Bantam Tools PlotterFest
This last weekend the team at Bantam Tools hosted Bantam Tools PlotterFest24. A big thank you to all the invited artists who came and shared their work and their passion with each other. I’m still floating on a cloud and very inspired.
We invited 35 artists who make art with plotters to join us at our HQ in Peekskill New York. Folks travelled from as far away as Europe and California to join us. I think most folks knew of each other and some had met some others in person, but there were many moments that I saw where two superstars of the plotter world got to meet each other and form a mutual admiration society. I hope that many folks made new friends and were able to deepen friendships during their visit.
The event was catered by our local Kathleen’s Tea Room. Vivian is the owner and her tean prepared food for 3 meals and kept us very happily fed. Lots of folks also spent evenings at our neighbor, the Copperhead Club.
Having great food and a “3rd space” to go to nearby was a great part of the event. Good food is important for a gathering!
Saturday was an unconference style gathering. The topics were wildly variable. We set up a room for discussions, a room for presentations, and a room for workshops. Rooms where the board was left empty folks filled those rooms with casual conversation. The hard part was that there were more things than you could go to so you had to make choices about which places to be at. Besides great conversations about obsessive pen/ink choices, there were more open discussions about how to make videos of your work and be online as an artist.
Everyone brought an artwork to leave behind and the variety was staggering. Each artist has their own style and it showed! It was also great for folks to be able to be talking about their work and be able to point at the gallery wall and show what they do instead of opening up their phone and sharing the work.
We had a fun activity where we filled up two giant spaghetti sauce tubs with pens and had folks guess the amount of pens in both tubs. The ones who got closest to the amount of pens got to choose between 3 prizes, a signed Vera Molnar print, a Bantam Tools NextDraw and a signed copy of Windell’s book.
I had my Coin Op Plot machine out and each participant got 4 quarters to get a piece of art. I really love this project and I can share more about it if there are folks who want to make their own vending machine for art.
On the last day of the conference, guest split up and went to Dia: Beacon, Manitoga, and Kino Saito to have local art experiences and decompress from the intensity of the unconference.
Having a gathering like this was a dream for us that got to come true. Thank you to all the folks who came and to my Bantam Tools team for hosting this talented group of artists.
