nightswimming

giddy up

2012-01-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

Last week was a beast.

There was a tense ER visit, a frantic drive across 3 counties, a brief hospital stay, an MRI of a brain, excellent news, a fireworks celebration, and a horse getting high by chewing on a fence post.

...and everyone is fine. Especially the horse.

It was one of those weeks when you analyze everything, and as a result imagery has just been dropping from the sky. I've had zero spare time this week but somehow I'm putting the finishing touches on a new drawing - and on the stash of white chocolate covered pretzels.

blue, bridge, blue, brother

2012-01-15T19:07:00.000-08:00

blue standing in spartanburg with laurens just over his head

the bridge

blue's first tree climb

my brother the viking

480 months

2012-01-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

This afternoon as I walked across a long parking lot toward my truck I felt a strange presence. I could hear a car creeping up beside me. As the mysterious car approached it slowed to keep pace with me. The window slowly slid down. Like you, I completely expected to see the barrel of a gun pointing out the window. I'd hear a few loud "pops", I'd roll into a ball and duck behind the closest car to check myself for holes.

But as I turned my head to confront my impending doom I did not see a long black car with dark window tints. Instead it was a tiny white VW bug with Emily Berry inside it. Instead of the rifle barrel it was her squinted eyes pointed directly at me. Her face wore a sinister smile that seemed to say, "Gotcha".

And to her credit, she did. It seems she got wind of someone's 40th birthday and dropped all her other responsibilities in order to mastermind a plan of black balloons and goofy posters to be spread across the art department.

As I approached the building the day after my birthday I found bright yellow posters on the entrance doors asking who's birthday it was. Just inside those doors was a large poster with a goofy photo of me with letters to indicate "this guy". Black balloons were all over the sculpture room and wood shop....and then that mess up there on my office door.

Implicated in this matter along with E-Berry are Ali Hammond, Ginger Morrow, and -shock of a lifetime- sweet and innocent Sarah Craft.

My vengeance will be swift and thorough.

-But thanks. It was nice.

Sunrise over the plantation this morning

winter break work

2012-01-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

"All Growned Up" 24" x 48" ink on wood

"Dolphin" 24" x 36" ink on wood

"Donkey" 24" x 36" ink on wood

I remember when I got into grad school one of my undergrad professors laughed at me when I asked him if he had enough time to make his own artwork. He told me that people didn't seem to understand exactly what sort of time and effort went into teaching and he wished me luck in finding my own creative time.

I found myself looking toward the winter break with anticipation. Not for gifts, but for time to work. I knew that Blue would be out of school for the same 2 weeks I'd be out and that would mean I would have dad-duty. At 5 years old this meant that trying to work for the majority of the day - uninterrupted - in the basement studio would be impossible. This meant no sculpting time for me. I'm selfish enough that I could still probably have cleared the time at night or arranged for him to spend some quality time with the grandparents, but avoiding the family during Christmas felt a bit odd. I knew I had a wood panel prepared for drawing, so that became my creative plan.

This is where the juggling act began.
There were gifts to be bought, parties to attend, and Christmas movies to be watched over the winter break. But then there was the long list of things that needed to be done to the house....those things I've been putting off since August. And when a 5 year old is home from school on his first ever Christmas break he needs to be entertained. TV rots your brain and I'm pretty sure Nickelodeon computer games do too so there was only so much of that I wanted to let him do.

And knowing all that ahead of time, I still thought making a few drawings would be a cakewalk.

A couple of days during that first week I was able to steal away into the next room and work on laying out the first composition. If I got 15 minutes at a time I was lucky. After errands, making lunch, preparing everything for the spring semester classes and a couple of short driving trips the afternoons were gone and it was time for the other half of the family to arrive home. Blue and I would try to have supper ready but then there were 2 kids to play with. Kids who were teetering on the edge of supreme excitement every moment of every day. They would locate the hidden elf, jump into the Christmas tree and chase me around the house. Then it was time to watch a Christmas show. They'd pick one and we'd see how long we could stretch those little attention spans. I realize this represents an hour or so I could have been drawing, but I have a responsibility to make sure my children grow up with the proper respect for The Grinch, Charlie Brown, Jimmy Stewart, Little Ralphie and Chevy Chase. After the show it was bed time and after 30 minutes of getting them prepared to actually get in the bed, there was another 30 minutes to an hour of making sure they stayed in the bed and went to sleep. By this time it was 10:00 pm or later. (If that sounds late for a kid bed time, pretend that I said 9:00. Or 8:00.)

And then it would happen.

A Christmas miracle.

I would get to draw from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am.

Eventually the hours added up enough and with the help of a couple of days this last week - I was able to finish those three drawings. And now, just moments ago, I found out that my wife hates the last two of them. She said they were very disturbing and she made a terrible face at me. They are disturbing, but I still find them amusing.

the Christmas post

2011-12-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

The days off from routines provided a burst of creativity around here...

Blue drew "a building where kids who are dead go to feel better". This is 5' x 10' on the floor of my sculpture hauling trailer.

Georgie fashioned a chicken pillow set for a gift.

Violet drew what she said was our dog Zeke. Squint your eyes, there's a white lab in there somewhere.

And I got to work on a drawing of my own.

I also got to paint. Painting is the devil. I hate painting. No offense to you painter types, but I hate the act of painting. But at least it brought the bathroom out of the 1980's.

I met my goal. I'm fond of setting outlandish goals just to have something to work toward. I'm not saying it's smart, I'm just admitting that it's something I do. I decided to try to reach 1,000 km within the year. I had to run in some rain showers, some early mornings and some late nights, but ridiculousness prevailed.

What would Christmas be without some guns?

And we were apparently good enough to get a visit from Santa

on another day of Christmas...

2011-12-23T07:16:00.000-08:00

...the gift of publication in a most obscure book.

on the first day of christmas...

2011-12-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

...I was gifted an autographed photo of Richard Simmons *

*Not the actual Richard Simmons.

The actor portraying Richard Simmons in the photo is none other than jon holloway, famous photographer & infamous photography professor. jon is so dedicated to getting into character that he spent an entire year growing out his "haystack" hairstyle so he could be Richard Simmons for Halloween. And before you ask, yes, he's wearing pantyhose.

great moments in sculpture #508 remix

2011-12-17T14:26:00.000-08:00

The play-by-play recap:

the vacant lot before

also before

AnnieBob uses the plasma torch to cut shapes

JAW also plasma torching

AnnieBob's shapes welded together just like her sketch

JAW's shapes welded together like her sketch

At this point with most projects the students would put a quick couple of coats of paint on and they'd be done. The worst would be over.

That's what they thought.

And then the real work began...

AnnieBob and JAW learning the shovel as a sculptural tool

Digging through several inches of gravel, brick, clay, and local history

Mixing and pouring concrete

Leveling and surfacing the concrete

This also is an art

Several hours of back wrenching work led to this

and this

Then they brought in the freshly painted sculptures. They anchored them to the concrete, put out some pine straw for accent and gave interviews to the various media outlets gathered to see the show. Then they posed proudly for a few hundred photos.

Both were proud and tired of smiling and at this point they were both threatening me with harm for putting them through all this.

The next day they were featured on the front page of the local paper - above the fold. They are now famous artists and the once vacant lot is now properly beautified.

And I know it doesn't look like it here but I promise I helped them dig those giant holes and pour that concrete. I have the back pain to prove it.

Big thanks to Jon Holloway for providing the vacant lot, the pine straw, and a lot of cement mixing help.

2011 Reindeer Run or Too Cold For This

2011-12-14T15:21:00.000-08:00

Brother Daniel and I signed up for the 2011 Laurens YMCA Reindeer Run mostly because I live in Laurens now. I drove past a sign one day and saw the entry form in the paper. The only thing left to do was to convince my brother to get up early on a Saturday and drive 30 minutes to my house so we could go run 3.1 miles....just 2 weeks after we ran on Thanksgiving day.

He fell for it and off we went. At race time the temperatures were just above freezing. It's tough to know what to wear for a good run. Even at mid 30's temperatures you're likely to sweat a lot so the tendency is to dress light. Then you find yourself suddenly wet and cold when the running is done.

But we'd both rather run in the cold than in the soupy summer air.

That's brother Daniel finishing with his fastest time yet. I hit my best time too and was lucky enough that there were very few dudes my age running ahead of me so I got second place in my age range.

The cold also affected the free post race bananas. We had trouble peeling the frozen husks and eating the banana was like chewing ice cream. I was afraid Daniel would drop his and break his toe.

Now we're trying to talk each other into the Charleston Bridge Run in the spring.

great moments in sculpture # 508

2011-12-10T19:06:00.000-08:00

Lander University sculpture students in the news:

http://www.indexjournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=40&ArticleID=8682&TM=30363.35

"E.H.H" by Amy Walde

"Canary" by AnnieBob McKinney

Carolina Arts

2011-12-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

Wanna support the arts? You can always buy a drawing or sculpture from me but if you're looking for a way to be supportive without spending any money, here's something you can do for free:

The December issue of Carolina Arts is out today and is available for free download at: www.carolinaarts.com

Read up on what's going on in the Carolina art scene and find some exhibits to see over the holidays.

blue and violet do thanksgiving

2011-11-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

blue sat with santa. violet declined.

she opted for frosty instead.

and a dash on a reindeer.

blue logged his first ever hole in one

and i added more photos of water, sand & sky to the collection

and i watched the movie "elf" at least twice.

and these are the faces we got when it was time to go home.

a mountain stroll

2011-11-24T19:42:00.000-08:00

When we moved last spring we lost the mountains.

We never lived in the mountains but for all my years we've lived with them resting on our horizon. True, the trees tried their best to hide the hills, but they were always there and all it took was a walk across a field or a quick drive down the driveway to reveal Hogback or White Oak or some other strangely named mountain. It's an image I didn't even realize was a part of my visual vocabulary until a few years ago when I did that one-drawing-each-week-for-a-year goal. As I looked over the 52 drawings, most of them had a hilly horizon somewhere in the picture plane.

Out on the new plantation we have some hills within a short walk but we have to drive to the next exit up the interstate to get a glimpse of those same mountains. My makeshift running path is mostly flat. This is a realization I just had today. Before today I would have described the path as slightly hilly. I assumed I was running up small hills and down small hills and that I was getting a good workout for my legs. Today, however, brother Daniel and I ran the "Gobble Your Gibblets 5K" at USC Upstate in Spartanburg. Now I am convinced that someone moved their campus into the high mountains just for this race. My legs are screaming. There were hills there that came out of nowhere and the inclines looked like something out of an evil geometry book.

These races are so strange. I run this same distance at least 6 days a week, but there's something about running with other people who are itching to outrun you. I try to tune them out, I try to pretend I'm running at home, I even closed my eyes a few times (not one of my better ideas) but I still ran faster than I normally do. Faster is good for time but not so great for the heart. At least that's how it felt during the last few hundred meters. There was this one absolute killer of a hill on the last kilometer that eventually tapered out to just a regular hill that remained almost all the way to the finish line. I would swear I heard that hill laughing at me.

We did well though. I think we both improved our times from last year and I was happy to finish 2nd in my age range. Of course, 2nd is just the first loser, but after that last hill I think we were both happy to just be walking upright after the race.

There's brother Daniel crossing the finish line in noble fashion. And since it's shopping season, I'm sure he'd love for you to come to his store The Tangled Web across from Westgate Mall in Spartanburg. If you need comics, games or anime, he can hook you up. www.twebcomics.com

the one with the shameless self promotion

2011-11-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

Three shiny new sculptures added to the website and ready for viewing. www.dougmcabee.com

just a few of the Raku results

2011-11-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

these are all hand-built using the coil method of construction. 8 inch minimum size...

raku and raku too

2011-11-15T18:02:00.000-08:00

The ceramics class is so large this year we had to split the Raku firing into 2 events. Photos of each event below...

The first night, before Daylight Savings Time ended...

KJ, one of the lid lifters all scrubbed in and ready to go

Shunny looking like some kind of ceramics bandito. She volunteered to be the photographer for the first firing.

