Here's something you've probably figured out about me: I'm a beach person. I'm at my happiest when I'm at the beach. Teaching this class at the beach is a dream come true and that's not even a tiny bit of hyperbole. I LOVE teaching this class.
With that said, teaching this class is hard. I don't think I was in the bed before midnight a single night of this trip (including the night before we left). I had a 5:30am alarm set for every morning of the trip and most mornings I was awake just before the alarm went off. During each day there are 16 students that need individual time and feedback. Each day there are 16 projects to grade and 16 projects to critique. Equipment must be ferried to and from the beach. Plans have to be developed and adjusted every day. I have to do the Public Relations for the trip which means contacting and coordinating with the local TV news crews as they come to do interviews and stories. I'm also expected to make some sand art each day and many days there are unforeseen things that come up and need to be dealt with. And that doesn't even touch the travel organizing and planning that Singletary takes care of for us. So many papers and forms. So much planning and coordinating.
In addition to that "work" stuff, there's also the social aspect of a trip that is so important. Spending a week completely surrounded by people is tough for everyone. The students are packed in rooms together with little or no time to themselves. We spend every waking moment in a group on the beach, in a group in our rooms, in a group in the van or in a group at a restaurant or activity. Socially speaking, it's a lot.
That's where my other job comes in. The job of being everyone's hype-man. It's easy for me to be happy in my natural beach habitat so my job then turns to spreading that happiness. I know that after a couple of days of shoveling sand and lugging gallons of seawater up the beach, everyone is tired. I know they probably didn't rest well in a room full of strangers. I know they miss their homes, pets, and beds. I also know how frustrating it is to work on a sand sculpture for hours only to have it collapse before you finish. These conditions call for an idiot to run around giving everyone high fives. They call for that idiot to yell "WOOOOOOOOOOOO!" from the 7th floor balcony. They call for extra silliness and ridiculousness. Luckily, these are points on my resumè.
But you may also know that I'm not a "people person" and that I tend to be socially awkward and even a bit anti-social. I need my time to be quiet and to recharge just to survive a week of intense people-ing like this. So being the hype-man to 16 or more people is not easy. But the beach provides.
Each morning of the trip I slipped quietly out of my door, put my running shoes on in the hallway and immediately saw views like this full moon setting over the marsh.
And the sun filling the sky with color and light in the opposite direction. Add in a nice 5K run and an excellent cup of coffee from my personal coffeemaker and you get an instant hype-man.
That's my lower back on the morning of day 3. It shows my ridiculous "fun in the sun" glitter tattoo. It also shows why I have trust issues. See the splotchy sunburn? That's what happens when you don't want people touching you so you have to trust Singletary with a can of spray sunscreen. Maybe next year I'll bring a brush and have someone lather it on for me.
After the sky's light show, coffee and some quiet time in my sketchbook, we were all back on the beach by 9:00am for day 3. We worked until noon and scaled down our projects in size accordingly.
Actually, not many people really scaled down their projects. This rose created by Elizabeth was several feet across.
Jester's big cat head was pretty huge.
And Molly made her largest sculpture of the week, a 20 foot long keyboard!
Most of our sculptures do not survive the overnight tide, but with 16 students working, we still maintained a public sand sculpture gallery all week long for visitors to enjoy. These two patrons were just a couple of MANY people who walked through and enjoyed the art my students created. They were astounded by the work they saw and everyone loved to stop and talk with the students about what they were making. There were a lot of smiles during the week.
It was a short day in the sand so we could make time to visit Brookgreen Gardens, the largest collection of American figurative sculpture. This visit is a favorite for many of our students each year.
Brookgreen is a beautiful place year round, but it's especially beautiful in the late spring/early summer.
We had a great tour guide this year who was really responsive to our needs as a class. She hit the high points in the formal garden before leading us across the plantation to the boat dock for our boat tour.
She made sure we got to stop in the gallery for a couple of artist talks that happened to be going on while we were there and still made sure we made it to the dock on time. It was a terrific day visually. Look at those clouds! We stopped to learn about this sculpture with the guide but a few of us had to stop back by and give it a critique before we could leave. Art isn't great because it's in a gallery or a garden. It's not great because someone tells you it is. This one needed another look, even if it got me in trouble with Brianna.
I'm not the biggest fan of realistic figurative sculpture, but many of my favorite works in Brookgreen play with abstraction in interesting ways. We were told that there was no abstraction in the collection and I joked with Singletary all afternoon about that.
