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.

artist talk

Hey friends,

I was invited to do a presentation at the annual SC Art Education Association 2025 Conference.  A couple of weeks before the conference, I realized that I was also scheduled to do an artist talk.  This was a result of my own confusion.  I'm always happy to provide an artist talk and I usually have one I can pull from my computer (or my butt), but as I was going through my latest one, I was bored by it so I decided to delete it two days before the conference.  I figured that the artist talk should be engaging for me too, right?  So I started making a new one.  

I have a couple of students who seemed interested but couldn't attend the conference.  They asked me to record my presentation and my artist talk.  I forgot to press record when I started my presentation but I did remember the next day as I started my artist talk.  Thanks to them, I have a file I can share with you.  

If you're interested in how my artwork developed from grad school to now (and if you have a good imagination to use since you can't see the slides), oh, and if you have about an hour to spare, here's the link to the audio file:

McAbee Artist Talk

the ugly truth about critique

actual students after an actual sculpture critique

Just like you, I’m a sucker for reposting an Instagram post that seems to support some idea I agree with.  We both know that there’s also data to prove the opposing view, but we smile, share the post to our story and hope our viewers see the exterior validation for ideas they know we hold dear.

Recently, the algorithm has been showing me some of those social media teachers who are supposed to be excellent teachers and social media savvy at the same time.  Many are art teachers and many share funny stories, good ideas and their hot takes on how to teach art.  Only a few are university level studio art teachers, but I still consider their posts and their thoughts on all things art teachery.  In the past week, I’ve noticed a few posts about studio art critiques and what those should and shouldn’t be.  Specifically, these teachers have called out negative critique experiences and proposed that critiques should be positive experiences for students.  I politely disagree.

Forgive me for my sarcasm, but students don’t always know best when it comes to their education and often times, true education can come from uncomfortable experiences.

Flashback to the fall of 1990.  I had my very first critique ever at the university level in the basement of Roddey Apartments.  The art building was closed for major renovations during my freshman year and our Foundations classes met in a dark basement with exposed plumbing just a few inches from your head when you were standing.  During our class times, every time a resident on the first floor flushed a toilet, we heard it loud and clear and you could even trace the flow of water from the source to the edge of the building.  

My professor for 2D Design was Paul Martyka, who to me at that time, was a total stranger.  I actually thought a nontraditional student named Billy was my professor on the first day of class.  Turns out he was just as lost as I was when the small framed, scraggly man walked in an announced that this was his class.  Mr. Martyka quickly became an enigmatic and legendary figure in my personal art school journey and you can find a whole post about him somewhere on this blog if you’re interested.  

At the first project critique, Mr. Martyka told us to pin our compositions up on the wall in a straight line.  He vigorously mocked us for not creating the straight line he asked for and then called on individual students to go back up and properly align their projects with the others.  I was sweating already.  The critique was brutal.  That’s the word I’d use to describe the experience.  Mr. Martyka would ask us to talk about each one in order from left to right and he’d ask very specific and thought provoking questions to each student.  He put each one of us on the spot.  When he shined his spotlight of attention on you, there was nowhere to run. You were going to answer his questions and bear the brunt of his laser-sharp attention until he decided it was time to move on.  Make no mistake, he knew you were uncomfortable.  He knew that discomfort was good for you.

Back then, we didn’t have anxiety and Mr. Martyka wouldn’t have cared if we did.  If you couldn’t bear the weight of attention on your artwork or you couldn’t sufficiently answer questions about your artwork, you needed to find another place to be.  It was a three hour hell.  A three hour hell that was punctuated by his infamous final act of critique:  the moment when he walked up to the wall and silently arranged all the projects in order from best to worst.  This took several minutes and you just had to sit there and endure it.  

I thought of Mr. Martyka’s critiques when I read a teacher post about how critiques should be a positive experience and that if students leave a critique feeling down, the teacher has failed.  Yeah, I beg to differ.  

