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Once in California ( 2008) - CBA Spring Conference
| від 8 09 2008 - 10:31
Каліфорнія 2008. Ковальське щастя у раю!
Once Upon the Time …
Once in the Paradise…
Once in Your Lifetime…
Once in California …
The phrase “Hold two anvils in each arm – one per each person arriving!!” – serves as the password to the usual question “How would I recognize you at the luggage claim while meeting you at the airport?” Here, in LAX (Los Angeles Airport), these precautions were useful again: a man known to us only by writing e-mails, the organizer of the Spring conference in Vista, Southern California, Dave Vogel easily waved two anvils in the air – the drawn ones!! Not many Ukrainians miss the connecting flight in new York due to the delay of the flights, then fly to LA instead of San Diego carrying a decisive small bag weighing 25 kg (imagine what was inside- YES! metal stuff and tools!), arrive in the middle of spring in California. Bingo! We met! Handshake, first hello – and back to San Diego- about two hour ride by car, to the place where we were supposed to stay for some days. To be sure we arrived in the right state, Dave stops in the halfway at the beach –befuddling smell of the south, thick night air filled by the sounds of the waves- the Pacific! Not much is seen around- midnight! – but the first impression so soothing and overwhelming: if not to see but to feel these first sensations was worth flying for 17 hours altogether.
Seeing is believing and the morning sunrise/sunshine revealed a fantastic view from the window – a bay, palms, and the ocean seen from the top of the hill where the house was. We were staying in the house- no owners there for some days but keys and fridge at your full disposal! Pleasantly shocking first experience. Also “one-hand-cat” – a cat that we tamed in two days (before it lived in the house for some years and even the owner couldn’t caress it with two hands). We did it! So it became a “two-handed-cat” which caused a surprise of the owner and she asked about our secret afterwards!
Two days fully/tightly packed with new impressions followed that paradise morning. Museums, view points, old light house, war-time museum, Old Town San Diego State Historical Park, tasty sea-food, wonderful sculptures on the seafront/embankment- the city municipal project – dozens of metal sculptures in the walking area in the modern architecture surrounding of downtown. The most important landmarks were seen; a “must” was heard: “Hotel “California” sung in the street by a bard! Yes, we are in the right place- California! One drawback of the organizers: the migration of whales hadn’t been not so carefully planned; it didn’t coincide with the minute we were at the whale-view point – so, we didn’t see the whales!!
But the rest was perfect: so much attention, friendly attitude! Didn’t want to leave but had to: Heather McLarty, whom we met for 15 minutes at Helfstyn smith festival (CZ) some years ago, came from LA by car to pick us up. Strangely enough but a quarter of an hour is enough to make friends and meet each other as best friends! Blacksmiths must be really having something different in their veins as the other people do: positive emotions and good relations appear at the blink of the eye!
So, never-ending chain of overwhelming impressions went on: all kinds of museums, famous Venice beach – one of the best Californian beaches lived its own life: street vendors, bicycles, joggers, skaters, surfers…Shall I go on?! Lots of familiar names: all was at the hand’s distance: Pasadena, Santa Monica, Melrose, Paramount Pictures, Hollywood boulevard, Beverly Hills… New day – more sightseeing: Disney concert hall – a glittering miracle of architecture, blues-and-jazz restaurant, Thai food for the first time on our lives..National Botanical Garden was a revelation: jungles, tropical and rain forest zones, deserts stuffed with all kinds of cactuses (and they call this orgy / riot of colour and shape a DESERT!!): unbelievable shapes and forms- a natural encyclopedia for a blacksmith – just forge it all (magnify all forms) and you will get fantastic designs. Hundreds of macro photos were taken (as in book by Karl Blossfeldt)- to examine at home and inspire from nature. At this very moment Sergiy felt he was born ad lived in deserts in his previous lives!
Back to Heather’s and Troy’s ancient house, an old musical studio before, with all atmosphere, objects, photos of the former owners of the house on the walls – now their home almost in the downtown; a blacksmith shop in a tipi( Indian house) sawn by the husband, a Hollywood actor for his wife to forge there! What a family!
