The Concept of BreyerFest

This should be fairly obvious at this point, but I’m not going to BreyerWest. It’s too far away, and there’s no room in the budget right now anyway. Even if I did have the resources, I’m way behind on all the projects I had intended to work on this year already; I can’t afford another distraction.

I don’t do many “real world” model horse things outside of BreyerFest; my work schedule even rules out a lot of local events, outside of some weekend flea marketing. One of these days I’ll finally make it to a local live show again, I swear…

There’s also the thing where I consider it very important to step away from some potential model horse activities and carve out time for other things. I’ve said this multiple times before, but it bears repeating: I think a lot of hobbyists get themselves in trouble by not having another activity outside of the hobby to step away into.

It’ll keep you from burning out and/or losing your mind.

Lost out on a much-wanted Special Run? Totally bombed out at a live show? That obscure Clinky Grail you finally acquired arrives on your doorstep, smashed to bits?

Time to do some knitting. Or birdwatching. And in my case, quilt. (Actually, the past few weeks it’s mostly been prep work. Yes, I wash and iron fabric for fun!)

It doesn’t stop me from having BreyerFest-related nightmares, or posting dumb things on the Internet, but it helps.

I’m also a little bit worried that some of my co-hobbyists might be working themselves up a little too much about having another BreyerFest-like event on the west side of the country. It’s somewhat understandable: it’s been a few years since there’s been an event of that sort out that way, and Kentucky is several time zones away and simply not feasible for most folks out there.

In 1991, Reeves experimented with having four regional BreyerFests instead of just the one in Kentucky. They could kinda-sorta pull it off then, because BreyerFest in its earliest years was a relatively simple affair: a “gift” model, some meet-and-greets/Q&As, dinner, a raffle and an auction.

How simple? Check out this actual promotional flier for the very first BreyerFest in 1990:

And take a look at the schedule of events for the 1991 Kentucky BreyerFest (the first one I actually attended):

Yep, all in one day! (From what I remember, the “diorama contest” was a fairly casual thing then, and significantly different from the diorama contest of today.)

All the fancier stuff that we now come to expect came later, accruing over time, and has since made the regional BreyerFest concept more difficult to pull off – unless they are able to tie it to local hobbyists’ efforts.

From what I’ve seen so far they’ve been shooting for a relatively modest event, closer in spirit to the earlier BreyerFests than the later ones.

Which is fine, really. While it is always good to hope for bigger and better things, anything beyond getting together with a group of your fellow hobbyists to talk and do some horsetrading is gravy.