The reason that logical conclusion isn’t so logical begins with Mr. Martyka.  I fully understand that Mr. Martyka’s critiques and teaching led some students to feel unsuccessful, to question their career goals and to (in some cases) change their majors.  I see this as him doing the students a favor.  You may disagree, but please hear me out.  Art is hard.  Careers in art are competitive, stressful and….brutal.  Mr. Martyka would not be doing you a favor if he didn’t prepare you for that in his classes.  I also know that many students, like me, accepted the challenges issued by Mr. Martyka and worked ever harder to rise to meet his ridiculously high expectations.  I made a C on the first project he graded of mine.  By Thanksgiving break, I had worked my way up to a B average.  The blood, sweat and tears I puddled up between Thanksgiving break and final exams earned me an A-.  

A bit of a side track here, but in 1990, we didn’t have the ease of email to communicate with our professors.  If you wanted to ask a question outside of class, you had to leave your dorm and walk across campus to the professor’s office.  If the sun was still up, you didn’t find Mr. Martyka.  You could leave a note on his door or you could just come back later.  In this calmer, less technologically intrusive world, Mr. Martyka offered us a cool option if we wanted to know our final grade for his class after our final critique.  We could leave him a self-addressed, stamped postcard or envelope and he’d write our grade and drop it in the mail.  As a creative art student, I opted to make my own postcard collage to leave with him and when I got mine in the mail, there was nothing written by him in the designated postcard area.  After a bit of an investigation, I noticed he had cut into my postal creation and then sealed the incision up with tape.  I carefully cut it open and found simply “A-“ written in pencil inside.  He was always three steps ahead of me.  

Of course, feeling the burn of the Instagram teacher claiming that all critiques should feel good, I had to think about my own critiques.  I’m no Mr. Martyka but I like to think that my critiques are serious, thoughtful opportunities to learn even more from a just completed project.  I agree that critiques are not excuses to negatively slam students and simply criticize their work.  I understand that many have that impression, but I believe they have that impression because they had bad professors and teachers.  I believe a critique should offer the opportunity for peers, teachers and the artists to all have a time of accurate analyzation and contemplation about a work of art.  Doing so effectively, requires this one thing that also gets labeled as negative.  Honesty.

Yeah, a real dirty word it seems.  

You can’t have an effective critique without honesty.  I teach this to my students on the first day of critique.  If the teacher/professor cultivates and manages to maintain an atmosphere of honesty during critique, your resulting feelings may have much more to do with how you feel about honesty.  Everyone thinks they want honesty until they get it.  That’s when you realize that honesty isn’t just people saying nice things to you.  Sometimes the truth hurts.

An effective critique involves careful consideration of all aspects of a work of art from the most basic to the most complex.  It should be evidence-based and it is definitely not about opinions or feelings.  Critique language is professional and thoughtful.  This is like a medical procedure.  We go in, do what we need to do and we get out.  Emotions are not needed nor are they welcome.  

An effective critique does not criticize the artist.  You may have to question some of the artist’s choices, motives and actions, but you’re always addressing the visual and physical evidence in the work, you’re not critiquing the artist.  I tell students to separate themselves from the work of art.  They are not their work.  But I also have to tell them to cry outside the studio.  

Tears and emotions are a natural part of the college critique.  Just as they are a natural part of every tough exam or project at this level.  I’d wager that 90% of the tears shed as a result of one of my critiques were shed because of the build-up of stress and anxiety rather than because of something that was said during the actual critique.  Sure, words can bring us face to face with our emotions and it may only take one less-than-positive observation to send a sensitive student over the cliff of tears, but they’re still not crying because they were verbally attacked.  

Students may feel emotions over knowing they did not do their best.  They may be embarrassed that their lack of time management.  They may feel outed when the shortcuts they took on a process are on display for everyone to see.  Many students have only ever had to try to meet expectations in their previous educational experiences and now that more is being expected, they may struggle to rise to the new challenge.  That realization can hurt.  

With emotions like those running at high levels at the completion of a difficult project, honesty can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  

I keep the reigns of critique held tightly in my hands as we look at each project and make observations and judgments.  I demonstrate how to state something honestly without being insulting.  I stop students when they seem to be on a verbal assault.  I force them to prove everything they say by noting the visual evidence before them.  This usually puts a stop to mean spirited comments and turns the spotlight back onto the person attempting to be mean.  I also make sure that students know when they’ve done something well.  Honesty goes both ways and I’m just as eager to point out the good as the bad.  In fact, contrary to what students may think, I’m more eager to point out the good.  After all that manual labor and all my urging in the studio, it’s really important to let students know what they did well.

