fall rewind

 Maybe it's age, maybe it's the crazy tech-world we live in, but I feel like time is moving very quickly and I've had so many experiences since August that I have several moments each week when someone will mention an event and I'll think, "Dude, I forgot that even happened".  

Since this blog started as my electronic sketchbook, let's throw some images and moments in from the really fun Fall 2025 semester...

As best I can remember, this is how it started.  A couple of my current students and a former student came to see my exhibit at Public Works Art Center.  The coolest thing about this image for me is that I taught Rumminger and Rumminger taught Cathryn.  (I also taught Emily (not pictured) and Emily taught Elena.)  Anyway, it was a fun field trip with lots of laughter.

Cathryn and Elena had a couple of kids in August.  Congrats to those two and to Jenna, the Godparent.

I love teaching so much and I really love it when the Universe gives me great students.  This semester I loved every single one of them and their cool personalities made the Sculpture Studio a great place to be.  I also LOVE getting to teach students to use power tools and seeing how badass it makes them feel.

Twinning with Luke.  I've really enjoyed watching Luke change into a completely different student over the last year.  

I got to dress up with the girl gang for an early Halloween party.  We were people from the Lorax movie.

And I didn't have to wear a dress or wig this year for the actual Halloween party.

Slogging is back as a regular, weekly event thanks to these people.  Even Blue joined us a couple of times.  (I like that Blue goes to school here, but don't tell him.  I don't want to scare him off.)

I traveled so much this semester that the dogs start getting anxious every time they see a duffle bag.  It was all good travel, though and I got to see people like Tom and Kathe Stanley, Jana and Dan Riley, Katherine, Logan, Kevin Jones, Kevin Morrissey, Devann, Jay, and so many other heroes and aspirational friends along the way.  That's Katherine and Logan at the end of the Public Works exhibit.

I definitely don't want to forget the time we went slogging and found a 2x4 and took it back to the Studio.  Nevaeh would later use that board to create the frame for her door painting.  

Each week, these Ninjas of Kindness gathered in the plaza to make people smile.

It's one of my favorite things.  I love them.

Molly came to campus!  I loved seeing her artwork and getting to hear about her creative process.  She's so cool.

I think I only managed to do 3 episodes of Coffee With McAbee this semester.  Maybe I can fit more in during the spring.  The Jenna episode was great.

I got to teach a whole new batch of people to weld.  It was amazing.  I love it so much.  

We had one open Saturday to do the Art Hike and we made it work.  It was a great day with great people.  So much fun and fresh air.

Dan was kind enough to invite me back to be a guest artist at the Blackwater Boogie.  I always feel like a VIP in and around Summerville because of Jana and Dan.  The Boogie gives me a badge and wrist band that actually says "VIP".  So much love here.

This is Mir.  Actually, Mirte Van Roosebeke but for the life of me, I can't pronounce it without making Mir laugh at me.  Mir introduced me and the girl gang to field hockey.  It's not easy to learn from the sidelines, but we're getting the hang of it.  We enjoyed going to several games this season and watching Mir hurt people.  This pic is from the Championship game where they came in 2nd.  Hope Christmas is good in Belgium, Mir!

I'm so honored to know so many cool people.  I don't know how I got invited to Mrs. Emmette's 70th birthday party, but it was one of the highlights of my year.  What a sweet and kind lady.  What a treasure to have her at Lander.

I mentioned Tom earlier and I just mentioned how it's an honor to know so many cool people.  I don't know how I won the lottery to get to know Tom and Kathe but dang, I consider myself truly blessed.  Tom is a legend and he's so supportive of me and so many other artists.  He gives all the time and I love him so much.  It was a ridiculous honor to be featured with him at the Greenville County Museum of Art's "At This Moment" exhibit and book project.  

I got to serve the annual Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast to my students again this year.  This is fast becoming one of my favorite traditions.  

Ali and Emily at the SCAEA conference.  They're both art teachers now and I remember back a million years ago when they were my students roasting me with a poster for my 40th birthday.  I still have the poster on my office wall.