Jonny Cupcakes on the left, me in the middle, KJ on the right.

Putting the first few pots in the cans.

Adding one more to the can. That might be Erin, Lydia & Abby behind the cans.

Abby's lid stuck and it took 3 people to free it up.

And then it exploded! Just kidding. This was the "burping" of one of the cans.

Ashley "The Wisk" doing her victory dance

The second night, after Daylight Savings Time ended...

A scary bunch. Brandy, Tavern-E-A, Josie, ElizabethE & Anne

I gave them the safety talk and this was their response.

Waiting on the cones to fall. I lack patience. AnnieBob took this photo to compare the reflective surfaces of the kiln and my head.

Just as the second cone was falling, suiting up and making sure no skin was exposed.

Devin on the left and EllenBess on the right. They were the gatekeepers for this round.

Cracking the lid open.

Pulling the first pot.

Very warm.

Still pretty warm.

Making the white crackle crackle better.

This is the part everyone likes.

AnnieBob and Bethany photographed the second firing. No one was singed at all and everyone was anxious to see how their pots turned out. Everyone did their job well and I may have even been a little proud of them. Of course, I'll never tell them that.

seen at secac in savannah

2011-11-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

Fiber artist Beth Melton. She gave a great presentation and she said she'd send me some of her "Pee-Paw's Pecans".

The river. Nice to look at but very cold to run by early in the morning.

Sculptor Ann Hamilton. The Lander gang plus Beth sat down front at her keynote speech.

The longest Veterans Day Parade I've ever seen. The marching bands punctuated the talks on Thomas Kinkade making them even more goofy to experience.

SCAD's reuse of old stuff. Great use of existing structures and great use of color on the new stuff.

Churches. Southern city....lots of churches.

Liza Lou's trailer exterior. SandySingletary and Beth wait while Georgie views the interior.

Liza Lou's trailer interior. Very shiny. Very impressive.

Mapplethorpe photos. Naked flowers, not people.

Kehinde Wiley's massive paintings. Just as slick as they were in the art magazine but even more perfect and awesome in person.

River Street. Newly acquired fact: Running on cobblestones is not fun or easy.

Some real life "Occupy" people. Not impressed with their level of dedication. When the drizzle started they ran away.

This. War monument and lots of other public art. Public art rules. It appeals to people and makes them want to come to your town and walk around.

A pirate ship. It wasn't really a pirate ship but when Blue sees this photo he's going to call it a pirate ship and I'm not going to rain on his parade.

weldors wielding welders

2011-11-05T14:59:00.001-07:00

JAW welding on a periactoid

AnnieBob welding on a periactoid

What is a periactoid? I'm not completely sure, but I do know how to make one. It's essentially an extruded triangle that stands upright. These mammoths are 16 feet tall and will be covered with cloth and used in the upcoming theater production.

You can see these being used in real life at...

Golden Samurai

"Set in the once poor town of Utagowa, Japan, this fairy tale tells the story of a town now rich beyond belief. But when someone comes to take away their wealth, the citizens of Utagowa have a thing or two to say about it! In doing so, they examine the age old proverb: all that glitters is not gold. With sword fighting, puppets, and other fun effects - this is not a show to miss!"

Location: Lander University's Cultural Center Auditorium

Dates: Nov. 16, 2011 8:00-10:00 PM

Nov. 17, 2011 8:00-10:00 PM

Nov. 18, 2011 8:00-10:00 PM

Nov. 19, 2011 3:00-5:00 PM

great moments in sculpture #82

2011-10-26T19:08:00.001-07:00

MAT "Soundsuit Project" inspired by artist Nick Cave

Blue's moment with Langhorne

2011-10-23T19:51:00.000-07:00

great moments in sculpture #478

2011-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

work begins on "the peg-leg project"

the chainsaw was a big hit. so was corey's dreadlock protective covering.

Over the first several weeks of the semester I watched at least 3 students as they held a power tool for the first time. They literally trembled as they prepared to pull the trigger. One student did her best to avoid using the chainsaw. When she finally gathered her strength and used it to carve on her project she loved it so much she asked her parents to buy her one. Probably not what you'd expect to hear from your college aged daughter.

I maintain that we have more fun in Sculpture than in any other area. I mean, come on.......we have chainsaws.

free hugs, angry birds & langhorne slim

2011-10-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

A photo with Shoeless Joe. Because it's never too early to start warning your kids about the dangers of hanging with the wrong crowd.

The last two days of Fall Break ended up with time spent at Fall for Greenville. The kids are all about some festivals these days and Greenville is always nice. There were rides....

...and shameless ads aimed at children....

...and free hugs (apparently)....

...and there was Langhorne Slim.....for free.

Fall for Greenville is all about food and music. The food is cheap and the music is free. We met some friends at the stage for Langhorne's show and we walked up and seized a spot right in front of the stage. Ever the caring parents, we had our 5 year old and 2 year old in tow. Before you get uptight about that, just know that the music was not too loud and as a daytime all ages show, the language was pleasantly PG at the worst. And what kind of parents would we be if we let our kids grow up thinking that the radio was the only source of music, that that Bieber kid was worth hearing, or heaven forbid.....that they NOT know what the word Americana means?

So we sat down on East Washington street, right on the center line and waited for the band to tune up. I'm a realist (most days) so I understood that the only way our kids were going to sit still and relatively quiet for an hour or so was with some technology help. At the first sign of fidgeting I handed Blue my phone and he went to town on some Angry Birds. When the show started everyone was on their feet.....everyone except Blue. He sat in the street with crazy fans jumping all around him for the entire concert. He didn't look up but he did catch the beat a few times and start swaying to the music.

For the final tune Langhorne launched into a particular song he's known for singing while moving through the crowd. At the Handlebar last year he sat down with a fan in the seats near us and sang to her. At the Visulite a month or so ago he jumped off stage and walked right up between G and me. Sunday he climbed down off the stage, jumped the metal barrier and walked right over to where we were standing. He was singing away when he spotted Blue sitting on the ground playing games on the phone. Langhorne smiled and quickly sat down in front of Blue and began to sing directly to him. Blue was so into the games I had to tap him to get him to look up. He saw what was happening and this huge smile washed over his face. Then Langhorne got up and continued his stroll through the crowd. Since Blue had my phone I couldn't get a photo of the experience. But as a wise man once said, "We have it in our hearts".

This was just after he left Blue's perch. That's Ginger's hair on the left. I took the photo and Blue asked for the phone again so he could finish his game. He's a tough crowd.

great moments in sculpture # 192

2011-10-12T18:21:00.000-07:00

There are 63 ceramic sculptures inside this fire.

My students spent a couple of weeks developing ideas and creating fragile projects and when they were finished I put them in a barrel and set them on fire.

Typing that out helps me see just how odd it may seem to you. It also explains why some students were so nervous about the idea. It's easy to get so caught up in your own little world that you forget just how odd some of your routine experiences may seem to others.

All the projects survived and the results were great.

a charming neighbor

2011-10-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

After the BBQ festival last week we drove out to Walhalla, SC for my friend's gallery opening. Stan DuBose is an elementary school teacher, an excellent ceramic artist and he was one of my college roommates. He built a cool house a few years ago up on a hill and had this really great studio with a view. Last spring he married an artist and they soon found out that the cool studio was only big enough for one artist.

The solution? Build a whole new building to house two perfect studios joined in the middle by a gallery for display. And throw in a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen while you're at it.

They call it End of the Road Studios and I don't even want to waste your time by trying to explain it in words. When we go back I'll take photos. To get the idea of antique doors for a ceiling, license plates for siding, a horse trough for a bath tub or pennies for kitchen floor tiles....you really just have to see it. It's really great and if you're interested in seeing it and perhaps buying some art at the same time, you can make an appointment or find out the next open studio time by emailing: artist@endoftheroadstudios.com

There's going to be a website but it doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

While we were there getting the tour I was watching people and apparently some of the people were watching me. I was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt because I have no fashion sense and because I tend to feel that t-shirts can be appropriate for just about any occasion. A very small, very white-haired lady ambled over to me and told me she liked my shirt. That's right, a lady pushing 70 was envying the Nirvana shirt. This particular shirt shows a concert poster for a Sacramento show back when I was in college. The lady asks if I'm from Sacramento. I say no. She says that she thought that I might have known "Dave". She's talking about Dave Grohl the drummer for Nirvana. I stood silent not really being able to process why she thought I would have personally known a famous guy. After a brief pause she continued...."Well you know, before we moved here we lived in Alexandria, VA and Dave used to live next door to us. Oh, he was such a nice guy! What a charming neighbor! We're so proud of him."

These are the kinds of things that happen in Walhalla, the garden of the gods.

Robin Cooper and Stan DuBose. Look them up.

pizza

2011-10-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

I guess that explains why this pizza was so good.

pig places

2011-10-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

Squealin' On The Square is something we've looked forward to since moving here. It's a BBQ competition and festival and it's a pretty big deal. There were vendors and people giving away nice free things...

...like free autumn photos where your kids act like they are having teeth pulled. They laugh and cackle until you make them sit down and someone pulls out a camera. Then they slouch and sulk.

And then they laugh and cackle again. Blue loved the obstacle course.

He also enjoyed the ice cream...

While Violet enjoyed a steady mixture of ice cream and baked beans. Yes, my kids eat vegetables.

I stayed veggie-free with the pulled pork. BBQ is one of our staple foods. BBQ restaurants are called "Pig Places" by Blue and Violet. I'm not looking forward to the conversation we'll have after Blue asks about the connection between cute pigs and BBQ.

oh canada

2011-10-02T19:40:00.001-07:00

Jermel is 6' 6" and most of that seems to be made up of legs. He is one of our art majors and he is a star on the basketball team. Those legs are the right proportion for sprinting back and forth on the court but they make sitting on the drawing benches for 3 hours rather uncomfortable. On the regular size benches he looked like an adult riding a toy tricycle.

Ever wonder what individualized instruction really looks like? Sometimes it looks like this. I took some time last week and hooked him up with a sweet Jermel-sized bench splashed with a bit of his Toronto hometown.

A photo of the Canadian ride along with a regular sized bench for comparison. When I tried it out my feet were a good six inches above the floor.

This is Jermel with his ever-present headphones enjoying his personalized seat. This is not the intended use for the bench, but it was so tall he was able to substitute it for a high stool to work on a tabletop.

Why choose a small liberal arts university? Because the professors will not only know you by name, they may also choose to modify the classroom furniture to suit your needs.

hooligans social event #1 of 2011

2011-09-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

The Honeycutters

Langhorne Slim and the Law

Georgie and I were the Red Sea. He was Moses.

at the Visulite Theater, Charlotte, NC 9/24/11

SandySingletary, Langhorne Slim, Ginger

Photo by Josh Drews!

strange currencies

2011-09-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Good news:

Molly got an art job! If you have more time than I do, feel free to scroll through the last few years of blog posts and read about Molly. The short version is that she changed her major to sculpture years ago and her mother saw fit to blame me. I ended up promising her mother that Molly would not starve to death and would be able to find gainful employment with her sculpture degree. Molly begins work in a week or so at the Columbia Museum of Art which is great for her and it means that I'm off the hook with her mom. Win-win.

And this little green guy had a good weekend. He nabbed the 1st place sculpture award at the 38th Annual Juried Show put on by the Spartanburg Artists' Guild.

G and I sorted through the works during the reception and she and I picked our favorites. Neither of us chose my own....which now that I think about it could be worrisome. My pick won something in mixed media and hers won 1st place in painting. Her pick placed higher, so she won the contest. She was nice enough to buy me a congratulatory coffee on the way home.

country feedback

2011-09-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Traveling Vietnam War Memorial made a stop on campus last week. This small replica of the memorial in Washington DC contains all the names of US soldiers killed in the line of duty during the Vietnam conflict. I suppose this is reason enough to force my sculpture classes to walk across campus to walk through the memorial but the added bonus for us is the connection to Maya Lin, earthworks, minimalism, public art, calls for artists and the experience of viewing a large scale public sculpture.

