle or lived here, but I think his work is extremely worthy of attention here, and even links to Northwest crafting traditions in a way that's not simplistic at all.

My two cents.

I did manage to sell four more pieces after I saw you (Jen) on the last hour of the last day, thankfully. Still not great but I'm glad to have done the fair. I do think the contacts I made will pay off. It's not like people are rushing to Seattle to find artists.

Juanalonso: Congrats!

A little reality please. Tuaczon lives in Paris. Probably used his parents' address.

Interesting read, I've been trying to figure out what connection the Seattle art scene has to the national/int'l art market and there were some promising illuminations made in this article. Altho the whole Aqua saga is kinda unfortunate. I made it to Art Basel, Scope and Pulse and the Rubell collection this year, and even Scope was disappointing (altho I had to go b/c of friends). I have a ton of pictures from the fairs here: http://laurenalbrecht.wordpress.com/2009… My 2 cents - after attending the NYC fairs for the past 5 years and Miami for the 1st time the quality of work exhibited at the various satellite fairs doesn't seem to deviate that greatly up or down year over year