These first 2 shots are of Marcel's boro gloryhole with a spent piece on the ground glowing... this whole demo was amazing- the scale is beyond anything else being done with borosilicate. It's an exercise in pure exploration of a medium's properties and attributes- it's very costly and plenty of people question the point since it's so similar to soft glass at this scale. I am missing a pic of the pot where they were dipping a blowtube in pure amber/purple (a colored glass). This allowed them to build up huge gathers of glass and blow borosilicate as if it's soft glass- it's an amazing feat to be sure.

These next several shots of are Scott Deppe working on his piece... AMAZING. Just awesome to watch, it was really distracting actually since I just wanted to stop working and see what he was doing.

This is the masterful Eusheen working on his hilarious piece. He took a friend's advice to do something totally different and ended up making this funny face with a hat on it themed piece. Very clever use of technique with the pattern work to create the facial features- that's not easy!! You can see the face on the piece in the pic- as well as the just incredible patternwork throughout the rest of the piece.

And here is Natedizzle working on his plasma tube piece thingy.... I'm not sure exactly what it was lol. He was a champion though, we started the competition at 11am and he didn't finish until almost 5am! And it was 90+ degrees (at least- that's before all the kilns and torches!!!) most of the day so it was exhausting. Seeing him persevere was absolutely awesome.

Here are a couple short videos where you can see/ hear how cool this piece really is.. it was amazing he was just making this 10 ft away from me as I made my piece! *****I'm REALLY SORRY about the swearing in the first part of the first video- you can hear my sarcastic remark about it but just understand the person was really excited about the piece just being made in front of their eyes- and it was now glowing and shooting purple lighting bolts out of it!!!! IT'S SO COOL. I should of just re-recorded but we'd been waiting to see that sucker light up for 18 hours so... what can I say?

Here's my piece! Notice that mine isn't as large, etc. as the others. That's all because of my technique/ style. I do what's called "inside out" patterning which simply put is time consuming, BUT the reason to do it is the details...

ME [this was on the artist's nametag, this is not me as in Kevin Nail]

Buck- the winner of the grand prize!!! Congrats Buck!!! His piece was interesting- it's a great way to "hide" the function in the design. Props. I saw some of his other pieces as well and they were just fantastic... look him up.

And here is Salt's piece... this is just ridiculous (in a good way!) isn't it?!?! He's got faces morphing into other faces, along with really cool color application to boot. SO COOL.

Eusheen's finished piece... sick....

Midas with some very interesting work- it is in pieces unfortunately which I didn't even realize because he made it look pretty cool in his presentation!

Ace's goblet.

Sheepdawg's piece- an inline bubbler- this is a pretty technical piece as far as seals, etc.

Scott's piece- which obviously didn't make it... it was an amazing thing that it came as far as it did. Scott had that skull with 3 bones on it and it all fell off his handle on the bench and broke in to pieces. The skull itself had 2 gaping holes in it- it's phenomenal that he fixed it!!!!!!! But unfortunately at the end it popped apart in the kiln as far as I understand... killer work no matter what.

Johnny Rise's piece- I believe it was intended to be a bit more together, but still super cool creation.

And the other winner- Mr. Gray. This guy's piece is awesome- just look, I don't need to describe it. Just AWESOME.

Josh McDaniel's piece- not quite finished, I heard he had some problems but still very cool piece!

Natedizzle's finished piece...

Doshworld's piece- he's done a lot of hanging pieces like this, but I've not see this particular design before.

Hamm's piece- this guy is very talented and I can't even begin to explain his piece. All I can say is it's super technical and BIG and awesome- pics aren't even coming close to doing it justice. At all.

Christina Cody's piece- I liked this piece a lot but unfortunately it fell over soon after and broke!! Luckily she didn't care and wasn't bummed out- don't know why, it was cool!

Corn's piece- the kiln she used got too hot and slightly slumped her pieces (the worst!!!!!!!) so they are a little off shape-wise but still very cool!

Alex K.'s work- very nice color scheme and cleanly done.

And one more pic of a Eusheen piece that was sold at the show- this was one of the most incredible pieces I've gotten to hold. He worked with another artist (Natey... not sure of the rest of his name) and these guys just killed it. It was like 3 ft tall and in the pic it's on a metal stand- if that's not art, nothing is. (it's a pipe folks!!)