The information provided in critique is just that…information.  Students who want to succeed will take the information provided about their artwork and consider how to apply that information in the future.  They’ll use critique as an extension of the project and remember what they need to do better in the future, while keeping and nurturing strengths that were pointed out.  Critique is more than just a public viewing of strengths and weaknesses.  Done correctly, it’s a powerful teaching tool.

porch sittin'

my front porch view

During one of my summer adventures, I had the joy of spending several days at South Porch Artist Residency in Summerville, SC.  This was my second time staying briefly with Brad and Brian in their beautiful historic home.  The white picket fence, the towering live oak trees and the perfect front porch all scream “southern charm” just as much as the hot, humid summer air.  This place is perfection and so are Brad and Brian.  When I’m there, I feel as if I’ve been adopted into the family.  

My week was packed with creative activities on a very tight schedule, but in all of my frantic coming and going, I noticed that I would see Brad and or Brian each night on the front porch.  At first I thought this odd because, who sits out on the porch bathing in mosquitos and shirt-soaking humidity in July in the South?  With a second glance, I noticed the giant oscillating fan inches from their perch.  A perfect solution to keeping mosquitos away and keeping cool in the soupy night air.  

On my last day there, I had a few minutes to talk with Brad and Brian on the porch and I used that as an opportunity to look around and see their front porch setup.  It was clear they used the porch as an extension of the house.  It was an office annex where they could get work done but also listen to the cicadas, watch the birds and feel the breeze blow from the trees.  I was inspired.  

During my second year of undergrad, my roommate, Chad, and I got bored one fall evening and decided to go for a walk around the beautiful, Southern campus.  Winthrop University had (and has) so many courtyards, colonnades and front porches rich with white wooden rocking chairs.  We noticed the lines of empty rockers and decided that we would simply take over a few of those chairs and sit.  To us non-partying art kids, this provided a bit of a fresh perspective on our small world.  We would get bored in our dorm, head out to find a suitable pair of rocking chairs and we’d sit and be goofy for a while, laughing and cackling  until we decided to head back to our dorm.  Brad and Brian had reawakened that memory for me.  

Driving home from South Porch in July, I thought about that inspiration.  I was inspired by the use of the porch and I also just happened to have a front porch of my own.  I knew that I was romanticizing my own porch sitting possibilities and that I would have some personal obstacles to overcome.  I understood that it would be very difficult for me to sit still on the porch.  That stillness is what I coveted when I saw Brad and Brian sitting on their porch.  My buzzing week of activity stood in contrast to my (probably incorrect) outside perception of their nightly peaceful porch sits.  I wanted to sit on my porch, but I also wanted to be able to be still long enough to enjoy sitting on my porch.  My summer of art adventures was not going to slow down for another few weeks, but even a night or two of sitting over a week or two might still do me some good.

I also had a whole lot of daily responsibilities lined up for each summer day and beyond.  Aside from the summer art adventures, I would need to set aside time in the evenings to go to cross country practice, eat dinner when we returned, clean up the kitchen after dinner, shower, handle emails, prepare art for delivery, plan upcoming trips and still make time for nightly TV time with Blue and Violet.  I knew it would be weird in that rush of nightly activity to hit pause and tell everyone to hang on a few minutes while I sit quietly outside on the porch.

At dinner one night, I explained Brad and Brian’s nightly ritual and how cool I thought it was.  This was me preparing the way.  Then I got up from dinner, cleaned the kitchen and announced I would be outside for a while.  I turned my fan on high, stole a rocking chair from inside and sat on my porch.  The sound of the cicadas and katydids was overwhelmingly loud.  I’m sure there were crickets in there too.  My personal army of hummingbirds quickly got used to my presence and began to ignore me while fighting and chirping over the feeders.  The sun was setting behind the house and the clouds on the horizon in front of me reflected the warm colors of the sunset.  My view was green, blue, orange and beautiful.  I went inside a while later with several mosquito bites on my head.  

I realized I needed to make some adjustments for my next porch sit.  I would need sleeves to keep the mosquitos off the backs of my arms.  I would probably need a hood over my bald, mosquito landing pad of a head.  I tried not to scratch the itchy lumps on my head and headed back out the next night undeterred.  The thin camo long sleeve hoodie was perfect.  My arms and head how had a layer of protection and on the cooler nights, it wasn’t too warm with the fan on high.  I added another chair for a side table to sit drinks, sketchbooks and computers on.  It was a bit redneck, but my porch sits were getting more convenient, more cozy.

