So I have this cool friend Dan. Dan had the idea of creating a music festival for musicians that would be all about doing good and giving back. He found a state park in his area that needed more accessibility, musicians who wanted to play the songs they wrote instead of just a bunch of overplayed covers, and he found some local businesses that he wanted to support. He jumped through the hoops of asking permission, applying for grants, and organizing a team of people and he made this dream a real thing. This is year three of Dan's festival and this year he wanted to find a way to include some visual art so he invited me to think about how I could participate. We discussed some ideas and eventually settled on me doing some live drawing on site during the festival weekend.
I put this on my calendar and and shelved it on one of those back shelves in my brain. You know how you have the idea about how something will work or what something will look like in your head? Is that just me? I had an image of the festival layout where the bands were way up there with lights and attention and the vendors were back in the back just kinda hanging out. I saw myself back there with the vendors, not taking any attention away from the music. I saw myself cruising in with some vague ideas, drawing some fun stuff while listening to music and then driving home. The fun thing about these mental pictures is that they're always wrong.
Violet loves Dan and his music...and music in general...and she didn't have a Cross Country meet that weekend. She volunteered to sacrifice a day of school to be my assistant for the weekend. So on Friday morning after my run, we hopped in the truck and drove towards the coast.
Since the festival was just a little bit inland of Charleston and I needed to deliver a drawing to Charleston, we did the two birds, one stone thing and drove to Charleston first. After dropping off the drawing, we parked on King Street and enjoyed the beautiful morning and that gorgeous Charleston light.
After a quick drive along the waterfront in Charleston, we headed to Summerville and got checked in to this beautiful place. South Porch Artists Residency is a cool, historic home that offers gorgeous accommodations and studio space for artists throughout the year (southporchartists.org). We dropped our bags and headed out to Givhans Ferry State Park to get set up at the festival.
This is where things got interesting. After checking in at the guard gate, we drove into the park and Violet opened the map to figure out where we were going. She's calling out the things we're driving past and she finds my name on the map with a location. She says, it looks like we're going to be between the main stage and the side stage. I figured this was a general location she was indicating until she held the map up and showed me. Fear started rising.
Then I saw this. My name was printed in the map.
And then I saw this...
So, there on the right is the main stage. And on the left is the side stage. Right there in the middle? That's my spot. Fear was immediately replaced by anxiety. What did I just get myself into? Violet was laughing. I was repeating, "oh no, oh no, oh no". The week leading up to the festival was one of critiques and grading and introducing new projects. I wanted to put together some ideas for what I might draw but I just never got to sit down and do that. Now I was sitting in my truck while Violet laughed, wishing I was more prepared.
Soon Violet shifted into cheerleader mode and started hyping me up. She told me I could do this with no problem and that it would be fine. This is the stuff I say to my students when I'm not sure they can do this and I know that it may not actually be fine. (Please don't tell my students that.)
After the banner was up and everything was situated I needed to do that thing that creative people do. Procrastinate. This is difficult to explain to non-creatives but if you are a creative person you'll get it. I had a lot to do and a quick deadline. It would have been smart to get started on the task at hand right away. Knowing that, I still would have done literally anything other than getting started on the task at hand. Violet and I walked around, we looked at vendor tents, we got some food, we ate, we chatted, I panicked a little more and then she started telling me I needed to get to work. The music started. I watched a cool duo sing about 20 feet beside us. I thought about drawing but I didn't draw. 5:00 pm came. Then 5:15.
With great hesitancy, I got up, shook my first paint marker, and fearfully put the marker to the surface. Once I made the first mark, I was fine. The panic left. Most of the fear subsided and soon I was in my own world.
The sun went behind the trees without much notice from me. I was in my groove now. Still, there were many directions I could go with these drawings and I was making decisions on the fly. This is a terrifying feeling when you're creating and that terror is amplified when there's a few hundred people watching. I brought some new color markers to try out and I decided to go for it.
Just a little while longer and it was too dark for my old eyes to see what I was doing. The plan was to finish 2 drawings each day. Drawing one was not finished at the end of Friday. Clearly I had a terrible plan. I mean, starting after 5:00 wasn't very good planning and at that point my plan was very unrealistic. This is what the first drawing looked like at the end of Friday. Violet and I had a little clubhouse set up behind the large easels and I joined her back there to rest a little before we drove back to town. We had been up since 6:00 am going strong and when we arrived at South Porch Artists Residency around 9:00 pm, we were already talking about going to bed. I had no cell service at the festival and so I flopped on my bed and checked messages, emails and opened Instagram and Violet said she was out. Our two rooms adjoined and I saw her light go out and heard her put her phone down. I decided to follow her example and we were both asleep by 10:00 pm.