The puppet parade was a cool showcase for how awesome my Sculpture 1 students were this semester.  I was so proud of what they created and shared with the campus.

Keith Haring may be my favorite artist of all time.  I got to see an exhibit of his work recently at the Columbia Museum of Art and it was inspiring and wonderful and great.  (A weird side note: The CMA posted a black and white photo of Haring drawing on a wall before the exhibit opened and several friends sent me messages saying they did a double take when they saw it because they thought it was a photo of me.  It also fooled me briefly.)

The Elena project will definitely be one I remember for many years.  There's a whole post about this if you scroll down.  I was so impressed with how she rose to the ridiculous challenge.  I'm thrilled to say we were accepted into the juried exhibit!

As a bald man, I believe hair is magical.  I love a good braid, some twists, a bus-down (Taylor, did I spell that correctly?), highlights, waves and the way hair frames a face.  I also have very strong opinions about bangs.  Somehow all that has translated into me having a collection of student hair I've cut in the studio.  Hit me up if you'd like to donate.

This one is very recent but a great memory already.  I spent the day with upper level students at Fort Dorchester High School and got to teach them to use the jigsaw!  Based on the Elena project, we cut out figures and began drawing on them for a school mural.  Such a fun day with amazing students.

Another recent but important event for the semester.  I got invited to create artwork at Beeple Studios during a live event last weekend.  I was a team leader and I got to select my pod of artists, Devann, Maddie and Katherine.  (I also had Creighton and Katelynn but they ended up having other commitments and had to skip)  Together with all the other artists, we helped raise almost $30,000 for the upcoming Public Works Art Center expansion project.  You can help by going to their website and making a donation!

And this was just two days ago, but Sunday ended up being so beautiful when I went out to run that I decided to delay my departure and go to the Charleston waterfront to enjoy one last summer day before the harsh winter set in.  Literally, the temperature dropped 30 degrees during my 3 hour drive home and it was something like 15 degrees the next morning.  But, before that, I enjoyed a beautiful morning in Charleston with blue skies, perfect light and 71 degrees.  

You may have come here because you were interested or maybe you wondered if your name would be mentioned.  As I said, I have the honor of knowing so many miraculous humans and while that's great, it makes it unrealistic to mention every single person who positively impacted my life this semester.  There were so many!  My running friends on IG who I know better than most people but have never met in person deserve a mention.  People who have said nice things about my artwork deserve a mention.  All my current and former students deserve a mention.  Oh and the dogs.  There was an image that wouldn't load and it was of Walter, the menace.  He and Timmy have brought smiles and comfort in spite of their minor irritations and major vet bills.  But they can't read blogs, so back to you, kind human, reading this.  I am also grateful for you and your interest in my weird, ridiculous life.  

we love a good challenge, don’t we?

This story starts at the beginning of the fall semester.  My Sculpture 3 class is set up to allow students to begin working much more independently.  I do not give them specific assignments unless they ask.  At this level, I’m interested in students pursuing their own interests in terms of materials, processes and conceptual development.  In August, I told my students to share their ideas and to get started.  Typically, a student in that class will do some experimentation and take a good chunk of the semester to complete their first project.  Then they’ll smell the end of the semester coming and they’ll rush to complete one or two more projects.  

When these students shared their ideas, they were all at different places with different interests.  I love taking an individual approach in the studio, so this was fine with me.  One student in this class, we’ll call her “Elena”*, showed me a rough sketch of a full body self-portrait and told me she wanted to learn how to make it out of steel.  This was a good challenge for her and it was going to push the skills she had previously developed.  However, the idea she explained was probably too difficult for her to pull off with the complex form she drew.  

In my teaching brain, I’m always trying to think a few weeks ahead.  I could easily imagine her starting this project, realizing it was not really possible to complete and then shifting it into something else that could also be a good experience and produce a good product.  I saw a few options in my head and quickly decided to greenlight the project idea.  She smiled, went away and got started.  