Sitting still was and is the most fierce enemy of my porch sits.  As soon as I sit and my brain registers that I’m still, it kicks into high gear.  “Don’t forget you have to do that.  Maybe you should go do it now.  You haven’t checked your emails in a while.  Did you get into that show?  Maybe you should check.  Remember the email you forgot?  Now would be a good time to answer it.  Dude, the grass needs cutting.  When are you going to take care of those vines and limbs?  You could just run grab the pruners and cut those right now and it would be done.”  The commentary is nonstop.  Don’t worry, I’m still undiagnosed, so it’s ok.  

The stillness was what made it worthwhile at the same time.  It’s not really a physical rest for me so much as it is a mental rest.  Maybe rest isn’t even the most accurate word.  There’s definitely something that happens out there, whether it’s a 5 minute sit or a 30 minute sit.  Even if I give in and check my phone or text someone, there’s something that happens that is, perhaps, spiritual.  Sitting outside and getting tuned into the sights and sounds of nature is a bit of a reset.  It’s hard to be annoyed when an iridescent green hummingbird is hovering a foot from your face to see if you pose a threat.  It’s tough to remember the bad parts of your day when you’re surrounded by the saturated colors of summer.  It’s difficult to hear the negative voices when you have a chorus of cicadas in your ears.  

I have a lot of improvements to make in order to perfect my porch sits, but I’m out here, right now working on it.  There’s a cricket to my right sounding off periodically.  The hummingbirds have called it a day and I know soon they’ll head back to Central and South America.  The tree tops are gently swaying in a light breeze and at 7:23 pm, they’re almost just dark silhouettes against a sky that was blue just a moment ago.  There’s an orb weaver spider working on his sticky architecture beside the porch column and there are bats flitting through their nightly acrobatic routines in front of me.  It’s kind of magical out here.  

the trouble with truth

My last post on Sep 22 was about me freaking out over a piece of truth.  Going about a normal day, I got an email that forced my mind to realize that I didn’t have any art out on exhibit at that moment.  That realization sent me down an emotional rabbit hole, had my brain flooded with thoughts and worries for a few days and eventually led to me sitting down and writing out my thoughts to share.  

I was checking my phone this week and I got an email reminding me about an upcoming reception/awards announcement.  I paused.  Wait.  What?  Was I in that show?  Oh no.  I do remember planning to deliver two sculptures to that exhibit.  Did I forget?  That would be ridiculously unprofessional.  Or did I deliver them and forget the exhibit?  Is that worse?  Didn’t I just write a blog post about not being in a show?  Was I wrong?

A while later I sat down at my computer and searched my emails.  There it was, back in July.  Apparently I did deliver them, though, I honestly have no recollection of that.  As a visual person with a busy mind, this happens sometimes.  If I have a lot of things going on, I’m lucky to remember all the things I have to do in a day and if a day is busy and nothing freakish or visually interesting stands out that day, it’s possible I will stop on my way to cross country practice in the middle of summer, drop off a couple of small sculptures in a rush and then continue on to practice, run 3-5 miles, drive home, work on preparing for upcoming classes, spend time on a drawing, plan two trips to Chapel Hill, take down a solo exhibit in Summerville and totally forget about dropping off the two small sculptures.  For the record, Violet had hip surgery somewhere in there too.  (Yes, the little blue sculpture in the poster and fliers for the exhibit is mine, making it even more terrible that I forgot.)

But I didn’t sit down to write about forgetting things today.  I’m here because I was thinking about truth.  

When I was a sophomore in college, I knew the truth.  I used to walk by this building with a big cornerstone with the inscription “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”.  I knew this was from John 8:32 in the Bible because I was a good little church boy who grew up being told what the truth was.  Specifically, I was told that my religion had the real truth and that no other religion did.  This implied that truth existed, it could be found by humans and that I had found it.  Just think about that.  Me, a country guy from South Carolina.  I found the Universal Truth before I even turned 18.