We're in the thick of Cross Country season so we were up early the next morning to go for our run. Violet joined me and we took a nice, cool run through Summerville. I was reminded of all the fun I had there a couple of summers ago doing a week-long installation and then doing a weekend mural painting. It's a beautiful little town. Violet had joined me for an overnight trip there during my exhibit and I took her to this amazing coffee shop called Coastal Coffee. They have a really good breakfast menu but their coffee is as good as my coffee. Almost no one makes coffee as good as my coffee. After our run we showered and packed up before stopping by Coastal Coffee for fuel.
We drove to the festival with a lot more confidence and two very positive attitudes. One of us also had a bit of a coffee high because he insisted on having a second coffee to go. It's that good. This is my mural box. I love it. It makes me happy and it really sets the mood for creating. Once the box was open, I was rolling.
The music had started, alternating between the two stages on either side of us. By the time I finished the first drawing, it was after noon and the place was really starting to fill up. There were already more bodies on the lawn and it was only going to get more crowded through the day. This is what it looked like over my shoulder during the morning.
Soon it was time to put the first mark on the second panel. I could feel people watching as I moved to the blank piece of wood and stood before it with my marker. I felt all their weight as I drew that first line. But I did it and I felt confident. I tried not to look at people or even notice when they walked up to watch more closely. I smiled, I tried to speak if I was spoken to, but most of the day I was in the zone. The music from the main stage was loud enough to shake my chest but I really didn't notice it. I couldn't tell you who played until Dan took the stage around 4:00 pm.
I forget when I took this photo. Maybe when we stopped to get Violet dinner? The Fed Up truck was her favorite vendor aside from the Pourly Grounded Coffee dude. After the good breakfast, I didn't really think to eat the rest of the day. I picked up a big cup of boiled peanuts but quickly realized I couldn't eat them without getting the brine all over my hands and that wouldn't be good for the drawings.
Oh this was very cool. The Edisto Natchez-Kusso tribe is indigenous to the Edisto blackwater area of South Carolina. This land was their land before the westerners took it. Dan invited the tribe to perform several dances with drummers during the afternoon. It was so cool to see the handmade outfits and to watch the various dances. At the end of their time, they led everyone in a group dance of unity and it was a great moment.
And then it was time to see Dan play.
Then it was back to work for me. When they print the number of drawings you're going to make on the official signs, you kinda have to make all four don't you? I actually just now noticed the number was printed on the signs. That would have been even more pressure if I had noticed earlier! The whole idea of me being at the festival was to make drawings that I would donate to be auctioned off for charity. By early afternoon, festival goers were coming by to write their bids on a clipboard at our table. We had some shirts, buttons and stickers out for sale and Violet was doing her best to sell the merch. I felt so much better when I saw people were actually bidding on the art. I had that secret doubt voice telling me how embarrassing it would be to make these drawings and no one want them.
Drawing number 3 went very fast and with drawing number 4 I really didn't know what I was doing when I started. It was important to get that first mark down so I did and then I had to just make up a narrative and a composition on the fly. It was great! People who were bidding started asking questions and I got one lady to tell me what she thought was happening in the drawing. I drew steadily as the sun slipped behind the trees again. The place was packed. People were everywhere. I put the finishing touches on the final drawing and I walked around the easels to where Violet was and announced I was probably finished.
One of Violet's jobs was to title the work. One less thing for me to have to think about. She did a really good job. Here's the result of our work:
"When It Rains"
drawing 1
"Pelican's Playground"
drawing 2
"Storm of Magic"
drawing 3
"Love Takes Flight"
drawing 4
The sun was setting and it was getting dark. My legs were tired and a little sore from standing in awkward positions for the last day and a half. We were both over-stimulated and as Violet started talking about what we could eat for dinner, I started to realize that I was hungry.
We walked around a little to speak to a few people and we sat in our clubhouse and just rested. We kept talking about food and soon we were packing up and heading to the truck. We hugged Dan and thanked him for making this beautiful thing and we drove back to Summerville with no music playing.
We thought of a place to eat and when we drove by it was packed out. Then we remembered Poogan's Kitchen a short drive away. They were preparing to close but we got in and got our food before they closed. We both got chicken and waffles and it was delicious. We were full and happy. We were also tired. I think we were a little later than 10:00 pm getting to sleep but we were still in bed early.
The next morning Violet stayed in bed while I ran through town alone. I didn't get to visit the inside of Public Works Art Center, but I did say hello to the exterior. It was cool out and the sun was rising over the town. It was a nice little run.
This was a travel day for us but we were in no hurry so we had a nice breakfast at Vicious Biscuit and then stopped by a few stores before heading out of town. We were hoping for some Crumbl cookies but we found out they were closed on Sunday. We needed cookies so we quickly made a new plan.
Ok, I got a little distracted from the story by food and running, but the point is, we did it. We said yes to a potentially scary opportunity. We put ourselves out there. We were terrified of all the things that could happen but we did it anyway. We did it afraid. And when we did all that, it worked. We didn't fall on our faces (even when standing precariously on a folding plastic chair to reach the tops of the drawings) and we didn't fail. We met some new people, made some new contacts and we helped a really good cause. We also had a lot of fun.