As both classes moved across campus they were chatty and jovial. Something interesting happened, though when they turned to walk down the wall. It's tough to put a finger on a single cause and I'd bet there were many factors but man, did they get quiet. It was great to step back and watch them and other viewers as they reacted to the wall. There were elderly veterans sharing stories, family members placing flowers under names, and the strongest men you'll ever see were openly weeping.

After a much quieter walk back to the sculpture room we looked over some slides of the full size memorial in DC to discuss the differences between it and the replica. We talked about Maya Lin and viewed some of her gallery pieces which just so happen to utilize the lamination process the Sculpture I students are knee-deep in right now.

Now that the semester is under way, there are all sorts of things happening. Just so that none slip through the cracks......

Someone graduated with their MSN degree. This someone graduated with honors, still hanging on to that 4.0. The fact that she did this after completing her BSN all while working full time is impressive. The fact that she did it while raising 2 kids and actually having one of them is even more impressive. True fact: During one semester she planned and stayed one week ahead of the class schedule for the entire semester. She turned in her final project a week early and after clicking the "submit" button she promptly went into labor and had a kid. She was out of the hospital and back home before the rest of the class finished their semester.

More good news....the grass has been cut again. Yes, all of it. Better news....I didn't have to cut it. It seems the cows are hungry around here and my acres of grass make great snacks. Sweet.

And Zeke. That's Zeke. He's the new plantation dog. He's a lab and since we had one for 11 years we really should know better. But he's smart and he's a good dog. Let's just hope he doesn't decide to eat the house.

Don't go back to Rockville

2011-09-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

Artists' Guild of Spartanburg's 38th Annual Juried Show
September 15-October 20 at Carolina Gallery, 145 East Main Street, Spartanburg, SC

Reception: Saturday, September 17 6:00-8:00pm
Juror: The Honorable Alf Ward

That's right......THE Alf Ward...

bacon cakes

2011-08-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

L to R: SandySingletary, Elizabeth Snipes, Tom Pitts, Jim Slagle, Linda Neely, me & jon holloway

We baked Professor Slagle a bacon cake for his birthday last week. No, the cake did not taste like bacon nor did it have bacon in it. It was merely sculpted and colored to resemble a huge, tasty slab of the delicious meat.

sky blue sky

2011-08-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

Doug McAbee: Sugar Coated

Exhibition Dates: August 15 - September 30, 2011
Gallery Talk: Wednesday, August 24, 4:30 pm

The commute to work. A conversation with his wife. The funny thing his kids did this morning. This is where Doug McAbee's Sugar Coated ideas come from. His interest in the power of color, beauty, and humor in visual communication continues to inform his work. McAbee's artwork often dips into serious or sinister subject matter, but always does so with a sense of humor, a shiny color, and a spoonful of sugar. His drawings often incorporate graphite with color ink and can mix well-rendered images alongside more hastily sketched images. While each image used in a drawing or a sculpture holds a significant personal meaning to McAbee, he is interested in how these meanings shift when unrelated images are fused together. McAbee is even more interested in how these images and forms almost always take on new meanings in the eyes of the viewer.

Sugar Coated will open on August 15 at Greenville Tech's Greer Campus Galleries. The work will be on display until September 30 and can be viewed from 8am to 8pm Monday through Thursday and 9am to 5pm on Fridays. Doug McAbee will be on hand for a gallery talk on Wednesday, August 24, 4:30pm. The Greer Campus Galleries are operated by and for the faculty and students from the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Greenville Technical College. The Greer Campus is located at 2522 Locust Hill Rd in Taylors, South Carolina. For more information call Gallery Director Enid Williams at (864) 250-3059 or visit www.gvltec.edu/vpa and click on Greer Galleries.

back in the ussr

2011-08-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

An internet stroll turned into an image search which led to this very odd find. It was like finding a whole room of people talking about you while you were sitting right there in front of them.
I never new my work was about democracy and the "freedom of action within human laws".

Kulturologia.ru

http://www.kulturologia.ru/blogs/190311/14187/

Metal "newcomers" from Douglas Macabi (Douglas McAbee)

American sculptor Douglas Macabi (Douglas McAbee) weirdo. Not only that, he writes in his biography, was raised by wolves like a balloon, in deep space. It also creates a painted steel sculpture unusual, resembling aliens, monsters, or well out of the animated film "Monsters, Inc.", which in their unpretentious simplicity reminiscent of children's crafts clay. But people, however, I do.

His artistic career began as Douglas Maccabi graphic designer and worked in this field for over 15 years. But at some point he realized that the call is still waiting for him somewhere else, and that the time for self-realization, there are fewer - and found a lesson for everyone. So, for now Maccabi is a professor of art at Lander University in the U.S., and creates its own unpretentious sculptural installations made of steel, to the delight of myself and the people for amusement.

Sculptures Douglas Maccabi resemble, as already mentioned, alien beings, but as for me, there are more similarities with the Soviet playgrounds that were built in parks and gardens in the distant 70th - 80th of the last century. You remember them, swings in the form of dogs, slides in the form of elephants, and other "attractions", created for children by unknown masters.

Although, if no kidding, the bright-color abstract forms, invented by the author, looks quite interesting and even pleasant, if not look for hidden meaning in them, and be perceived as another fad pretty weird creative person Maccabi Douglas (Douglas McAbee).

Comments
•
Dennis_Churaev 3/19/2011 8:33 p.m.
In my opinion, the general style of a few "children." Not bad would suit to decorate children's playgrounds. However, although I would hardly put it all in my apartment, some products I like ... More precisely only the trees on the latest photos. It is unlikely that I would have bought something like "a green tree on wheels. Well, I love crafts of iron, so thanks for the picture interesting.

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charmik6 3/19/2011 9:57 p.m.
In fact the aliens are very suitable for children's playgrounds or parks. The child sees the figures in his imagination. It's very simple and unpretentious, childlike. The author really came down to us from the "deep space". I myself would have bought a couple of aliens (but only for a symbolic price) and would put them in the garden, somewhere near the bench.

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SVENN 3/19/2011 twenty-nine past ten p.m.
Although I do not quite understand how the interior can be used for most of this design, but these glands I definitely like it.

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luckshmie one forty 03/20/2011
but what have the interior? your home is worth a lot of sculptures?

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Oxan 3/19/2011 10:33 p.m.
Find creative solutions that will attract the attention of modern society is very difficult. It seems that even the author does not aspire to complex structures, but rather seeking the simplicity of forms and ideas. Unpretentious metal sculpture reminiscent of children's creations, and it is close and understandable to everyone, even to buy and put them into your home not everyone wants.

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luckshmie 03/20/2011 1:42
so what have your own house? :) It's probably for garden decoration, or for cultural and entertainment centers, restaurants, in general, non-residential premises.

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bija088 [LiveJournal] 03.20.2011 six twenty-nine
Democracy, what is good, his freedom of action within the framework of human laws, too, in art, like a man this way of working, let them work

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Marina 03/20/2011 7:12
Nice stuff. Above all, they "will not have anything," just to please.

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Keny911 eight fifty-two 3/20/2011
Nuu ...) on the aliens are not very similar, but it looks very fun and interesting.)))

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lyalyaka123 03/20/2011 10:42
but what no meaning here is, I think uverena.mne everyone in life has ever created such things as a child. just before their call was not accepted and art exhibit on display

•
maestro999 3.20.2011 1:19 p.m.
Cheerful)))
Very similar to children's toys)
I really liked this creation in its simplicity and originality. Not everyone is to conceive of such. I think that these sculptures will be very even to the point in children's institutions, venues and parks.

•
rustdotko 03/20/2011 4:38 p.m.
Every man to his own taste. As I duck these masterpieces are not very much, but as anyone. Although the work was carried out qualitatively and with a peculiar taste.

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wladipavlo 3.20.2011 4:47 p.m.
good girl ... a talented ...

•
Lan 03/20/2011 thirty-one past nine p.m.
And the eye is not pleased, and economy is not amiss.

whisker wars

2011-08-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

Congrats to newly minted Professor Donovan McAbee (he's the one on the right).

Here he is comparing beards with Jesus before heading off to start his job as a religion professor at Belmont University.

And before you ask, no, we are not related. He's from a different set of McAbees. They have hair.

finest worksong

2011-08-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

One new drawing and three new sculptures have been added to the website. Go on and have a look.

fear and rafting in north carolina

2011-07-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

So what do you do when you put the finishing touches on 3 new small sculptures and deliver them to the powder coating place?

Well....you get embarrassingly excited about getting the sculptures back and seeing how they turned out. And then you ditch your worries by going whitewater rafting at the USNWC

The US National Whitewater Center is just outside of Charlotte, NC. It is the world's largest man made recirculating river and it is also a US Olympics training site. Go here for a better sales pitch: www.usnwc.org. I got to tag along with my wife's group from work on sort of a spur of the moment type of trip.

The river features a 22 foot drop over one long route and one short route. Dropping 22 feet in elevation over a long route makes for a nice family adventure and insures that everyone will get wet. Dropping 22 feet on the short route makes for a few terrifying moments and insures that someone is going swimming. There may or may not be a near death experience involved.

Our group covered both routes twice and it was pretty easy to see the strategy of the rafting guides. The first run is educational. The guide gets to see how the group follows instructions and how they react to surprises. The second run is apparently a contest to see just how many people the guide can get tossed overboard by the class III and class IV rapids.

The good news is that they will save you from the watery peril. On our final trip through the short course our guide decided we should do it backwards for more of a challenge. Of the 8 people in our boat only 3 of us held on tight enough to to remain in the boat. Even the guide went in the drink at one point but he only did that to help rescue the person who had the near death experience.

While there was a serious element of fear involved in the adventure, this really is a safe and controlled experience. The USNWC has never had a drowning at the facility and most of the injuries there are well deserved ones brought on by really dumb ideas being put into action. In addition to the guides in each raft there are swift water rescuers stationed around the rapids with rescue ropes. But try telling that to the 5 people who were cast into the river. And even if you're relatively safe in the boat there's an adrenaline rush involved when you have to pull people you know out of the frothing water while continuing to rush over Olympic sized rapids.

I saw facial expressions of fear and panic that will no doubt find their way into some future artwork. And because I didn't have to swim for my life, I also partook in a very healthy dose of belly laughter at the expense of others. I'm not proud of it...but it was hilarious.

All photos courtesy of Google image search. The actual photos of our boat in action can be found on the USNWC website but they were copyrighted.

the search for Bill Murray

2011-07-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

This is awesome. I want one for my office door.

It's odd how our eyes are trained to take in the scenery without noticing the utility lines.

St. Philip's has no sense of humor when it comes to ghost and graveyard tours.

When I am memorialized with a statue of my mug I'd like to look happier than this guy.

Someone stole someone's graffiti idea and made more graffiti out of it. Sounds like the work of Shepard Fairey?

George the horse & Georgie the wife

sweetness follows

2011-07-24T08:24:00.001-07:00

4 year olds ask lots of questions. When they ask what a cemetery is....honesty may not turn out to be the best policy. Lesson learned.

sweet nectar of the gods

2011-07-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

scenes from the plantation

2011-07-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

the places...

the animals...

scenes from the beach

2011-07-05T18:58:00.001-07:00

forgive me if most of these images feature my kids. blue and violet have become performers and they know how to get a camera on them.

decidedly not my kid. velma and the mystery machine

an orange parrot on blue

a green cat for violet

blue suddenly wanted to be a zombie. g wrapped him up in some toilet paper (there was a minor definition lapse between "mummy" and "zombie" but the resulting performance was the same) and off he went terrorizing the town.

there was some sand art: a giant fish monster washed up and tried to eat the dynamic duo.

half eaten

blue with our bearded man. he and another kid demolished seconds later.

there was some alligator wrestling

we spotted a tic-tock croc which of course meant there would be....

pirates...

captain blue

the violet terror

and captain hook himself

they discovered adventure golf and loved it

and someone had a birthday. i'll be nice and not tell you her age.

there was a wedding right in front of our balcony. blue said the preacher looked like a vampire. don't miss grandma's purple crocs.

but soon the vampire and purple crocs were upstaged by the kite surfer.

blue's first exhibit

2011-06-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

That's right, Blue's first public exhibition of 2D work in a regionally juried art show is now on display for your enjoyment. He was so proud that his colorful page was selected to be hung on the wall. If you'd like to see it just visit the Sticky Fingers restaurant on Woodruff Road in Greenville. You'd better hurry though. I'm not sure how long the scotch tape will hold up.