This made being sure of everything easy.  Every argument or discussion could be boiled down to black or white, good or evil, right or wrong.  And since I knew the truth, I always knew where I stood.  However, as time went on and life gave me more and more experiences, I found it more and more difficult to break everything down into black and white, good or evil, right or wrong.  (Writer’s note:  I use “black or white” as it was used in religious jargon.  I was taught that everything was black or white in terms of morality or Biblical truth.  There were no “gray areas”.  Gray areas suggested that truth may not really exist.  Just making sure this is not interpreted as any sort of racial terminology.  Some of those people were quite racist too, but they used different jargon for that.)  My religious upbringing had prepared me for this.  I was taught, mostly indirectly, that education was tied to “liberal” thoughts and that I would need to be on guard in college and grad school or I could be infected with a “thinking too much disease”.  I might start questioning things that shouldn’t be questioned.  I might have my faith shaken off its foundation.  

I’ll save you all the stories but here’s the spoiler:  I did start questioning everything and while my faith in God was never shaken off its foundation, my faith in the “people of God” was.  Fast forward to this week when political faces on screens open a meeting by invoking the name of God in prayer and then talk about the importance of killing, the need to remove all empathy and how only a select few are fit to do all that killing and unempathetic thinking.  Churches I’ve attended refuse to use their own holy book to condemn the court recorded activities of certain people in power because they think they can use those people to get the Ten Commandments posted in schools or abortions made illegal.  

Dang, we got in the deep water fast, didn’t we?  Oops. 

We’ve lived in a social climate for a decade or two now where truth depends on opinion.  Leaders and respected adults have told us what was “true” without presenting any evidence to support their claims.  Worse, we’ve allowed them to do so without question or any investigation.  We’ve just nodded and voted and moved on.  With the proliferation of Facebook, “fake news” and now AI, who even knows what truth is anymore?  Doesn’t truth now depend on your belief system, your politics or your own personal to-do list?  Forget the facts, if something feels true these days, it’s truth.  

So I’m on my computer, looking at old emails and I remember that what I wrote here on Sep 22 was not actually true.  I sent myself into a black hole of self-doubt and mental torment because I wasn’t in any exhibits and it wasn’t even true.  What I thought was true in my head, was not, in fact, supported by evidence.  I’m over here whining about not having art out in the world and my two sweet little sculptures are sitting under bright lights, making people smile and wondering how I could forget about them.

Y’all know I try to keep a record of the exhibits and opportunities I get accepted into and rejected from.  I started that because it always felt like I was getting rejected.  It was easy to remember the pain of not getting into that exhibit, but so easy to forget getting into that other one.  I remember the exact wording of the rejection letter from that great juror but I forgot the award I won.  I felt like a failure because I couldn’t remember succeeding.  I did not “know” the truth and I wasn’t free.  

I’m not just rambling.  This smaller scale story of not being able to find the truth is directly related to that larger scale story of the human race not being able to discern truth.  When we lose the ability to know what truth is in the minutia of our daily lives, it’s easier for us to lose a grip on what truth is on a larger scale.  

I believe you find truth through questions.  Any religion, group or individual who tells you to not ask questions is a religion, group or individual wanting to have complete control over you.  They know you find truth through questions and they don’t want you to find truth.  

And when your religious knee jerks and you want to disagree with me, I’ll ask that you pause and think about the questions asked in your holy text.  Just one example from my own religious upbringing, one of Jesus’ favorite things to do was to answer a question with a question.  Remember that bracelet you wore 10 years ago?  What would Jesus do?  He would ask a question.  Thinking isn’t a sin.  It’s how you find truth.  

I’m lucky I get to teach critical thinking skills on a daily basis at my job.  In order to critique a work of art, you have to be able to isolate feelings and emotions from the conversation.  You have to look carefully at the visual evidence present and be able to fully analyze that evidence.  Then you put all that information together and make judgments based on the evidence.  You’re asking questions and finding answers based on evidence.  This brings you to the truth.  

Many of us are at the point where we just want to let Google do our thinking for us so we can get back to watching our Tiktoks.  Maybe we just want to react to our emotions and make choices based on how we feel rather than based on evidence.  But, feelings aren’t truth.  

Everyone gets discouraged from time to time but we have to remember that our feelings aren’t truth.  When our feelings don’t match up with reality, we lose truth in all the small ways and in all the big ways.  

why do i suck?

