Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 8
and other group dynamics of judges' deliberations.
In the Pacific Northwest, where they have their own waterfowling traditions, events in California prompted other P.F.D.A. members to promote wildlife art shows of their own. In 1977, carver Boyd Schell, aided by at least one bonafide Tule Rat and two "originals" founded the Wild Birds in Wood Show, in Portland, Oregon. This annual exhibition of regional talent continued at the World Forestry Center for the next 17 years. In neighboring Idaho, another P.F.D.A. member in Boise, Ted Smith, emulated the Portland success by promoting an annual Idaho Wildlife Art Show, sponsored by a local coalition of Idaho sportsmen.
In the 1990s, however these efforts at introducing wildlife art to the west were beginning to reach their limits, and by 1994, both shows had been eclipsed by the Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show in Tacoma, Washington. Better financed, and not limited to local artists, this show had been building since 1988. But times were changing. The Pacific Rim Show moved north to a larger market in Seattle (it is axiomatic in the genre arts that when a community gets "saturated," it is time to pull up stakes), where in 1999, production was taken over by a large art materials company in Seattle. These new owners had a larger agenda; changed the name to Pacific Rim Art Exposition, and in its brochures announced that the new Expo "opens its doors to all genre of art."
At present, this leaves the entire Pacific northwest territory open to the enterprising but little known Smith River Almost Annual Duck-Do, a kind of P.F.D.A. / P.S.W.A. floating affiliate - about which not much is known, except that they have no influence, leave no legacy, and have no traditions beyond keeping up with the changing times, and haven't been back to Smith River in years.
At the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century, the numbers of regional and national decoy contests, art shows, festivals, expositions, and collector meets, were at their highest ever. A new quarterly, Wildfowl Carving & Collecting Magazine, of Harrisburg, Pa., would list over 100 events in a calendar year. Eventually, this magazine would be the first to acknowledge that the great national urge to make every man a decoy carver had waned, and that the numbers were measurably in decline. With some inkling of this, the P.F.D.A. officials decided to test for new wildlife art markets in the growing area of San Jose and South Bay.
The first two efforts were professionally organized, widely advertised, and over quickly. Billed as "North American Wildlife Art Show '88", the first exhibition opened in San Jose. The artists made a handsome effort, the public of South Bay barely responded, and the show managed a break-even success. The North American '89 exhibition was moved to neighboring Santa Clara, where another break-even "success", convinced the club to withdraw from deepening non-profit waters, and to return to the safety of their water tanks in Sacramento.