By Staff
carving collections
Provides opportunities
for entities to sponsor
components of festival
By MIKE VOSS
Contributing Editor
Something new is coming to the annual East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships.
The East Carolina Wildfowl Guild, with its headquarters in Washington, will offer individuals, businesses and corporations opportunities to begin collections of waterfowl decoys, carved songbirds or other wildfowl carvings. The collected decoys and carvings would come from the various carving competitions held as part of the annual event.
The guild also is accepting sponsors for the carving competitions.
The new program will debut at the 14th-annual East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships, to be held Feb. 6-8, 2009, in Washington.
Gossett said he believes such collections will prove popular.
The guild believes that beginning a collection of decoys and carvings makes sense because a collection increases in value as it expands. Such collections have been proved to be a good investment, according to the guild.
Presently, the guild is preparing to circulate its 2009 competition book to world-champion carvers and other world-class carvers throughout the United States and Canada.
Sandra Gossett, who coordinates the festival’s vendor-exhibitor component, said wildlife artist Art LaMay, known for such works as “Bad Boys,” a row of mallard ducks on a log, asked for an application so he could participate in the 2009 festival. Gossett said she told LaMay not to worry about submitting an application and that she would find a place for him to display his work at the festival.
LaMay, who turns 70 Aug. 28, said he learned about the East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships at a similar show in Virginia earlier this year. LaMay, who lives in Palm Coast, Fla., has been producing wildlife art for 38 years, specializing in waterfowl works.
That person informed him about the East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships, LaMay said.