And Blue has masterfully covered both 2D and 3D areas of creativity lately. This is his pinewood derby race car that he created this week in Vacation Bible School. I'm not sure exactly what this means yet but he was the only child in the entire church to paint his car green.

we have moved

2011-06-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Way back when I was in high school there was an old farmhouse on highway 9 that I passed every day. The house was pretty much falling in on itself and when the folks moved out they proclaimed their departure in an unusual but clever way. With a can of black spray paint, one of them printed in very large letters all the way across the front of the house "WE HAVE MOVED".

I guess that's one way to do it.

These days we are logging on to websites and filling out forms at the post office to declare our exit from our home of 16 years.

We loved our old house. We were less than a minute from the Waffle House, the Bojangles and the grocery store. I had a paved and scenic running track that was exactly 3.1 miles in one lap. I had a lawn I could cut in less than an hour.

But life on the plantation is good. We have to wait 9 extra minutes for Waffle House and more like 15 minutes for Bojangles and the grocery store. My running track is all grass now which is easier on the knees and it takes 5 laps to reach 3.1 miles. The yard takes 12 hours to cut and well, there's just no way to make that sound positive.

But the view from the front porch is nice...

A Better Vedder

2011-06-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

What if I told you that one of these guys just released an album of ukulele music?

Well it's true. The one on the left is Eddie Vedder and in this photo his is rocking out as lead singer of Pearl Jam. In the early 1990s Pearl Jam was huge part of the Grunge music scene. If you were not around in the 1990s or if you were too cool for these punk kids and their music back then, just know that the music was loud and aggressive. Sometimes you could make out the thoughtful lyrics over the overdriven amps and sometimes you could not. If I'm remembering my college years correctly Pearl Jam featured 3 electric guitars for that multi-layered guitar sound along with an electric bass and a frenzied drummer.

I was not the biggest Pearl Jam fan back then. Call me an old man, but I always gravitated toward their quieter songs. I realize the loudness was part of the experience and it had much to do with the type of emotion being communicated to the audience. It's just that if these guys had gone to great lengths to write meaningful words I really wanted to be able to hear them.

Around this same time MTV began promoting their "MTV Unplugged" sessions. Typically artists from electric bands were invited in to a recording studio and given acoustic instruments and asked to kindly leave the electrical outlets alone. (Clapton's set is still one of the best in my most humble opinion) These sessions were a huge success in part because when the noise was cleared away the real beauty of the melody and lyrics were revealed.

(A related side note: This was also the time period when REM released their acoustic mandolin hit "Losing My Religion" followed by the acoustic heavy album "Automatic For The People" which featured the song "Nightswimming")

In the years since Grunge was grungy and loud Eddie Vedder has gathered some years. He became a father and has fostered some powerful charitable causes. I don't want to say he's grown up because that seems an insult at best. But it is fair to say he's grown.

Cue the ukulele.

The album is titled "Ukulele Songs" and it is a beautiful thing. From the first note there is a feeling of almost raw tenderness and honesty. Far from the feeling of a large concert venue, this feels much more like Mr. Vedder sitting in one of your dining room chairs staring out the window while whispering some new lyrics over the ukulele he's strumming. All this while you paint the walls in the next room.

Of course, if you don't like ukulele music, you probably won't like this album. It's 16 songs of Vedder's baritone voice and the pleasant meandering of the ukulele. I've enjoyed it while tearing down wallpaper and painting room after room. The songs linger in my head long after the iPod goes quiet. Also lingering there is the notion that age and experience may have allowed Vedder to make this album. It seems that musical artists eventually make their way to a more simple and stripped down means of communication. (I do realize that Bob Dylan moved in the opposite direction and shocked everyone by going electric at the folk festival all those years ago. Still, if you check the vaults Bob has his own MTV Unplugged session on tape indicating that he does bother to check in on the simple side every now and then.)

Is this an example of shedding the unnecessary? Could it be that Eddie Vedder has economized his creative production and stripped away everything that was cumbersome? Maybe he has simply had the privilege of living a life that has allowed him to pursue beauty in expression and he's followed that through to this album.

*In the interest of full disclosure I must tell you that Eddie Vedder is a lifelong Cubs fan. This means he has taste, he has patience and that he knows what it's like to experience pain....year after year after year. It also means he is a man of exceptional character. Go Cubs! (next year)

little known fact

2011-05-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

When sculptures bore me or otherwise get on my nerves, they get cut up and recycled into new and more effective sculptures.

Such was the case with an early yellow unnamed sculpture and "Lady" a light purple sculpture from grad school. Each sculpture had a particular area that I thought was interesting but each was lacking that "something" to communicate a complete idea. Both of them needed to go away.

Lucky for "Lady" and "Old Yeller" I was taught to recycle long before recycling was a cool thing to do.

The image below reveals just how these two "parts" were fused together with new steel in order to more fully solve the problem of communicating a specific persona through abstracted imagery. The armature is visible as well as the steel "skin". You can also see the welding seams as they appear before they meet the grinder.

The resulting sculpture was painted bright red and named "Ethel's Daughter". Some of you may know that "Ethel's Daughter" made the trip to North Charleston, SC recently to be a part of the 6th Annual National Outdoor Sculpture Competition at Riverfront Park. She also won an Honorable Mention Award at this show.

You can view a photo of her in her new location and read an artist statement by going to the website below:
http://www.northcharleston.org/residents/departments/arts/OSCE.aspx

pride and tetris

2011-05-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Blue graduated from preschool. That's him in the front row singing. I think that's one of his "girlfriends" on the back row to the right.

3D Tetris: It helps to be a spacial thinker when you need to pack all your stuff in one truck. My packed U-haul was a thing of beauty. This photo was taken the day before I finished packing it. When It was finished it was 99% filled with positive space....much to my brother's dismay. He had to help unload it all.

finally

2011-05-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

new sculpture....

I pushed enough stuff out of the way and made a work space and finally got a new sculpture under way. I was not alone in the studio though.

This guy

and this guy decided to stick around.

This year is the big 13th year emergence of cicadas in the Greenwood area. I've never seen or heard anything like this. These guys are everywhere. The stairwell, the offices, the classrooms. They cover the sidewalks and just walking across campus seems like you are walking across cicada rush hour traffic. The buzz by your head and smack into your chest. The trees absolutely pulsate with the cicada songs. I grew up collecting cicada shells from our weeping willow tree and my son and I still collect them from the ash tree in our backyard. He calls them bug-a-bugs. But I'm used to seeing less than 50 each year. They are harmless and actually really friendly little bugs but the massive number of them and the nonstop chorus they play in the trees in Greenwood is like something out of a Steven King story. I'm relatively sure they had some impact on the new sculpture but it's far too soon to understand exactly how.

And now it's time for something painfully adorable:

wiregrass postcard

2011-05-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

year-end shenanigans

2011-04-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday was the senior cook out for the art folks at Lander. We gathered at Jon Holloway's Sundance Gallery courtyard for onion burgers and aluminum foil hats. Sure it sounds strange but trust me, it made perfect sense at the time.

Gabe

Annie-Bob

Jimbo

Doris

Cate

E-Berry

...and add in Leah, B-Berry, Jason, Latonya, Elizabeth & Gabe's cool dog Picasso for the group shot.

After the shenanigans, they traded shiny hats for professional attire in time for the Senior Exhibit in the Monsanto Gallery the following day. The exhibit boasts a very impressive body of work from each student....including a few very fine sculptures.

blue/violet easter update

2011-04-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

lots of truth, some lies

2011-04-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

If I've talked to you in the last 40 days there's a really good chance I told you the truth.

My wife found herself belly laughing at a goofy commercial a while back. She laughed so hard I came in the room to see if she was in need of professional help. She grabbed the remote and continued laughing as she backed the TV up so I could see it. It was the one where there's grainy footage of Abe Lincoln and his wife preparing to go out. She is of a portly description and she asks "Honest Abe" if her dress makes her backside look large. Abe is immediately at a loss for words and his search for any sort of less-hurtful answer sends Mrs. Lincoln away in a huff. As commercials go, it was a funny one.

For the season of Lent this year I gave up lying.

I suppose the disclaimers should begin here. I'm not talking about Radical Honesty. A.J. Jacobs tried Radical Honesty for a period of time while doing research for one of his writing projects and I may have written about it here in the past. Radical Honesty called for him to be nothing but honest all the time. Not only was he forced to answer questions honestly, but he also had to offer up truth whenever and wherever he found it. He is still married (as far as I know) and you can imagine his wife is a saint for overlooking some of his comments. In his experiment Radical Honesty proved to be very problematic and this was not something I was interested in. I believe that we should be honest, but I also believe that we should use the rational thought we were given and this rational thought often tells us when to keep our mouths shut.

I'm also not talking about sarcasm or jokes. Apparently you can't have sarcasm and jokes without some element of deception and as one of my students put it so eloquently, without sarcasm and jokes I really can't be me.

I can hear some of you saying, "Wow, this guy must have a real problem with lying." Thirty nine and a half days ago I would have told you that I don't have a problem at all being honest. In fact, since I still have a few hours left before lying is OK again, I must tell you that I thought this would not be a huge challenge for me at all. It's not like I go around making up things and misleading people for fun every day. What I discovered is that I have the same problem with lying that everyone else does. That problem is that we do lie every day in small, often unobserved ways.

I'm talking about social lies. The tiny lies that are just a part of polite conversation. Like when you're talking with someone and they present some odd or awful idea and you smile and nod in agreement. Maybe you even say, "yeah" or "I understand" when you really just want them to shut up so you can escape. And then they say, "It was nice talking to you" and you respond with..........the truth? Not a chance. You say, "Nice talking to you too."

It's not that you want to hurt them or mislead them. It's just easier to be nice and lie. No harm, no foul, right? And you wonder why I prefer the life of the hermit.

If you're confused by this completely backwards approach to Lent, let me repeat something I've written before. I know this is not how it works. I'm a recovering Southern Baptist and my churches never really observed or mentioned the season of Lent. Giving up things is just not what we like to do and I get that. Someone would eventually suggest giving up fried chicken or covered dish lunches and we'd have to secede and create a whole new denomination and no one wants that. When I entertained the idea of giving something up for Lent I was smart enough to do the research and figure out how the sacrifice went along with the spirit of the weeks leading up to Easter. My thinking took a turn though, and I saw this as an opportunity to do more than simply give up a good thing for a season. My goal shifted toward working to give up something that should remain given up after Easter Sunday passes. As far as my memory serves right now, I've given up cursing, carbonated drinks and negative comments toward people in previous years. While I can't say that any of those things are still "given up", I can say that I've seriously decreased the amount of presence most of them have in my life (darn you Throwback Mountain Dew).

So, on day one, I got up and went about my business and I caught myself almost lying before lunch. Twice.

A few days later I found myself talking to a person about my artwork. He asked a direct and insightful question about one of my sculptures and I forced myself to explain the answer in all of its personal glory. I still hate that he had to listen to all that.

There were an alarming number of big questions I had to answer during this time. My wife and I had to make some important decisions and the fact that I needed to be completely honest may have helped some of those decisions go better than average.

I've lost count of all the art and social events I had to attend during this challenge. For the most part I think I was pleasant but there was one event where I was surprised by a few greetings and I may have been social instead of honest. I'm not proud of this. Don't worry, if you're reading this, it wasn't about you.