These visits allow me to see my favorite sculpture in the Brookgreen collection, "The Thinker" each year. It's probably the most abstract and hilarious sculpture there and I truly love it. I see things every year that I've never noticed before. One of the things I love about visiting "The Thinker" is that I'm usually alone or in a very small group of walkers when I see it. This allows for extra time and introspection similar to my morning run.
Another McAbee must-do is the labyrinth. Each year I must find my way to the center while contemplating life along the path. This is a meditative experience and again, it's usually experienced alone or in a very small group. There are beautiful moments like this scattered all along these Sand Sculpture trips that help to recharge the hype-man.
There's so much in Brookgreen that you seem to discover something new every visit. The delicate balance and elegance in this creature was stunning.
I mentioned Brianna. I found a few students walking to meet at the van at the assigned time and we stopped to talk about that sculpture I mentioned above. There was a lot to see and a lot to question. I may have made a selfish decision to miss the 5:00pm rendezvous time and think and talk more about the sculpture but it was important. But the van people were tired, sunburned, sore and hungry at this point. When I finally made it to the van a few minutes late, Brianna was thinking about cooking me over a fire right there in the parking lot. Oh she smiled when I took the photo, but trust me, there are murderous thoughts behind that smile.
So we ate at a small, quick restaurant close to the hotel and made it back in time to relax by the pool. Singletary's pink hat couldn't compete with Chanel and Lilly's umbrella hats, but it was still pretty spectacular. We like Singletary. I know we "hate" Singletary during the academic year, but at the beach, we like Singletary. Kaylen, Brianna, Abigail and Jester joined us for some silly conversation.
After the sun set (and after a little grading and planning) a group of us met back on the beach in the dark to howl at the full moon. We waited for it to rise above the ocean. As it's white light danced on the waves, we gathered up and gave our best howls to the moon. You should have seen the lights come on in the hotel as people rushed out on their balconies to see what was going on. It was great. It was a very positive day.
Sunrise at the point on day 4.
Aaron Ladd from WMBF greeted us on the beach as we got underway. He was very cool and he interviewed a lot of students. I'm proud to report that I was reminded to put on a shirt before appearing on camera. Thanks to everyone who reminded me.
Several of the students' sound bites were used when the piece aired. Very good publicity for Lander.
It was a busy day and a full day in the sand and sun. Elizabeth made a panda bear.
Molly made a full size chair and ottoman.
Tien made three bears staring at a head that looks very much like mine.
Abigail temped gravity and made a Poke-thing stand up.
Katherine also fought gravity and made a full sized monkey sitting in an innertube.
I ran around all day. Between doing the interview and documenting all the other interviews and helping with work, I also decided it would be a good idea to talk trash to Grace and challenge her to a friendly competition. She worked steady all day on a very huge giraffe sculpture. I procrastinated all morning. Then I had a lunch meeting with Singletary to discuss important things. When I came back from lunch I answered the "MCABEE!" call 16 times before taking a little break to surf with Abigail, Brianna and Jester who were finishing up their sculptures. After that, with a couple of hours left to work, I decided it was time to get serious. I started on my sand chicken sandwich.
It ended up looking like a big bird, but it was a good size and I was proud that I was able to pull it off in the time I had left.
As I said, Grace worked steady all day. She moved a lot of sand. Her giraffe was ginormous with his legs splayed out in front of the beach walk out.
She even got in there with some dead vegetation and made the little mane.
To make the judging fair, we enlisted the help of total strangers on the beach to vote for the winner. The votes were counted by a neutral third party. Grace won in a landslide. This was the day Grace got her mojo back.
After voting, these fine people took some selfies with Victor's sand butt. This photo cracks me up because of the girl in the two-piece standing there watching the dudes.
For dinner, we opted for a new place called Uncle Mikey's Pizza. Uncle Mikey seated us at a very long table and you just can't do that to a group of art students. I pulled up DaVinci's "The Last Supper" on Google and spent a couple of minutes arranging bodies while we waited on our food. Go ahead and Google it. Compare the image above. It's pretty good. Check those lines of perspective in the ceiling tiles! Ridiculousness rules! Right after we finished taking The Last Supper photo, Lander’s very own
art historian, Dr. Romaine, showed up as if on cue. Professors Slagle
and Oswaldo came too. They joined us on the beach for the next day or so and
made some sand sculptures of their own. We were lucky to have more
visitors from the Lander art family than ever before this year.