There I was, minding my own business in front of my computer.  Just a regular day at school, nothing special.  I had just gotten the hang of my fall semester classes again after about 3 weeks and was feeling like everything was getting more under control.  I was checking emails and carefully reading through them from the top down.  I’m sorta weird about my inbox.  I need the email to remain “unread” until I’m ready to answer it or do whatever it’s asking me to do.  If I don’t keep it “unread”, it will quickly disappear into the abyss of old mail and I’ll wake up in a cold sweat three months from now when I remember that I didn’t answer it.  So I respond to one email and then read the next one.  It’s just an email advertising a call for art for an upcoming exhibit, but it sends a sharp chill up my spine.  Instantly it hits me.  I don’t have any art out on exhibit right now.  Does that mean I suck?

If you follow my nonsense here or on Instagram, you know it was a busy summer.  I had work in several national level juried exhibits all across the country and I did three exhibits in Summerville at once.  For most of the summer, I was very busy making lots of new art, shipping art to exhibits and installing a big immersive solo exhibit.  In the academic world of art professors, that’s a good year’s worth of accomplishments and it happened in the course of a few weeks.  But there, in front of a new call for art, it hit me.  You’re doing nothing now.  You must suck.  

Have I ever told you about my friend David Lancaster?  We became best friends in 4th grade after “hating” each other in 3rd grade.  It’s a long story and we’re already chasing a distracting story reference, so just go with it.  David became a great friend and we spent all of our available time together in school.  Beginning in the summer of 10th grade, we also began taking family vacations to the beach together.  One summer in the 1980s, we stayed with his grandparents at the ocean front Holiday Inn in south Myrtle Beach.  It was next door to a water slide and the smaller pavilion and there was pop radio music blaring from speakers all day and all night.  During this particular trip, “What Have You Done For Me Lately” by Janet Jackson was popular and it’s the only song I can remember playing during that entire trip.  It’s one of those annoying ear-worm things and I never really liked the song.  Because of the weirdness of my brain wiring, when I have a moment like the one in front of that email, that song plays in my head.  I can hear the canned music and her staccato lyric “what have you done for me lately?”  It’s not a pleasant experience and it only adds to the anxiety I felt that brought the lyric to mind in the first place.

I think about that lyric often when I think about social media and the idea of being a productive artist in the digital age.  

My brain speaks:  Maybe you did a year’s worth of stuff in a few weeks, but why aren’t you in a show right now?  What shows do you have coming up?  You don’t have any shows coming up.  Does that mean I suck?  Am I even still an artist?  Why is it so easy to feel like a failure?  Why is it so easy to forget all the positive experiences and just focus on the fact that all my work is sitting in my studio?  And did you see that so-and-so has a show somewhere now?  Why isn’t that you?  Have you applied for anything recently?  Am I even doing enough?  You got rejected so many times.  Why do I suck so bad?  (Yes, I realize I switched back and forth between I and you…it’s my brain talking and it’s also a part of me…go with it.)

I’m a pretty rational person and after a few minutes I will calm down and realize that professionally speaking, I’ve already had a great year and it’s only September.  But do other people know that?  I mean, if we’re all just relying on social media to know what’s going on, do people even remember that I did something a week ago?  I mean, I can generally get to a rational place in my own head and be honest about my accomplishments but what if other people don’t see that?  Or what if they don’t remember?

We’re all living in that Janet Jackson lyric now.  The news cycle is now down to being about a day long, and that’s if only one big thing happens in a day.  And for artists, a day isn’t very long.  It’s really great that you got that big opportunity or award.  You’ll get a few likes and comments about it and then, a day later, you’re old news.  What have you done for me lately?

I see this in my artist friends as well.  One good friend had an exceptional run of exhibits and awards and a couple of weeks later told me how bummed they were about their artwork and lack of upcoming exhibits.  Here’s the funny part:  I fussed at them for being ridiculous.  I listed all the big accomplishments I could remember off the top of my head and the list was pretty long.  Then I told them they had selective memory and that they needed to be kinder to themselves.  I encouraged them to keep a list of their accomplishments along with a list of kind things people said about their work and to review those lists frequently to keep things in proper perspective.  It’s good advice, right?  

I guess I need to take my own advice.  

And I need to get that stupid song out of my head.