ODACA Day Luncheon 2001: Pocket Full of Starlight

New Artists for 2001

Elizabeth Jenkins, Teresa Churcher, Natalia Pobedina

The theme of 2001 Luncheon was "Pocket Full of Starlight": Celebrating ODACA's 25th Birthday. The 2001 ODACA Day was held on August 5th in Atlanta, GA at the 53rd annual UFDC National Convention. Our souvenir doll was by Marianne Oldenburg. It represented a young girl sitting in a champagne glass with sparkles and stars reflecting the theme, "a Pocket full of Starlight", and our birthday celebration.

Three new Artist members were invited to join and welcomed into ODACA during the luncheon. They are Teresa Churcher, cloth, Elizabeth Jenkins, air-dry clay, and Natalia Pobedina, air-dry clay. This evaluation is the last step in the ODACA artist membership process. Congratulations to all of them.

Marianne Oldenburg gave an informative and entertaining program on her process of doll making. She included details about the time consuming study, preparation, sources of inspiration, reference material, the actual sculpting/production process, and she touched on the personal demands that this profession makes on the artist and her family. Marianne could easily make it big as a stand up comedian! She had us all laughing. Then she led us all in a sing-a-long of  "Happy Birthday to ODACA".

Louise Fecher, a freelance writer and former editor of DOLLS Magazine, won "The Joan Ross Sweetheart Award" recognizing her for years of actively promoting and encouraging doll artists.

We ate a fabulous lunch of tender well-seasoned steak, steamed veggies, mashed potatoes (Bobby Huston, ODACA Day coordinator, must be a meat and potatoes kind of guy!) and birthday cake to celebrate ODACA's 25th birthday celebration!

A monster thanks goes out to Bobby Huston who coordinated ODACA Day 2001. He did a fabulous job. But where was he during our luncheon? Bobby missed the luncheon! Since no one showed up to lock the ODACA sales room door, Bobby was guarding the sales room door instead of enjoying his feast! Thanks Bobby!

Close to the end of our luncheon ODACA artists draw the winning tickets for Helper Opportunity items donated by both Artists and Aux ODACA members. We had a lot of variety on our helper item table and the winners were really excited. The items need not have been made by an ODACA artist but most were.

The final event of the day was the ODACA 2001 Sales Room. It was truly impressive. Our luncheon guests were the first allowed into the salesroom for a quick preview before it was opened to the general public. The sales room was opened to a moderate to light crowd. Many people came to our sale after seeing a doll schedule that had been printed in the local newspaper, and those UFDC members who came in early. Guests were very appreciative of being able to go to all of the public doll events without conflict. In addition, many of our NIADA artist friends were able to stop by to say hello since our schedules didn't conflict this year. We were glad to have all our new Artists joining us in the Sales Room. The day's formal activities ended at 5:00 pm. Everyone was pleased with the way the entire day progressed.

Teresa Churcher	Elizabeth Jenkins	Natalia Pobedina	Helper Winner
Helper Winner	Joyce Patterson	Helper winner	Helper winner
Millie Wilcoxson with luncheon Guests
Luncheon guests
Betsey Baker	Helper winner	Bethomas	Helper winner
Millie Wilcoxson	Virginia Heyerdahl	Marilynn Huston with lunchen guests
		Dodi Becker, Maryanne Oldenburg, Gisele Hanson and Ellen Poitras

A brief business meeting was called to order with both ODACA Artists and Aux ODACA members present. Our new artist members were introduced. Although most committee heads remain the same. Marilyn Huston announced as the new Chiarperson of the Standards Committee/New Members. A slate of officers were voted on for the 2002-2004 session, their names will be announced next year as they enter their office.

ODACA Day 2001 started off with the new applicant doll critique, the final step toward attaining ODACA artist membership for artist members. This is the most important part of the standards committee process where the standards committee can finally inspect applicant's work up close and in person. A big thanks must be extended to our standards committee members for their long and hard work previewing slides and portfolios of the many applicants, and then making the difficult decision to determine which ones could qualify for ODACA artist membership. ODACA artist membership is awarded based solely on the quality of a large selection of an artist's doll work.

There were 38 ODACA "new artist membership packets" sent out to hopeful artists for ODACA 2002 in Denver. These requests demonstrates the keen interest in the ODACA Artist membership process.After the ODACA business was taken care of, we joined our guests at our luncheon.

"The Artists' Showcase"

A Special Doll Artist Exhibit at the 2001 UFDC National Convention

On Wednesday evening, August 8, 2001 ODACA and NIADA Artists participated in a special Exhibit of Doll Art titled "The Artists' Showcase" during UFDC's 53rd Annual Convention in Atlanta. Thanks to UFDC for allowing us to showcase our art.

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