Weeks went by and the sculpture developed slowly.  I’m impatient.  I am sort of notorious for checking in on students by yelling at them to work more and spend more time in the studio.  I can usually hear the eye rolls as I shout over the studio noise.  This particular student is pretty sassy and independent.  She would just look at me, smile and say, “I know, I know.”  After another couple of weeks and a lot of hours on her part, the outline of the form was complete and she had started filling in the surface of the form with lots of steel lines.  

Essentially, she was creating mid-lines on all of her body parts and using lots of closely spaced steel lines to imply the surface of skin.  Not only was it extremely difficult to get the mid-lines accurate, but it was almost mind-numbing to think about filling in all those tiny lines.  Each tiny line had to be bent into a complex curve and fit her body exactly.  Each line took a long time but she was rising to the challenge.

The actual Elena bending steel with Sharpie lines drawn on her skin

More weeks ticked by.  Though she didn’t have a lot completed, what she had was looking so good that I didn’t want to steer her in a different direction.  In addition to being pretty sassy, she’s also pretty stubborn so she probably wouldn’t have quit if I told her to.  Looking ahead, I started to wonder if she would be able to finish the project by the end of the semester.  When I hinted at this, she bucked.  “It will be finished!”  I backed off.  If she did finish it, the project would likely be so good that it would easily account for a semester of studio and class hours.

Each December we get a cool opportunity through a regional art museum in North Carolina that allows faculty members to choose a student’s work to pair with their own work and enter into a juried exhibit.  The exhibit highlights the power of mentorship and focuses on the student-teacher relationship.  In the past, I’ve selected students who made great work and could benefit from the mental boost of being chosen.  It’s a pretty competitive exhibit that features some of the biggest art department names in the country.  This year I started thinking ahead to this exhibit and considering who I might ask.  When Elena popped up in my final considerations, I saw another opportunity wrapped in this one.  

If I could get Elena to agree to enter the exhibit, she would have to be finished by Dec 6 to meet the deadline.  It wasn’t super possible in my head, but there was a chance.  This would get her project finished by the end of the semester.  The risk was that she could also get frustrated by the almost impossible challenge and give up.  

Still, there was another issue to conquer.  I would need to make something new to enter with her project.  I usually enter a steel sculpture of mine and choose a sculpture from a student.  So much of this semester had involved Elena and I looking closely at a handful of reference photos she was using to create her sculpture.  So closely that we knew how far her ears were from the mid-point of her skull and how thick each toe was.  Looking at these details was less like looking at a human form and more like analyzing an image like a blueprint.  

One morning, I was running in the dark at 6:00 am and the idea came to me.  I could draw Elena using one of her reference photos.  For months, I had been wanting to use a person I knew for the subject of one of my drawings.  I wanted to use a particular pose and use them as the shape of the wood I draw on.  Then I would keep parts of their portrait and add other imagery to create the narrative.  Asking someone I knew if I could draw them seemed like a huge thing to me, but here was an opportunity.  I just had no idea if she would agree to any of it.  

Several hours later, Elena was sitting in my office with a few other students.  This happens a few mornings each week.  My office is a bit of a gathering place where I want students to feel comfortable.  The project came up and I told Elena about the opportunity and my crazy idea.  She smiled, but that didn’t tell me anything.  Sometimes she smiles when she’s about to tell you to go jump off a cliff.  Sometimes she smiles when she’s uncomfortable and doesn’t know how to tell you to jump off a cliff in a nice way.  Sometimes she probably also smiles because she’s happy.  I just never know.  

She thought about it for a bit before saying something that knocked me back on my heels a little.  She had recently listened to an artist talk I gave where I happened to mention that I was hoping to get up the courage to ask people I knew if I could draw them in the near future.  I barely remember saying it as I talked about my latest drawings of random internet strangers, but she smiled and said, “Well, yeah, we should do it.  You were just talking about how you wanted to draw people you know and how that would be a new challenge.”

So we agreed to the challenge.  She would have about a week and a half to finish about 70% of her sculpture.  I would have the same time to start and finish a new drawing that scared the heck out of me. 

It was best for me to not think about it and just get started.  I spent that afternoon cutting out the wood and preparing it for drawing.  As I traced and cut the wood in the studio, Elena was on the other side of the room bending steel.  

