the Christmas post

The days off from routines provided a burst of creativity around here...

 

Blue drew "a building where kids who are dead go to feel better".  This is 5' x 10' on the floor of my sculpture hauling trailer.

Georgie fashioned a chicken pillow set for a gift.

Violet drew what she said was our dog Zeke.  Squint your eyes, there's a white lab in there somewhere.

And I got to work on a drawing of my own.

I also got to paint.  Painting is the devil.  I hate painting.  No offense to you painter types, but I hate the act of painting.  But at least it brought the bathroom out of the 1980's.

I met my goal.  I'm fond of setting outlandish goals just to have something to work toward.  I'm not saying it's smart, I'm just admitting that it's something I do.  I decided to try to reach 1,000 km within the year.  I had to run in some rain showers, some early mornings and some late nights, but ridiculousness prevailed.

What would Christmas be without some guns?

And we were apparently good enough to get a visit from Santa

.

on another day of Christmas...

...the gift of publication in a most obscure book.

on the first day of christmas...

...I was gifted an autographed photo of Richard Simmons *

*Not the actual Richard Simmons.

The actor portraying Richard Simmons in the photo is none other than jon holloway, famous photographer & infamous photography professor.  jon is so dedicated to getting into character that he spent an entire year growing out his "haystack" hairstyle so he could be Richard Simmons for Halloween.  And before you ask, yes, he's wearing pantyhose.

great moments in sculpture #508 remix

The play-by-play recap:

the vacant lot before

also before

AnnieBob uses the plasma torch to cut shapes

JAW also plasma torching

AnnieBob's shapes welded together just like her sketch

JAW's shapes welded together like her sketch

At this point with most projects the students would put a quick couple of coats of paint on and they'd be done. The worst would be over.

That's what they thought.

And then the real work began...

AnnieBob and JAW learning the shovel as a sculptural tool

Digging through several inches of gravel, brick, clay, and local history

Mixing and pouring concrete

Leveling and surfacing the concrete

This also is an art

Several hours of back wrenching work led to this

and this

Then they brought in the freshly painted sculptures. They anchored them to the concrete, put out some pine straw for accent and gave interviews to the various media outlets gathered to see the show. Then they posed proudly for a few hundred photos.

Both were proud and tired of smiling and at this point they were both threatening me with harm for putting them through all this.

The next day they were featured on the front page of the local paper - above the fold. They are now famous artists and the once vacant lot is now properly beautified.

And I know it doesn't look like it here but I promise I helped them dig those giant holes and pour that concrete. I have the back pain to prove it.

Big thanks to Jon Holloway for providing the vacant lot, the pine straw, and a lot of cement mixing help.

2011 Reindeer Run or Too Cold For This

Brother Daniel and I signed up for the 2011 Laurens YMCA Reindeer Run mostly because I live in Laurens now. I drove past a sign one day and saw the entry form in the paper. The only thing left to do was to convince my brother to get up early on a Saturday and drive 30 minutes to my house so we could go run 3.1 miles....just 2 weeks after we ran on Thanksgiving day.

He fell for it and off we went. At race time the temperatures were just above freezing. It's tough to know what to wear for a good run. Even at mid 30's temperatures you're likely to sweat a lot so the tendency is to dress light. Then you find yourself suddenly wet and cold when the running is done.

But we'd both rather run in the cold than in the soupy summer air.

That's brother Daniel finishing with his fastest time yet. I hit my best time too and was lucky enough that there were very few dudes my age running ahead of me so I got second place in my age range.

The cold also affected the free post race bananas. We had trouble peeling the frozen husks and eating the banana was like chewing ice cream. I was afraid Daniel would drop his and break his toe.

Now we're trying to talk each other into the Charleston Bridge Run in the spring.

great moments in sculpture # 508

Lander University sculpture students in the news:

http://www.indexjournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=40&ArticleID=8682&TM=30363.35

"E.H.H" by Amy Walde

"Canary" by AnnieBob McKinney

Carolina Arts

Wanna support the arts? You can always buy a drawing or sculpture from me but if you're looking for a way to be supportive without spending any money, here's something you can do for free:

The December issue of Carolina Arts is out today and is available for free download at: www.carolinaarts.com

Read up on what's going on in the Carolina art scene and find some exhibits to see over the holidays.

blue and violet do thanksgiving

blue sat with santa. violet declined.

she opted for frosty instead.

and a dash on a reindeer.

blue logged his first ever hole in one

and i added more photos of water, sand & sky to the collection

and i watched the movie "elf" at least twice.

and these are the faces we got when it was time to go home.

a mountain stroll

When we moved last spring we lost the mountains.

We never lived in the mountains but for all my years we've lived with them resting on our horizon. True, the trees tried their best to hide the hills, but they were always there and all it took was a walk across a field or a quick drive down the driveway to reveal Hogback or White Oak or some other strangely named mountain. It's an image I didn't even realize was a part of my visual vocabulary until a few years ago when I did that one-drawing-each-week-for-a-year goal. As I looked over the 52 drawings, most of them had a hilly horizon somewhere in the picture plane.

Out on the new plantation we have some hills within a short walk but we have to drive to the next exit up the interstate to get a glimpse of those same mountains. My makeshift running path is mostly flat. This is a realization I just had today. Before today I would have described the path as slightly hilly. I assumed I was running up small hills and down small hills and that I was getting a good workout for my legs. Today, however, brother Daniel and I ran the "Gobble Your Gibblets 5K" at USC Upstate in Spartanburg. Now I am convinced that someone moved their campus into the high mountains just for this race. My legs are screaming. There were hills there that came out of nowhere and the inclines looked like something out of an evil geometry book.

These races are so strange. I run this same distance at least 6 days a week, but there's something about running with other people who are itching to outrun you. I try to tune them out, I try to pretend I'm running at home, I even closed my eyes a few times (not one of my better ideas) but I still ran faster than I normally do. Faster is good for time but not so great for the heart. At least that's how it felt during the last few hundred meters. There was this one absolute killer of a hill on the last kilometer that eventually tapered out to just a regular hill that remained almost all the way to the finish line. I would swear I heard that hill laughing at me.

We did well though. I think we both improved our times from last year and I was happy to finish 2nd in my age range. Of course, 2nd is just the first loser, but after that last hill I think we were both happy to just be walking upright after the race.

There's brother Daniel crossing the finish line in noble fashion. And since it's shopping season, I'm sure he'd love for you to come to his store The Tangled Web across from Westgate Mall in Spartanburg. If you need comics, games or anime, he can hook you up. www.twebcomics.com

the one with the shameless self promotion

Three shiny new sculptures added to the website and ready for viewing. www.dougmcabee.com

just a few of the Raku results

these are all hand-built using the coil method of construction. 8 inch minimum size...