Mark Sfirri (USA)coloured & painted ash solid form 16x10cm. SignedI first met Ray 39 years ago when I had first started teaching woodworking at Bucks County Community College in 1981. I next met him in Philadelphia in 1988 at the second American Association of Woodturners conference. After that, it’s a blur, there were so many conferences and Ray and I always took time to have long discussions about the state of affairs of turning on so many different fronts. In 1999, I was asked to be a part of the AWGB conference which was a big honor for me. My turning room was across a crosswalk from most of the other demonstrators. I was set to go with my first demonstration and was waiting for about five minutes before beginning and I looked out and there was a maintenance worker with a shovel who stepped onto the shovel into the ground and hit a wire which cut the power to my side of the building and I thought “Oh dear!” I ran over to the other part of the building and found Ray with a few of the other organizers and told them of my plight. The three of them stepped into high gear reminding me of a fire department getting the call. They ran extension cords all the way to my room and I was good to go within minutes and I could proceed with my demonstration. I remember some great discussions in Puy St. Martin with Ray and Liz around 2003, if memory serves.About the Collaborative PieceI was unsure what I was going to do when I selected a rough turned block in August of 2018. When it arrived, I still had no clue. I did think early on, that it would be upside down from what Ray originally intended, which would have been a naturally finished, nicely proportioned bowl with a foot. I was very careful to have the overall contour of the outside of the piece to be very much Ray’s line. I took off very little of it and continued the line to a point, with very little room to space on the block. I wanted to carve in a recessed area to paint something but had to think of what that might be. It was a eureka moment when that idea came to me and the imagery became clear.The Ray Key Collaboration Auction