Keep in mind that these Lent thoughts about honesty were running through my head during all these events and during all those conversations. I found myself trying to stay a sentence or two ahead so that I could anticipate questions or comments and be prepared to respond appropriately. I also used the time to observe people who seem to have already conquered these problems. I watched one guy in particular and noted his elongated pauses in conversation before he will commit to agree or disagree with someone. I watched a few people practice the most wise response - silence. I've long thought that silence was the enemy of conversations and socializing but now I see the wisdom of silence.

It was this discovery of silence as an acceptable response that freed me up to begin telling people around me that I was trying not to lie. For a while I kept quiet because I know my friends and my wife well enough to know that they would do their best to make this difficult for me. I could just see them using this as a tool for their own personal entertainment. The really strange thing was that when I told them what I was doing they seemed to go out of their way to not ask me anything. A couple of times my wife asked me something and I replied with a smile "ask me again on Easter". I suppose it's nice to have the truth available to us when we need it, but maybe we don't always want it. Or maybe sometimes we need something beyond the truth.

It would be great to say that I feel enlightened by this experience and that I will never lie again. It would also be a lie. If anything I feel perplexed and interested in learning more about the human relationship with the idea of truth. Maybe I'll look into that more after I completely figure out gravity, dinosaurs and quantum physics. While we all wait on that, I'll keep trying to be honest. But make no mistake, I know exactly what to say when my wife asks me questions about her dress.

Joe Kwon

2011-04-12T17:35:00.001-07:00

We saw the Avett Brothers again last weekend. Everyone had a favorite Beatle back in the day and apparently everyone has to have a favorite Avett. My wife loves Seth. Ginger alternates between Seth and Scott. Alicia loves Bob. My argument is that while Bob has great taste in universities (Winthrop) no one could ever hope to be as cool as Joe Kwon. Have a look... That's what it looks like to love what you do. That's what it looks like to be completely lost in your creative outlet.

That's what it looks like to play the cello in a rock band while destroying a bow.

Of course I envy his hair too, but you can't help but like someone who is always positive and always so grateful to be doing what he loves. He really seems to enjoy every minute.

Joe's a good guy. I like him.

If you like food - you might enjoy Joe's food blog: http://www.tasteontour.com/

in a van down by the river

2011-04-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

Installation day for the National Outdoor Sculpture Competition and Exhibition was today. Ethel's Daughter made the trip down to Charleston to Riverfront Park. I envy the view she has until March of 2012. It's a beautiful park and it was a beautiful day for digging a 30 inch hole through concrete and gravel. Charleston is already hot and humid if you were wondering.

Ethel's Daughter and her spectacular view of the Cooper River

Ethel's Daughter and her new friend "Creapy Crawley" to the right

We drove through the old Naval Officers' residences to get to the back entrance of the park. This great house was up on a hill with sculpted oaks and spanish moss in the front and the river in the back. I want this house. Sadly it's a bit of a drive to Lander.

The back yard slopes down to the park and to the river. The small red speck in the center of the photo is Ethel's Daughter. And......

I got to see this guy.

Adam Walls is a sculptor and a professor at UNC Pembroke. Adam and I go back a ways. He lived in or around Spartanburg for some years and he and my brother travel in the same circles. He was also in the MFA program with me at Winthrop during my last 2 years of school. The image above tells you how he's doing these days. This is a nice 2 page article on his work in the January/February 2011 issue of Sculpture Magazine. I'm pretty jealous of it.

Adam is one of the nicer guys on the planet and if you get the chance - you should meet him. You can see his work at www.sculpturebyadamwalls.com. Adam created the "Creapy Crawley" sculpture in the 2nd image up there and I'm lucky to have such a cool installation neighbor.

Fun fact from today's tour of the interstate: We saw a blimp.

exhibit

2011-04-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

This one snuck up on me. Sneaked up? Either way, it's already open. http://wiregrassmuseum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80&Itemid=81 "Toys.Art.Us" sounds like the kind of art exhibit I'd enjoy seeing. A handful of artists from around the country were invited to exhibit work based on whimsy and childlike play. This exhibit is at the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan, AL. The show is open March 29 through July 30. Dothan is not too far from the Gulf Coast so if you're planning a beach trip this summer stop in for some laughs before hitting the sand.

pigtails and pirate pajamas

2011-04-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

pigtails and pirate pajamas

The spring semester has been action packed. I know a couple of sculpture students who would shout a hearty "amen" to that. Those two students are pictured below holding down the right side of the photo.

That's EllenBess, Melissa, Ivy, Doris and Cate moments after they gave their presentations at the Student Scholarship Showcase at Lander last week. Excellent students were selected from all areas in the College of Arts and Humanities to give presentations about their own research in the humanities. These ladies represented the Visual Arts and they did a great job of putting together fine presentations with very short notice while juggling project deadlines for their other classes. They all did a superb job and Doris and Cate made sure that the three-dimensional areas were well represented. I was proud.

That's Gordon standing on the table and that's his chunk of plaster blurring in mid air. It would be easy to explain how this plaster smashing is a part of the plaster project....but that would take all the fun out of the photo.

plaster!

2011-03-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

I have this awesome plaster project.

I'm sure my students could offer their own descriptors for the plaster project, but you have to remember that they have no idea all the things they are learning from it. And while they are working like plaster sculpting machines this weekend to meet the deadline I thought I'd share some images of the chaotic plaster pouring day.

All the good photos were taken by Lara Hammond. I took the bad ones.

The pouring day forces everyone to work in close proximity to one another. Ashley "The Wisk" is mixing plaster in the kitty litter bucket.

The Wisk and Keara

The Wisk and Corey the commercial superstar. The Wisk turns up in so many photos because she mixed like a pro.....earning the name "The Wisk".

Andre in his plaster covered socks

Pouring the plaster. I think that's Rion and Adri?

Alexandria and Lara

Anne and her mold. Each student created a sketch for a design and then created a cardboard mold for the plaster.

Kai-lan and Colleen

We mix enough plaster for 3 molds at a time and pour as quickly as possible.

And just like you'd expect....the cardboard and duct tape molds leak a bit. Everyone has to help out....there are parts of 4 different people in the image above.

Abby in stripes with the funnel.

This looks like an insane process and you'd think that everything would fall apart and that none of the designs would work.

But you'd be wrong. OK, the process is a little crazy but all of the forms yield some close relative to the original design. Generally the students end up with something much more interesting and stimulating than they were hoping. That's when they find out this is just the halfway point of the project.

this was nice

2011-03-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

Me on Beautiful Decay

a social moth

2011-03-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

If you know me.....you know I'm not exactly a social butterfly.
I think I'm getting a little better though. This week I had two social events to attend.

And if you know me....you do not believe I went to two social events in the same week - or the same year. But it's true:

Nena talks with her hands as Aaron contemplates the bucket of kitty litter.

About the kitty litter...I promised free candy to all persons willing to come to the closing reception. Not my kids' leftovers from Halloween or Christmas or even Valentines day. I got the good stuff. As I looked for a container someone suggested I use one of the many Tidy Cats buckets that Dr. Pitts has donated to the sculpture area. It was a great idea.

I spoke to every single one of those people in that photo. Honest.

And there's Dr. Pitts peering through a pony tail.

This is jon. jon is a professional photographer. This is jon's professional photographer face. jon also likes to knit sweaters for his pets.

You can tell jon is a professional photographer because he carries a bipod with him at all times. You never know when the perfect photo moment will develop.

And then there was Mardi Gras. This was a fundraiser event put on by the local hospital and not only did I attend...........I wore a suit. Yes, a suit.

I wore goofy shoes but the suit was a legitimate suit. Back there on the stage is the Dukes of Dixieland band belting out appropriate jazz tunes.

Some sort of conga line broke out with glittery umbrellas. There was a man in a frog suit. It was a very confusing time for me.

Georgie made me go. She would want you to know she did not approve of my shoes.

And of course we had to celebrate with Blue when we got home.

free candy

2011-03-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

6:00 to 8:00 pm this Thursday. The candy will go fast.

maybe its the horizon

2011-03-01T18:50:00.000-08:00

It is certainly not the cultural offerings. The food is good but it can't just be the food. I even spent some time in grad school studying the colors to see if that was it. It wasn't. But I keep wanting to go back to the coast again and again.

A couple of years ago I started to think of the amount of time I spend at the coast just looking out at the horizon. We may say we're watching the waves but how long can you really pay attention to such a trance inducing motion? Maybe it is not the sand or the waves. Maybe I am just orienting myself.

As it happens I've been re-reading Leonard Shlain's book "Art & Physics" and just before we left for the beach last week I read a section dealing with Pythagoras, development of linear text, and light. Shlain mentions the effect of the horizon on humans as our chief orienting device. He goes so far as to suggest that many of the greatest and most successful empires may have excelled simply because they sat on or near a coast with the horizon in sight at all times. I've over simplified this idea of course, but when you consider linear thought, spacial relationships and the development of linear perspective in seafaring cultures you have to realize this is a point worth considering.

How many times each day do you normally see the horizon? For many of us our best chance is on a long stretch of interstate and even then we get only a thin line sandwiched between two clumps of trees. Even if you spend a good bit of time outside there's plenty of architecture and landscaping to block your view of the horizon.

I'm not an airline pilot or a sea captain but maybe as a human I'm wired to stabilize my movements and sense of direction based on the horizon. If in our modern lives with MapQuest or Google we think we no longer need this giant orienting line....perhaps we are fooling ourselves. Maybe our vanishing appreciation of the horizon could account for some of our stress and irrational thinking.

It seems the point of this verbal excursion is: go to the beach. Take a break and consider the horizon. I did and here's what it looked like this time around:

Blue jumping

Blue's special lens attachment for the iPhone (his toy over the lens)

Cold Violet

Warm Violet

Sand turtle with a giant Dali mustache

Sand pirate with Blue

shapes into forms

2011-02-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

Meet Doris. Two months ago Doris had never made a sculpture, never welded and never even considered something called a plasma torch.

And this is Doris about a month and a half ago using the plasma torch to create a sculpture.

And this is Doris welding her steel organic shapes together into a 3D form.

And this is Doris basking in her own glory. The glory of knowing how to weld like a champ, knowing how to artfully wield a plasma torch and having just completed her first sculpture.

Justin just escaped from this photo but his sculpture did not. If it matters, Justin brought in his finished sculpture while wearing a sweet black suit. Presentation is everything.

This is Kaitlyn. She is cutting out shapes. Shapes that are rounded and smooth and safe for toddlers of all ages.

This is Cate. She welds like she's been doing it all her life. She even has a special welding shirt. We're still working on her taste in music.

This is Ellen and her shadow working together. When Ellen coughs her shadow coughs too.

This is Bradberry (not to be confused with E-Berry). His sparks are just as impressive as his cutting goggles.

And this is E-Berry (not to be confused with Bradberry). She LOVES welding and sculpture. She may tell you she hates it and that I'm evil for forcing her to work so hard during her final semester of college, but it's all a show. She loves it. She's having fun.

show !

2011-02-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

Jennifer and I are the two new folks in the Art Department at Lander. This show is named after her cool Black Lab and it features Jennifer's impressive printmaking skills along with some of my drawings and sculptures.

There will be a closing reception on March 10 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I'm sure there will be refreshments of some sort and I plan to bring free candy. You are invited to see the sights and get a sugar high with us.

Check out this month's Carolina Arts Magazine to see our ad for the show. www.carolinaarts.com

seeing what you're hearing

2011-01-25T15:36:00.000-08:00

I've sat through a good many sermons in my life so far. I also know enough about public speaking to know there are tricks and tools for manipulating how a listener will emotionally respond to a speech or lecture.

One of the most sinister is used by lecturers, storytellers and Baptist preachers. It is the light left hand jab followed by the hard right knockout punch. You may know it better as starting off with a joke. The idea is to get the listener to let down their guard by allowing themselves to laugh and enjoy the moment and then, just when they relax, you level them with the main point of your speech. It's so cruel. And still so effective.

Though I've heard this tactic all my life (and probably used it once or twice myself) I still fall for it time and time again as a listener. Which brings us to This American Life and Ira Glass.