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After stuffing ourselves with fine Italian cuisine, we dropped by Krispy Kreme to tank up on sugar and get some fashionable hats. I love Krispy Kreme almost as much as I love the beach. Life is good. “Hoist em up!” became our slogan for the trip. It’s an important part of
The Philosophy of High Fives.
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The moon was still full and it was up over the water when we made it back to the hotel. Those who weren't falling-down-sleepy gathered on the beach for a moonlight stroll. We had a great group of people. We laughed and talked and took moon photos. We also howled at the moon, because why not?
It was getting late by this point and I'm old. The late nights and early mornings were catching up with me. I turned the crew around and we headed back to the hotel. When we arrived we noticed a lady and a dog checking out the sand sculptures in the dark. One of our people recognized the lady as someone we met last year on this same trip. We engaged with her and she remembered us. Her name is Christine. Last year she had two little dogs. She told us about losing one of her dog-children this year and I'm pretty sure she made Chanel cry. Last year we took photos of Christine sitting on one of Grace's large animal sculptures so we thought it would only be fitting if we did the same thing this year.
Pre-run pre-sun shoreline at the start of day 5. I didn't sleep well so I really needed this run and coffee time.
Day 5 was a day at Huntington Beach State Park, just a few miles north of the hotel. I love Huntington for several reasons. The beach is preserved and protected. It's relatively lightly used by the public. It has an amazing jetty accessible by foot. And it was the studio home of Anna Hyatt Huntington, one of the greatest American figurative sculptors. Anna was a female sculptor in a time when sculpture was very masculine and she was a total badass. This makes her a great hero for the 80% female group of sand sculptors.
While my students spread out on the wide open beach and prepared to work all day, I took my leave and started toward the jetty. This is an annual pilgrimage for me. A treat for all the senses. I enjoy the dominating horizon of the coastline, the smell of the salty breeze and the clash between wildlife and the elements as the sea kisses the
land.
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There are even fewer humans on the jetty, making it a great destination spot for a hermit like me. Honestly though, I'm still a little kid and I love watching the crabs, sea urchins and whatever other marine life I'm able to spot on these walks. I walked out to the very end of the jetty and caught a glimpse of a loggerhead sea turtle swimming up into the inlet. It was a gorgeous moment that ended abruptly. But such a wonderful, memorable walk.
Walking back towards the group I ran across a couple of students who realized how smart it would be to spread out. Molly found this great little spot a long way from the group.
With her mojo in full swing now, Grace created a panther in honor of a panther sculpture created by Anna Hyatt Huntington.
Brianna memorialized her recently passed dog friend with a portrait.
Kaylen went for a larger sculpture to suit the landscape.
From the size and color I'm guessing this is the wing of an unlucky heron. It know it's gross but I also know it's beautiful.
Lilly went non-representational this day and made a cool 3D design.
By this time Victor had found his place. He worked hard every day and settled into some really great figurative work. He made a lot of butts.
Tien made a giant creature from the Lion King and posed with it.
And Molly opted to create a small but intricate pumpkin in an out of the way spot for someone to discover.
We spent the majority of the day sculpting, but we stopped early enough to take some time seeing Atalaya Castle, the home and studio of Anna and her husband.
If I have an aesthetic, this is it. I'm in love with this place.
I'll be honest, our group walked in to explore the castle on our own and I walked right out into the courtyard, plopped down in the grass, and just looked. The blue of the sky was perfection. The green grass stretched out like carpet. I laid flat on my back, watched, and listened as the breeze played the faintest tune with the palm fronds. I was very, very happy. I got devoured by ants, mosquitos, and various other insects. It was worth it.
We told the guards we weren't leaving until they made our photo. There's the photo. Then they made us leave.
You can see the exhaustion on the faces in this photo. We called the Grilled Cheese and Crabcake Company to tell them we were coming. Their dining room is very small and when we got there, they were telling people they would have to eat outside because they were saving the dining room for us! They're wonderful people. They have the best food on the coast. I was very happy indeed.
After dinner, some of us needed ice cream, so we stopped briefly at Painter's Ice Cream again and played a few rounds of some sort of charades game on someone's tablet while we ate.
After a few errands and tedious things like grading, it was well past midnight again. And that's the end of Part 2.
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