I'm thrilled to tell you that my exhibit at the Greenville County Museum of Art has been extended through July 3, 2016. That's an extra month to go by and see some colorful, goofy drawings and sculptures on your summer break! Thank you to everyone who has made the effort to go by and see the exhibit already. It is wonderful to have work in the art museum I grew up visiting and it truly means a lot for my friends and family to go by and see the show.
On Sunday, May 1 I gave a little gallery talk for the "Sundays At 2" event at the museum. G had to work that day and Blue got to skip out for a friend's birthday party, so Violet and I drove into town by ourselves. You never know what to expect at these things and you always fear that no one will show up. I was prepared to talk to Violet for an hour if I had to. Luckily, people actually showed up. And a good number of people too. I was honored to have Mom and LJ there, along with several of my students.
Katertot (with arms crossed) came too! She graduated a couple of years ago and is applying to grad school soon. Winston brought his family too. He graduated from our MAT program a couple of years back.
And there were lots of friendly strangers too. Many of them spoke to me and asked good questions after my talk.
Lander's president and his wife also came out to show their support. Can you even process how cool that is? They're such good people. I tried to sneak a selfie with them in the background but I messed it up.
During the talk I explained a few things about my process, from idea generation to the technical parts of using the materials. People often seem to be very interested in the idea generation part. With abstraction, there are often a lot of questions about why things look so weird and why I don't just portray things realistically. I enjoy working through the steps of abstraction and explaining how images become meaningful and how they can be blended together in ways that allow them to have meaning that stretches just beyond the reach of words.
I talked a little about how many of my ideas begin with very ordinary things I may notice in everyday life. Things my kids say, doing the laundry or cutting grass may inspire a thought that eventually becomes an important image artistically. Metal Megan came and took that cool photo of me during the talk.
Violet did great during the talk. She even listened. She vouched for me that the word "underwear" was funny as we discussed the importance of undergarments as one of my thematic images. I also explained how one of her kindergarten "boyfriends" caused me to have a dad-crisis that directly led to the drawing below.
Oh and I shaved my long beard the night before so I previewed my summer face at the talk. I even wore a shirt with a collar!
I am so thankful to everyone who came to the talk and everyone who has already seen the exhibit. I'm also grateful to the entire staff of the Greenville County Museum of Art. Everyone from the director to the curatorial staff to the education director to the security guards has been wonderful to me. They are all top notch people.
If you haven't seen the exhibit yet, please go by and have a look. Admission is free and you can see some really famous things while you're in the building. The museum is located at 420 College Street, Greenville, SC 29601. Take goofy photos while you're there and post them and tag them with #dougmcabee and #gcma.
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