I think I've mentioned that my forward thinking wife bought me an iPod way back when no one really bought iPods or knew how cool they were. This was so far back in time that when I unwrapped the gift I was afraid she'd be very sad when I didn't use it at all. It had a black and white screen and only played music if that helps you date it.

But with commuting being a huge part of my life then (and now) I learned to love the iPod fast. Sure it held all my music and I didn't have to switch out CDs anymore but there was also the discovery of Podcasts. This American Life was one of the first ones I subscribed to and I've listened to it every week since.

Each week when Mr. Glass creeps out of my speakers I hope it's going to be a good one. Of course all of them are not good. I know it's helpful when they explain the economy and all that but I grew up on Sesame Street and I need my education to be entertaining. I'm mostly kidding about that, but I do love the funny ones. Molly and I agree that the "Frienemies" episode is the best ever and I laughed the entire hour that week.

I should be clear though. There are episodes that are deadly serious and very compelling at the same time. Those are good but they bum me out. And the thing that gets me is that Ira will come on with his comforting voice and he'll set you up with this goofy and light hearted introduction. I'll smile as I drive along thinking, "this is going to be a good one" and the next thing I know he's talking about something as dark as the devil's black socks. He sets me up and then he knocks me down and I fall for it every single time.

This all came to mind because you can now see 30 minute episodes of This American Life on TV for free. There's a channel called Current TV and I would guess they have a website where you can find a channel number and a schedule. These are the same ones produced by Cinemax a few years ago so if you saw those you'll be seeing them again.

I gotta be honest, I'm not sure I feel all that great about the TV shows. It may have to do with my southern resistance to change and the fact that for years now I've only known the show by ear. I've always had to picture the people and images in my mind and that's been a huge part of the experience of listening. But I still watch them. And I even still fall for the humor laden setup only to be knocked flat moments later. What can I say? People use it because it works so well.

blue christmas

2011-01-23T19:05:00.000-08:00

Here's one I forgot. Last November a lady at church gave us a page out of her AAA Magazine and told us she thought we might want it. I stared at the page trying to figure out why I'd want to know about regional holiday lights options. Then I noted the delightfully handsome chap perched on Santa's lap.

That's right, our boy Blue became a spokes-face for Hollywild Animal Park's seasonal attractions. Last year we took the boy to Hollywild for the drive through light display. It was memorable for two reasons.

Reason one: Hollywild has a portion of the drive-through display that goes through the fenced in area where bread hungry wild animals roam free. The idea is that you will buy bread and feed it to the animals out your window. You get cow saliva on your hands and the other large animals brush up against your car and try to eat your windshield wiper blades. You are instructed to stay INSIDE your car for obvious reasons. No one wants to be trampled or slashed or eaten by bulls, ostriches, or bison. About midway through this part is when I was forced to get out of the car, unstrap Blue, and stand with him beside the truck while emptied his bladder in front of God, festive families, and overly curious animals. The animals concerned me most. They seemed sure Blue had some bread for them and I barely made it back into the truck before the huge bison or buffalo or whatever he was....was right on me.

Reason two: In a new area they had a little Christmas village set up. There were more animals for petting and foods for buying. And there was Santa. That night Blue was one of the first kids to seek Santa's lap out and no sooner had he plopped down on St. Nick's sleigh than some ninja photographer appeared and snapped a few photos. We expected to get the sales pitch about how we could own one of those photos for a low price but when he came over he only asked for our permission to use the image for promotions.

With a smile that adorable it's easy to see why he'd make the highlight reel. It also makes it easier to forgive him for almost getting me trampled by wild animals.

you can keep your milk and bread

2011-01-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

Last year we had 3 nice little snow events. These were very convenient in that they all happened on weekends. They were not huge events and I think all 3 were gone by the following Monday. This year we had a nice little convenient snow on Christmas day and while we all pretended to be snowed in the following day.....it was still all clear by Monday.

But just as our short Christmas snowman withered in the back yard......

A much less convenient snow event showed up.

My wife has one of those jobs where they expect you to show up even when a volcano erupts in the middle of town. My job doesn't directly involve the urgent care of humans which creates a difficult situation for me. That difficult situation puts me in the role of Mr. Mom.

You know the Mr. Mom movie, right? The guy who eventually played Batman finds himself as a house-dad and he's creatively changing diapers and cleaning kids with household appliances. I came pretty close to playing that part last Monday and Tuesday.

And what happens when I'm in charge of the kids? Peanut butter and jelly for everyone! Then I spend 45 minutes getting them bundled up and as soon as I get them outside the smallest one falls face down in the snow and play time is over.

And then....peanut butter and jelly for everyone! You want chocolate ice cream and doughnuts before bed? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

We did snow swinging and built 2 snowmen. We slid across the snow on a cardboard sled. We put giant icicles in the freezer for mom. Then we ate cheesy poofs and cookies.

Now a week later the snow is finally melting away. And just in time too.....we're almost out of junk food.

3 questions - all rhetorical

2011-01-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

Remember Tetris?

Of course, mine was not in color....but back in the day we had one of those hand held games featuring Tetris and it was addictive. I would get so focused on the game that when I'd stop playing it I would still see those little blocks falling wherever I looked.

I've been writing un-fun stuff almost nonstop since 8:00 am and my brain feels like that. I look away from the computer and I'm seeing words and paragraphs and lining up synonyms.

Don't you hate it when you fail?

I went looking for an old sketch this week and in last year's sketchbook I ran across the page in the image above. I don't make New Year's resolutions but I do remember making a conscious decision last year to sketch more in my sketchbook. My goal was to sketch a few times each week. Sure, I remember this now.......after flipping through the old book, but it had totally slipped my mind.

As I turned the pages I saw that I did have sketches entered in several times each week. I did well right up until August 20...

But that was it. There were a few odd sketches scattered around after that but the remainder of the book was filled with notes and lists related to school. Major fail.

I love sketching and I really do believe it makes one a better person. There are all sorts of serious reasons for that but just in terms of common sense - it's a good idea for an artist to record his or her ideas. The fact that I know this and still slacked off on my sketching probably makes me a bad person.

Apparently the gods of sketching thought it would be a hoot to teach me this lesson on exactly the same date I began last year. Nice. Lesson learned.

Don't you just love gifts?

Blue made me 5 paper swords, a drawing of a man, a handmade card and gave me 3 oak leaves for my birthday. Very cool.

new carolina arts

2011-01-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

If you've been in a gallery in NC, SC or GA in the last couple of decades, you've seen the Carolina Arts publication. This monthly paper provides information and listings for exhibits and shows in our region. Tom Starland, creator and sustainer of the paper has long been a cheerleader for the arts in the Carolinas and our red clay cousin to the west. He's also honest and funny and you can check out his relatively unfiltered thoughts by clicking on the Carolina Arts Unleashed blog link over to the right of this page.

Beginning this month you'll no longer see those stacks of Carolina Arts papers in the galleries. The past few years of tough times for the arts has put an end to Carolina Arts as we have known it.

The good news is that Carolina Arts will have a new life beginning today as an online entity. Sure you could read the paper online before but now since going completely online the paper will be in color and will be much more user friendly in a downloadable .pdf format. So while you cant fold it and tuck it under your arm or stash it in the little door pocket of your car, you can still take it with you on your laptop or phone.

I was initially bummed out by the news. But after giving it some thought I realized that it was not always easy to keep up with that physical copy. This is probably something I shouldn't say out loud, but I don't really get out to galleries on a regular basis. There's a great deal of truth in the "hermit" part of the title of this blog. Tom's big step into internet technology will allow me to continue my hermit ways without missing my local art news.

Carolina Arts has always been free and the new online version will continue this great deal. We should all know that there is still great expense involved and if we want to keep this arts resource available to us we need to make every effort to support the paper with mouse clicks. Go read the paper at www.CarolinaArts.com and then follow some links and make sure the advertising galleries know you're visiting their websites and reading about them in the online paper.

While you're at it, send Tom an email at info@carolinaarts.com and let him know how much you appreciate his hard work. Trust me, he's sacrificed a lot to help us out.

and.......a new drawing for the new year:

"Billy Believer" ink on wood panel, 24" x 24"

cooked dirt

2010-12-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

And now some images from Ceramics I featuring the less round and less vase-like projects:

Adri's ancient style fertility figure

Cate's

another of Cate's

one by Doris

another by Doris

Kristen's

and Sarah's

Coil built animal project by Jordan

Doris' homage to Perry the Platypus

Adri's gnu

Mr. Beaver by Kelsey

Slab built narrative project by Doris

Doris again, different view

There were many more really well done Coil Animal and Slab Narrative Projects.....but most of those were finished during that final week of chaos and alas I do not yet have photos of those. Rain check on that.

all the whos down in whoville liked Christmas a lot

2010-12-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

The first week off was productive. I secretly shopped and hid surprises. I deep fried a turkey. I watched all the required Christmas movies. Or at least the movies played while I stayed up late drawing.

It's 24" x 48" and I think it's called "To Be Here". That could change I guess. It's still fresh. I wish I had remembered to bring my other prepped wood panel home from Greenwood for the break. It would have been nice to have the stash of Sharpies in my office too.

Photographic proof that one of my brothers really does have 9 kids.

Little Cindy Lou Who playing in the Christmas snow. With a little breakfast left on her face.

Blue has been asking for snow since the day it melted last year. He's been wanting to go out and make a snowman car again (if that sounds weird...find the photos from last winter and you'll get it). It was difficult to explain to him that it was too cold for good snowballs and snowmen. We did manage to fashion one large snowball.

Blue and Violet in the snow on Christmas day. On our side of town it didn't start to stick until almost dark.

The snow enhanced my annoying blue Christmas lights on my Charlie Brown tree.

Christmas morning hula hooping. You know, it's photos like this that make me realize just how much of a freakshow our home decor really is. Wow.

She did eventually play with the toy....but only after working out all the creative possibilities of the box.

It took a while.

I know it's the wrong religious holiday but I can't shake the idea of "The Pieta" when I see this one. Blue and his cousin Logan.

it's a shirt

2010-12-21T17:32:00.001-08:00

I don't really love surprises. Good surprises are fine I guess, but the bad ones....I hate those. And since surprises by definition come unexpected and unplanned, you never really know which kind you're going to get.

As a teenager I developed the gift of figuring out my Christmas presents. Usually just by observing I could figure out some pretty big hints. The more awesome ability though was being able to shake a wrapped gift and immediately announce exactly what was inside. Looking back now I'd say this had something to do with my object and spacial relationships but it was more impressive for people to think it was magic.

I did this gift surprise deciphering far too long though. Apparently it's pretty sad to continue shaking presents after you're a married adult. That's what the wife told me anyway, so years ago I had to put the magic away and just deal with the surprises. Christmas surprises are easy to deal with.

I've been welding since I was 7 years old. My earliest memories of drawing for fun go back to even younger ages. Yet somehow I managed to go through high school art classes and two years of undergraduate art classes before I realized that sculpture was something I'd even be remotely interested in. I remember my first week in that Sculpture I class. It was exactly like the cliche of the light bulb suddenly turning on. It would seem now that a great portion of my life hinged on that surprise.

I can sympathize with my students for this first semester. They were used to specific teachers and their methods. Nice people with very personable demeanors. Most of my students signed up for these classes because of major requirements and the rest signed up because they knew students in the past who got to use the wheel or make specific projects and they thought that would be fun.

I'm not sure I want to know if their surprise was good or bad but I do know they were surprised. This short bald guy showed up to teach their classes and at times he may have even seemed a tad sarcastic. He had some crazy ideas....some good and some pretty bad. But some of those students who may have thought they'd spend their semester in a good chair quickly found themselves controlling a table saw. Others blasted through molten metal with a cutting torch. Still others turned into pretty good welders and fashioned some very big steel sculptures.

I won't bore you with speeches about how rewarding it is to teach or how cool it is to actually be standing there when a student makes that connection and becomes instantly thrilled. I will tell you that there was one student who seemed to hate my class with a passion right up to the last couple of weeks when she finally got a handle on welding and her whole attitude changed. I'll also tell you about the young lady who literally screamed and ran away from the welder during the welding demonstration. This same lady became the first student brave enough to try welding and then went on to make an awesomely large sculpture. And then there's the almost hippie...everything she touched in the sculptural world turned to gold and I seriously think she may be addicted to 3D.