Anvils (see the 1st paragraph!) were not necessary in San Francisco airport next day – we knew Lowell Chaput from Ybbsitz festival in Austria some years ago. Again, 5-minute acquaintance, some years apart with almost no contacts- and such a family-like reception!! Their home was our home, we loved Linda and Lowell very much, as well as their house, pets, their tequila drinks – Margarita!- and!!! the daughter- she was expecting a child. No need to say we gave her useful instructions and now Linda and Lowell are happiness-radiation grandparents. A perfect boy was born, half-Ukrainian! (no-no, not our merit! but Sarah’s husband’s who is originally from Lviv (Ukraine , a city quite close to ours!) An idea just came to my mind: we might have been easily adopted by the Chaputs- what a wonderful American-Ukrainian family it might have been. But no, I think we misbehaved although tried to be as good as gold. So, we had ONLY!!! calm family meals at home at candle light, tasty home-made food, nice talks about life, our countries, work, blacksmithing far deep into the night, free internet access ,and a demo at Lowell’s shop one day, so perfectly equipped by the way. About 25 people came to socialize, talk,eat doughnuts and pizza and drink enormous amounts of coffee (up/according to the European standards!), a slide-show presentation of modern Ukrainian state of artistic blacksmithing. It looked like the people present felt the “fresh” wind from Ukraine in the creativeness, high mastery of the works presented. Hopefully this wind will bring more American smiths to the numerous Ukrainian blacksmith festivals next year! We do hope it will be like this!
All the time outside the shop and cosy family dinners and burning hundreds of our photos to CDs was devoted to one more sparkling Californian pearl- San Francisco. A video game “Driver” or photos of glossy magazines we had seen before came to real life- a famous Golden Gate Bridge, tram, streets, hills, Coit Tower, China town, countless fantastic views, sea-seals at pier # 39…Fortunate were Linda and Lowell to be close to those two lucky Ukrainians: never before had they seen so many parrots flying freely and singing (they call it a SONG!! ) at small terrace garden at Coit Tower. Managing parrots in San Francisco was better than managing whales in San Diego – there were flocks of birds everywhere! I got an impression that those close to lucky Ukrainians Californians will see more of their land wonders. And here comes another proof of my theorem: Whitney Potter, the CBA (Californian Blacksmith Association) librarian, a lucky owner of 3 perfect kids and gorgeously equipped shop. He got the rare chance to see more of giant redwoods (I think for the 1000th time !) with his new visitors-us !and have more of neck exercises together with us: “Oh, look-what a tall tree!” – and the head looks from the ground to the top of the tree! “Oh no, have a look at this giant tree!”- and again the neck/head moves up and down( repeat the exercise for 1345 times- so many trees we measured with our eyes- a good prevention/preventive measures of osteochondrosis –maybe this is the secret of California dwellers good-looking appearance? or maybe a freezing cold wind on a sunny day almost in summer keeps San Francisco’s inhabitants fit all year round?( we will not print out the photos from this excursion on that day – the noses are strangely red at all photos!)
We were in hedgehog gloves all the time, always in stress: “See that island?! There is a famous Al-Catras(don’t know the spelling ) prison there! No one escaped from there during its hundreds of years’ history”. – OK, no need to repeat the hint: we behaved: only one shot of tequila per day, good manners at table in an Italian-style café Trieste famous for its visitors-celebrities: a well-known Coppola writing a script of his movie there one day, jazz musicians and singers, politicians and actors. Hope five next celebrities will be 3.5 Chaputs (0.5- this is a baby) and 2 Polubotkos!
“All play and no work makes Sergiy a dull guy!” – is our interpretation of the proverb. The hands were eager/searching/scratching/looking for some heated iron and the day at last came – the president (as it turned out to be –elected for one more term at the CBA Spring -2008 conference) Herb Upham took us in his giant !! car to Vista, the venue of the conference.
A “must –stop” half way through the valley: a famous steak restaurant, a really good one, the best meat in California spiced with the smell of thousands of caws several miles away. It is difficult to forget both the juicy taste of the meat and heavenly nice odor. But no one seems to care about the smell- the taste was 10 times stronger/better to remember!
And here it comes at last – the sight of Vista Tractor Museum- the venue of the conference. Lots of machinery carefully collected, preserved, fixed, exposed to the visitors. This is what we liked a lot and envy you: you always keep saying: “We have no history as long as Europeans do”. That’s true in a way: you have your own history and what is amazing –you can preserve anything you had perfectly well. This is what we should learn from you! So, among steam power tractors we see the equipment never seen before: a whole shop using one steam engine/diesel transmitting its power to a band/tape that starts all kinds of equipment in the shop( forge, air-hammer, rough grinding machine, drilling machine, etc.);all carefully fixed and returned to life! Amazing!