Thanksgiving Break gave me a lot of hours to dedicate to the drawing.  Since family dinners and events do not happen in the Sculpture Studio, Elena did not make as much progress over the break.  When she returned, she was focused and basically lived in the studio.  As the days went by, I finished the drawing and she worked even more furiously on her sculpture.  

The deadline for her to finish her sculpture was Saturday, Dec 6.  When I left campus on the night of Thursday, Dec 4, she had clear instructions and a plan for her weekend.  She would finish the sculpture, clean it, document it with photos and email those photos to me by midnight Dec 6.  When I looked in my teacher crystal ball, I wasn’t sure she would finish it all on time.  I could see many scenarios where she became too exhausted and had to stop working.  I could also see many scenarios where she would run into problems she didn’t know how to solve and forward motion would come to a halt.  When I left on Thursday night, I told her to let me know if she needed me to come back to help her on Friday.  I meant it, but I knew as I said it what the smile on her face meant that time.  She said “OK” but her smile said, “I don’t ask for help, I can do it on my own, thanks.”

Most of Friday, Dec 5, I was in Columbia, about 1.5 hours away from the Sculpture Studio.  I got a couple of updates and questions from Elena.  Another student we’ll call “Jenna” was working to finish a sculpture in the studio and she was also acting as Elena’s helper and hype-man.  Jenna provided her own updates.  When I was leaving Columbia in the mid-afternoon, Elena texted that she was getting frustrated.  I asked if she wanted me to come to the studio and she replied “Yes”.  When a stubborn, independent student asks for help, you don’t question it, you just drive to campus.  

The funny thing is, Elena knew what was wrong with the sculpture and also knew what she needed to do to fix it.  I was able to get some supplies for Jenna and spend a few hours giving moral support to Elena before leaving them both working in the studio.  I told Elena I would come back on Saturday if needed.  She smiled.  

Saturday afternoon, I decided not to ask if they wanted me to come to the studio.  I just told them.  They let me pick up a pizza and when I arrived, I saw that Elena had solved some big problems and made significant progress.  I looked at all the spots she had left to fill in and started doing the math.  It was going to be pushing it to finish, but it was possible.  Elena kept smiling but it was obvious that the multiple 12+ hour studio days in a row were catching up with her.  She was exhausted and her knees were killing her from getting on the floor and standing back up so many times.  Still, she had a challenge to meet.  She wouldn’t stop.

Elena working in the final hours

During the afternoon, I cut out a new piece of wood for an upcoming drawing and got it prepped.  I annoyed Jenna and took care of a few other things left undone from the previous week.  I peppered in some encouragement to Elena and tried to stay out of her way.  Time raced by and the sun set so fast that we missed the cool view from the studio loading dock.  Before we knew it, Elena was putting on the last few steel lines and Jenna and I were prepping the documentation area to take some photos.  

As Elena tuned off the welder, we celebrated with some cheers and quickly grabbed the sculpture and carried it off to the documentation wall.  A few minutes later, I was dropping the photos in the juried exhibit entry and tapping “send”.  One of Elena’s favorite things to say is, “Oh my lanta!” as an exclamation of surprise, disgust, disbelief or frustration.  I think I heard her say it a hundred times this weekend.  When I asked what she wanted the title to be, the answer seemed obvious.  

At 7:00 pm on Saturday, Dec 6, the project was finished and we had entered the exhibit.  Both of us had found an artistic challenge and both of us rose to meet that challenge.

The finished sculpture.  A self portrait in steel.

Should I have waved Elena off of the project months ago and provided different material and process experiences for her this semester?  A lot of teachers would have.  Should I have been honest with her in August and told her it probably wasn’t possible for her to complete her idea in the time we had?  Many teachers would.

I’m learning that if you don’t tell students things are impossible, they’ll actually do them.  I’m learning that sometimes Elena’s smile means you should go jump off a cliff and sometimes it means “thank you”.  I’m also learning that sometimes a student can challenge you as much as you challenge them.  

Two Elenas.  Both works of art together.

Now to get Jenna to finish her sculpture!

*Elena approved this post.  Jenna did not.