Ok, maybe I did just bore you with those. Sorry. The point was supposed to be that some of these students were pleasantly surprised by the semester.

So how about some photos to brag on my people?

Cate's famous Italian steel church

Sarah's steel apartment

Cate's laminated wood hideaway

Blake's rad death-board cart

...complete with red velvet lining and fancy mustache

Sarah's yellow submarine cart

There are many more amazing students and many more great sculptures but it's Christmas and we all have more important things to be doing. And besides I'll need to post some Ceramics images later.

holy drawings

2010-12-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

One of the two earliest memories I have of drawing involves drawing in church. My mom was careful to provide me with paper and pens each Sunday.

Now of course, I realize she may not have been preparing me for a career as an artist. She may have been trying to keep me quiet and still.

It works for Blue.

or

2010-12-04T17:39:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the vast expanse of Metropolisvilleburg a mysterious black car sped out of a vacant parking lot. The local authorities had no way of knowing that the evil Mr. Turkeyman was in the back seat of that car.

( yes, that's a real stuffed turkey in the back of that car)

While Mr. Turkeyman was on his way to his next terrible plan, our heroes were relaxing on a Thanksgiving vacation. Violet Flowers, sidekick to world renown secret agent Double O Blue was enjoying drinks on the outdoor patio of the local TGI Thursdays.

It was an unseasonably warm November evening and no one could have expected what would happen next. Mr. Turkeyman was counting on that.

Double O Blue and Violet Flowers laughed and enjoyed their evening until they could barely keep their eyes open. They were sleeping soundly when their secret agent TV phone woke them from slumber. When they were informed of the recent actions of Mr. Turkeyman they just sat for a moment in disbelief.

To gather more information about the evil plan, Double O Blue would need to go deep undercover and infiltrate the inner circle of Mr. Turkeyman's closest known associates. Lucky for us Double O Blue is a master of disguise.

With information in hand our hero set out to lay a trap for Mr. Turkeyman. The evil genius was fond of long walks on the beach and this was just the type of opportunity Double O Blue was looking for. He could hardly contain his excitement when his plan began to develop.

After making a few phone calls and pulling in some backup the stage was set. All that was left was to sit and wait. Soon Mr. Turkeyman would be walking by this exact spot and then......then Double O Blue would rid the world of this menace once and for all. So he waited.

And he waited.

And he had Miss Flowers bring him some coffee and then........they got word that Mr. Turkeyman was spotted in the area. Miss Flowers ran for cover while Double O Blue called in the Bird Team.

Everyone was in place. This was it. The moment had finally arrived. Mr. Turkeyman waddled up the beach and when he was in the exact spot, Double O Blue flew over in his secret agent plane and dropped a metric ton of bread crumbs right over Mr. Turkeyman. And who loves bread crumbs more than the Bird Team? Hitchcock would have been proud of the scene as the Bird Team swept in and devoured the evil monster.

Our heroes had barely begun their celebration when they saw the real Mr. Turkeyman racing down the beach in the opposite direction. The Bird Team had devoured the Turkeyman decoy and the real Mr. Turkeyman sounded the alarm. His Turkey Team rushed in and gave chase to our dynamic duo. Double O Blue stalled the evil turkeys while Violet Flowers escaped. Blue was captured and placed in a modern bungee holding device.

After several days, Blue used his acrobatic abilities and his incredible stamina to defeat the machine and escape with only seconds to spare.

Once again the dashing Double O Blue was going to need a disguise. Using his hipster glasses he was able to pose as a hipster.

Then he quickly slipped into a new disguise in order to infiltrate a dangerous surfing gang.

Mr. Turkeyman and his cohorts got wind that Double O Blue was on their trail again and just as Blue was closing in Mr. Turkeyman climbed in his giant Basterwagon and peeled out of town.

Double O Blue knew that he had brought almost the entire Turkey Gang to justice but he couldn't celebrate knowing that some time, some where Mr. Turkeyman would return.

And Double O Blue would be waiting.

OR....

We took our annual Thanksgiving break and had a blast. The kids were cute and the weather was great...I just didn't think that would be all that exciting for internet people.

And I know it was dumb, but come on....."basterwagon"? That was nice.

competition

2010-11-27T19:06:00.000-08:00

I got beat by a 69 year old man.

A lot of people beat my 5K race time but this guy stood out by being 30 years older than me and a couple of miles per hour faster as well. Actually, I knew this guy was going to toast me when I saw him before the race and I knew lots of other people would too. I told myself I just wanted to finish the race well, that I wasn’t trying to beat anyone else, I only wanted to improve my time. In other words, I lied.
During the race I found myself accelerating when I’d get behind other runners. Something about running just behind someone else made me want to pass them. And if I’m really honest I can say it felt pretty good to cross the finish line and then watch all the people I passed finish behind me. Perhaps I’m shallow, but I’m honest.

I usually get to have the conversation about competition in art about once a year. Sometimes with a student, sometimes with another artist, but always the same conversation. Usually the other person throws the first stone with something like “I don’t believe in competition in art”. Which to me is like saying, “I don’t believe in trees”. Things do not need you to believe in them in order to actually exist.

Competition in art exists. I can show you documentation. I get emails and snail mail each week offering to let me take part in these competitions for a small fee. Each year I enter several of these competitions, also called “juried exhibitions” just as my artist forefathers have done for ages. It’s part of the deal whether you like it or not.

I realize that’s not exactly the kind of thing the person on the other end of the conversation is saying. Generally they are talking about the idea that art should be seen as the emotional and conceptual expression of an individual and that there’s no universal criteria for judging such a thing. On the surface I’d like to agree with that argument….but I’d also like to win another prize for my art.

Recently my Sparkle City friend Kerry brought this quote to my attention: “The real reason that literary prizes are so prized, however, is that prize-giving is intrinsic to the purposes of poetry. From birds to bards, the urge to outdo the other singer is what makes us sing. Since the first strum on the oldest lyre, literature has been about competition and the possibility of recognition. Pindar, the father of lyric poetry, took as his chief subject the winning of games, and the spirit of the end-zone dance has been with us ever since. Horace satirized everything except his own appetite for fame. Milton mourned Lycidas not because he stood beyond all prizes but because he died before the prizes could be won. The subtlest souls still show up in Stockholm to make the speech. Fame, honor, the laurel, and the bays, this more even than getting back at the girls, or the boys, who left you for another—the writer’s other great motivation—is the poetic passion. (Even the idea of posthumous fame is merely the thought of a prize given while we are sleeping, and have left our muttering to others.)” -partial quote from Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. (link - http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/10/18/101018taco_talk_gopnik#ixzz150Qu35Pt )

I’ll admit that it sounds nice to say that no two artists should be judged on how they struggle to reveal inner truths about their own life experience. But to agree with this side of the argument would also mean that I’d have to convince myself to believe that my conversation partner would elegantly and articulately refuse any Best in Show award offered to them. And we both know that’s not going to happen. You can’t hate competition in art when you lose and revel in it when you win. I mean, you can, it just makes you a hypocrite and a bit of a jerk.

I’m barely a runner and there’s no danger of me winning any awards for it any time soon. Still I’ll nearly give myself a coronary to pass you in a race. Humans are competitive. That’s how we got this spot on the food chain. We want to be as good as we can possibly be at whatever we love to do. We want to be great and we want someone else to notice. There’s a word for an artist who does not want to be the best. That word is “hobbyist”.

Of course it’s problematic to judge works of art. Even after you break contests down to one particular field of expression (poetry, music, visual art) and then further break them down into categories (drawing, painting, sculpture) you still have to wade through various approaches to style and content. Then there’s the issue of separating the juror or jurors from their own personal likes and dislikes. I’m aware of these problems each time I enter a contest just like the hundreds of other participants….and still we enter to compete against one another.

Another piece of knowledge we all share is that winning does not mean we are any better at being an artist than the other entrants. It only means our work connected with the juror(s) on a different level than the other work. Maybe we got lucky with one particular drawing or painting. We still may not be as good at drawing as another person. We may struggle to mix that particular color or we may have no idea how someone else goes about the process of casting plastic. Whatever our chosen process, we are simply striving to pass important information along to others. When that connection is made, be it in the form of winning a contest or having an 8 year old tell you they love your sculpture, it feels like victory. And think about it: that 8 year old had a room filled with art to choose from. She probably wouldn’t describe that choice as a competition but by definition that’s exactly what it was.

five more kays

2010-11-14T17:11:00.000-08:00

After getting my forehead a tad toasty during the Raku firing I put in a couple of last minute practice runs getting ready for my second 5k race on Saturday.

My big....no, I guess big is no longer the correct word. My 'older' brother Daniel, the most famous Comic Store owner in the area wanted to run a 5k some time this year. In the last year he's lost over 100 pounds and he's been running and working out like a crazy person.

brother daniel

We arrived early for the race and stood in the cold morning air with a huge crowd of people. My first race last year was attended by around 100 people. This one had several Greenville parking lots filled with cars and a huge mass of people waiting to run.

There's something different about running in a race. You know that you can run the distance and you pretty much know that you're not going to finish first or last but something about it makes you nervous. You start thinking about all the weird things that could happen. You second guess the coffee you had for breakfast. You fear those side cramps that never happen when you do a normal run. You wonder if that man with the walker is going to finish faster than you.

Seeing the ambulance parked in front doesn't help.

Once the race started I forgot most of the fears. There was a wall of slow people at the front of the line...I still do not understand that logic....but after passing them and getting my regular pace down I was fine.

Brother Daniel had been running longer distances on a regular basis so I was not worried about him either.

And then, right on cue....the splitting pain in my side came along. Following that - the very real fear that I was close to losing my coffee. Just as I talked myself down from needing to heave, the guy in front of me peels off to the side, doubles over and loses his coffee.

But the cool thing about running is that the faster you run, the sooner you get to stop and rest.

And I managed to get my sweaty phone out of the shoulder strap fast enough to get this photo of brother Daniel reaching a major goal...

Sure we were beat badly by senior citizens and adolescents alike but we finished well and didn't have to ride in the ambulance. And I managed to shave 8 minutes off my first race time.

fun with fire

2010-11-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

Reason # 473 why 3D artists have more fun than anyone else:

Meet the Raku Posse.....

They actually look more like they are preparing to rob a train than create elegant ceramic surfaces. So this is (L to R) Jordan, Adri, Sarah, Doris, Morgan, Kristen, Cate and Kelsey behind the camera. She's responsible for the blurry photos you're about to see.

And this is what they decided to do when I told them the temperature was right and they should get over to their places quickly. They paused for a group photo while I stood tapping my foot impatiently.

After properly preparing for the event with pizza, cookies, and some kind of little kid crackers you're supposed to dip in icing (don't ask me) we took our places and got ready for the opening.

the view inside the kiln

Once the cones fell correctly the temperature was right and we cracked open the lid of the kiln. The idea is to heat the glazed pots to a high temperature and quickly open the kiln and remove the pots from the intense heat. The pots are placed directly into metal cans on beds of newspaper. The newspaper flames up when the pots hit the cans and the lid is slammed on to extinguish the flames. The removal of oxygen from the chamber and the carbon from the fire work to create effects on the surface of the glazes.

Jordan and Doris handled the kiln lid and I used tongs to snatch the pots from the heat.

The rest of the crew handled the cans and lids working like....well, since you were not there I'll say they worked like a ballet group in complete unison with one another. That's mostly true. They were impressive with their response to the flames and heat.

Grabbing fragile and red hot pottery with metal tongs while dodging extreme heat is not an easy task. In fact, all of this process was a bit of an ordeal and there were many obstacles to overcome.

The flames and smoke and protective clothing....you have to wonder why anyone would go to so much trouble just for clay pots.

And with Raku you don't have to wait long to see why it's worth the effort. We left the pots in the cans for the rest of the night to cool and this is what I found first thing the next morning. Brushing back the ash I found some pretty cool surfaces.