30 years of experience, perfect organization, team working as a clock, lots of events to participate in: numerous master classes, young smiths’ competition, iron-in-the-hat lottery, auction, “hands-in” courses( how to make a rose, tool),conference of CBA members and election of a new president (Herb Upham for one more term-bravo, Herb!- your businessman’s organizational abilities were highly appreciated by the members), talks with the best businessmen about successful conducting the business ( Dorothy Stieger, Greg Eng and others). This is the peculiarity of the majority of American smith events: taking into consideration that most (90%) members are hobbyists, not professionals, the main/special stress /emphasis is laid on educational side of conferences in contrast to Ukrainian or European events- there mostly professionals gather. But the quantity of members is impressing: 1000 members in Californian Blacksmith Association only (compare to 100 in all Ukraine!) But we need not forget the time criteria: 30 years against 3. Who knows maybe in 27 years there will be 1001 smith in the Smith Union of Ukraine?!
About 300 participants seemed to be invisible during the day – everyone chose the master class or demo up to their desires; all the bees came back to the hive at mealtimes and there you again and again saw familiar faces, made new friends.
Erin Simmons telling in his soft manner how to make his original –shaped hammers, Shawn Lowell – a tiny girl explaining how to design and incorporate stained glass and metal in works, Heather McLarty with her amazing repoussage technique; her friend Jay Kidwell was doing the copper vessel raising, two brothers Brazeal giving two demos in two days- these are not all master classes held during the days of the conference.
And of course a “SUPER STAR TEAM” working next station with Sergiy giving the hints which way to go to this choir but everyone in the team was a conductor himself working together in unison : during two days charming out a collaborative project “Tree of Friendship” The day it was finished was special – it was the Ukrainian Easter, so the idea of the project was born itself: egg-shaped tree, with the egg as the symbol of revived life, development, evolution; with meridians and parallels on the project as the typical lines on a Ukrainian Easter painted egg, central part of the tree- as a yoke inside of the egg – your inner world. It was a project giving place for everyone’s creativity, not a dogma but a living and breathing creature, undergoing changes with the efforts of everyone coming to the team. And need to say personalities were real celebrities: Lowell Chaput, Michael Bondi, Josef Haberman – Alfred Habermann’s grandson, one of the founders of CBA Toby Hichman, owner of a well-equipped shop Greg Eng, a flower among those men – a girl-smith Shawn Lowell, a smith of a Hungarian origin Tibor Laky, technical heart of microphones, video cameras and overhead projectors Wayne Parris and others.
Another symbolism of the project was as follows: Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine was going to host a blacksmith festival in 2 weeks; the project there was “A TREE”. So forging a tree in California (one of the design proposals for a Ukrainian festival) was like stretching two branches of one tree over the Atlantic, as if joining two festivals: in California and Ukraine!
Before the visit Dave Vogel asked not once what the project would be. It was difficult to answer not knowing who would be on the team; how professional the people would be. It turned out that such a big project in such limited time in such inadequate conditions had never been made before in the 30-year-long history of the association but the experiment was worth risking as it turned out to be. Due to a super-class team’s efforts they did it! Two days about 15 members of the team altogether working in shifts (one day one person, next day he was replaced by another), one spring air hammer which was rather old, gas torch, arc welding, four anvils, and millions of calories lost while forging at this unusually hot and incinerating for this time of the year day.
It was put together/joined/assembled right in time and went still warm to the auction and won 5 thousand dollars- the highest sum of money ever paid at the auction. What a happy owner of the tree – Dave Vogel-is going to do with it-we don’t know: either to plant it in the garden to grow and give iron fruit or use some finishing and let it shine/rust in a modern art museum! If it ever goes to Sotheby’s auction, it is going to cost a fortune because of its history and fingerprints of the best Californian blacksmiths!
Seems to be the happy end of the story: back to Ukraine, whirlpool of preparations of our Ivano-Frankivsk festival, report /speech at the festival conference about Spring CBA event, writing articles to Ukrainian, German, British, American magazines… that’s it.. But wait, something more is missing! The life experience you will never forget, warmth of relations, such a peculiar attitude, new friends who feel like a family members now…Difficult to part.. And wait, something more: soothing sounds of waves, salty wind in your face, soft sand under your feet…California
PS The day we were leaving a shark attacked a surfer.
Kind Californians kept asking us: “Have you swum in the ocean? No?! Come again to swim!”—-maybe the sharks are still hungry???
-No, they don’t eat the foreigners! –we were assured in the end!
OK, then maybe once we will go to this paradise one more time? I feel something is itching on my back…maybe the angel wings start growing??!!
photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26873051@N03/sets/
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