White Crackle glaze and Ferg Blue glaze fresh out of the cans. Add a little water and some soft scrubbing with steel wool and you get this.....

I've overheard people wondering out loud why anyone in their right mind would want to take art classes or better yet...why anyone would want to be an art major.

Aside from the fact that artists learn how to communicate the impossible, the fact that artists find ways to tap into emotions most people can't begin to express, the fact that artists create objects of unspeakable beauty....you should also know that while artists are working their butts off in those studios they are also having more fun than you could ever imagine.

gardening at night

2010-11-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

I made a couple of trips to Augusta in the last couple of months. The first trip was dropping off a sculpture and the second trip just a couple of Fridays ago was to pick the same sculpture up and give it a ride home. There sure are a lot of cows between here and there.

I tried to enjoy the long ride each time and I have to say it was tough. It was just me and the sculpture and some podcasts. This last trip there were also some leaves and that was pleasant. About 5 minutes of what feels like 50 hours of driving is a quick trip along I-520. It's a new stretch of interstate that sits up on a ridge overlooking the Savannah River valley. The view there was interesting and I would have taken some photos but I was pretty sure if I tried that I would lose the nice computer-lady's voice telling me exactly when to exit the new interstate and head back toward the cows. I like my phone but it's beyond me.

We also had some Halloween stuff. Blue wanted to be a football player so he was a USC Gamecock for half the night to appease his mom and then he was a Steeler the rest of the night to appease his dad. I would have preferred something scary but I guess this jersey could have been scary to some.

I do take not-so-great photos most of the time but I can't take all the blame for the blurry kid photos. These children will sit or stand still for hours until you pull out a camera and then it's like they are dancing on hot coals. Forget positioning them in the frame, you'll be lucky to catch even a limb in the shot and even then it will appear as a blurry flash of skin.

Seven photos of her coming down the steps and this was the only one where she wasn't blurred beyond recognition. Cute though.

We only had a few trick or treaters come to our door this year and that includes the car full of kids who were apparently dressed up as "kids from another street". No costume, no "trick or treat!" shouted at the door....just kids in regular clothes ringing the bell and standing there looking at you. Is it possible to lose the true meaning of Halloween? I wanted to call Linus in to read them something meaningful from the Bible but he was out in the pumpkin patch waiting for someone.

Speaking of driving.....

My daily commutes have had me on sun's schedule this semester. The sun peaks up on one side of the road and slips down on the other pausing briefly to flash a little color before continuing on his way. These little shots of kindness usually bookend my days.

Our friend Ginger is talented enough with her little phone that she can make decent videos with it. She grabbed this video from the Langhorne Slim show last week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE8EiYpI6jo

music is back

2010-10-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

For reasons beyond my understanding at this time, music has been mostly absent from my daily life since the start of the semester. The long drives have been dominated by podcasts or just the silence of decompression. My guitar and amp have nodded off in the corner of my office and even when I've had moments when I wanted to listen to music I've had a tough time finding something that fit my mood.

And yet....all semester I've been looking forward to seeing Langhorne Slim at the Handlebar in Greenville.

Part of the anticipation had to do with this being a social event. You probably know that I do not really socialize in the "social" sense of that word. Rarely do I set out to actually meet up with specific people with the intentions of engaging them in conversations about profound and silly things.

I'm not saying a concert is a social event. Far from it. Just because I'm standing beside you in a room while you attempt to jump up and down in place while balancing your beer, singing off key, and making a bootleg video on your little computer phone does not mean you and I are socializing.

(Which brings up a detached side note: I'm not sure why it's considered appropriate for people to go to a concert to hear a professional singer and then have the average concert-goer decide to try their hand at singing all the songs right there on the spot. I've never gone to one of my sculpture exhibits and had some random guy named Earl wheel in a MIG welder and take up steel sculpting on the gallery floor. Wouldn't that be awkward?)

Anyway, this concert was a fully sanctioned Hooligans event. Jolly, Mosh, Sandy, Ginger, G & I all made plans to converge on Greenville at the same time. Actually I think we converged on Greer first making a stop at a nice little Tex Mex restaurant downtown....that I've totally forgotten the name of right now. Our waitress was dressed up as a crazy cat lady and we saw a Ghostbuster, a couple of pirates, and several people we thought were dressed up until we realized that was just how they dressed all the time.

After the good food and some catching up we made it to the Handlebar to find the crowd really thin. The opening act was already playing and there was only a scattering of people in the building. The delay between the opener and the grand entrance of Langhorne was minimal. And when I say "grand entrance" what you should picture in your head is a reasonably small framed guy quietly walking out on to the stage, picking up a guitar and sitting down on a monitor and whispering a stunningly pleasant tune.

The first time I saw Langhorne Slim was there at the Handlebar about 4 years ago. Back then he was the opening act for the Avett Brothers and he had a similar feel to his stage personality. He wasn't flashy except for his ironic white suit - a simple nod to the fact that while he was an average guy, he was also working a job that carried some level of glitzy expectation.

Last night he started out playing that same old beat up guitar he had 4 years ago. Well, it was the same old guitar except for one new addition......a classy little silver glitter pick guard. A tiny speck of glitz on a heavily worn workhorse.

The band joined him for several acoustic songs as the small crowd more or less gathered around the musicians. The Hooligans had staked out a front and center spot about 10 feet from the stage but it felt more like we were standing in some one's living room listening to some guys play music.

Even after everyone plugged in their instruments and started using the microphones the show felt quite informal and almost conversational.

It was louder than any living room I've been in though. The stand up bass and the bass drum were loud enough that their vibrations rattled the high-hat significantly. And while these photos give you the impression that this is just a little folk band you should know that these guys know how to thrash with the best.

The energy, integrity and movement amplified by these guys can not be properly explained with words alone. You actually need to see the completely sober and normally rational thinking middle aged listener break into some sort of awkward dance to understand.

At one point Langhorne calmly walked down into the crowd with the microphone in mid song and sat in an empty seat in order to sing the rest of that song to the person beside him. When he walked back up on stage a few fans politely handed him back his cap and his microphone.

Near the end of the encore he shook off his guitar and grabbed several ladies from the audience and helped them up on stage to back him up on vocals. Our very own SandySingletary was THIS close to being pulled on stage. It was almost amazing.

When we saw him there 4 years ago I remember seeing him finish his opening set and just walk off the stage into the crowd so he could see the Avetts just like everyone else. It may seem like an odd detail to recall but he was wearing a white suit so cut me some slack. Not long after that Ginger went to one of his shows in San Francisco and accidentally had a conversation with him at the bar before the concert began. Last night we saw him a couple of times while the opening act was playing and then after the show he came out and chit chatted with people as they left. Walking out I found myself shoulder to shoulder with him and I couldn't resist the opportunity to speak and shake his hand. My wife thinks I'm an idiot but it's nice to let people know you appreciate what they do.

And this morning I rolled the old iPod over from "podcasts" to "music" and I enjoyed some vintage Langhorne Slim....or "Sean" as his friends call him.

speaking of fall break...

2010-10-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

campbell's covered bridge

We had some photos made at this bridge which might be the only covered bridge left in SC. Blue and Violet were defiant and both seemed to resent the idea of being told when they should smile.

Speaking of smiling....

I picked up the new David Sedaris book of short stories this week and was surprised to see that not only was the entire book about animals, it was also illustrated. I read the name of the illustrator on the cover and it almost rang a bell but my synapses didn't quite make a connection. Each story had an illustration and as the chapters went on the drawings looked more and more familiar. I read the illustrator's name again and finally resorted to searching it online to see why his drawings nagged my mind.

Turns out the same guy who drew this:

Also created and drew this:

That's right. Baby sheep's eyes freshly plucked out by a crafty crow AND Olivia the cute piglet featured in the series of books and animated shows on the kid channel all came from the mind of Ian Falconer.

It would be impressive to say that I recognized his work from his early career stage sets or from some other fine art visual display. But no....I recognized his style because our kids watch Nick Jr. or Noggin or whatever they're calling the kid channel these days. That little Olivia series of books and shows operates with a minimal format. The characters are drawn in black and white with little shots of red for emphasis. The same minimalism and color use are found in the Sedaris book.

The illustrations and the stories work together very well as both deal with juxtaposition of ideas. The drawings are of cute animals interacting with one another in social situations and the red accent often draws attention to some negative or menacing aspect. In the same way, the stories begin innocently enough with some adorable little personified animal and continue on until the story tilts sharply in an awkward or dark direction.

Speaking of duality...

Here we find Kendrick working with a chainsaw to create his sculpture project. It's interesting to think that graceful curves and smooth surfaces can be generated by something as tough and rugged as a chainsaw. And you probably wouldn't think that operating a chainsaw for 3 hours would be any one's definition of fun, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it. He worked straight through class without a break. At one point a friend gave him some Mountain Dew but he wouldn't stop working so they had to spray it in his mouth like a marathon runner while he continued carving.

Dr. Pitts - The Artist

2010-10-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Dr. Tom Pitts, the supreme Art Historian of Lander University would have you believe he is not an artist. Do not believe him.

Because now, for a limited time only, you can see original works of art created by none other than THE Dr. Pitts himself.

Four of Dr. Pitts original works of art are currently hanging in the hallway gallery. Come out and see them now before someone realizes they're up.

Gumby, Elmo and Ceramics

2010-10-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

The first half of the semester has been very good. Good students, good projects and good progress in the direction of some early goals. Still a very long commute but how can you complain when you have Gumby living in your Sculpture room to greet you every day with his permanent wave?

When Gumby made the move from his Graphic Design job to his new life in Academia he needed to be able to suit up. These young ladies are tying Gumby's new necktie in place.

I'm pretty sure I could write a sitcom about my Ceramics class. We have a good time and these students are doing some really surprising work. Thanks to SandySingletary we've got some sweet glazes to put on these projects. I'll need to write about Eli and Doris at some point but there's no time for that today. I have to spend the rest of my time trying to decide why this next photo cracks me up so much...

Is it the facial expression? The matter of fact folding of the arms? Maybe it's the beanie on his head? Or could it be the Elmo slippers?

Oh...and go here: http://www.northbrook.info/artshow/

I didn't win an award but it's a good show and a nice website. If you're in the Chicago area you can't see the Cubs play so run by the library and see my drawing in the show.

if you think round is funny

2010-09-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen the movie "Raising Arizona" in years and yet I still laugh out loud when I remember quotes from it.

Speaking of movies....I was up late last night working on the plate drawing in the photo above and I found a couple of good movies to play in the background. One was about a giant mutant crocodile and a giant mutant alligator eating people. The next one was equally as bad....it was called "Sharktopus" and you guessed it....it was a giant mutant shark/octopus monster. I think I spent more time on this quick drawing than they did on both of those movies combined.

field trip

2010-09-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

My Sculpture I class posing in a sanitary sewer. I'll explain later.

LJ

2010-09-14T17:05:00.000-07:00

This is LJ.

She's my aunt. She's not an aunt like your aunts. Your aunts have their own families and they do their own thing over there and they stop by to squeeze your cheeks on major holidays. LJ's not like that at all. She's the oldest of her siblings and as her mother advanced in years she opted to stick around and care for her. LJ and my grandmother lived next door to us as far back as I can recall and when my grandmother died LJ continued to live there solo. Whether she liked it or not this meant she was more or less drafted into our immediate family. She fought it for a while but eventually she gave in and began to come to our Sunday lunches and Christmas morning shindigs.

LJ's retired now but she spent her entire career as an Emergency Room nurse. She was Head Nurse for a long time and it was nothing for her physically escort obnoxious and inebriated troublemakers out the front door in order to keep peace in her ER. She'd put up with tons of nonsense from my brothers and me but she was having none of that at work. If you crossed her you'd find yourself in one of Dante's little circles.

She's well into her seventies now and she's still tough. Back in the late 1990s she was diagnosed with a pretty nasty case of breast cancer. She beat it. There were lots of surgeries and lots of chemo and it was just generally a tough time for her, but she beat it. She was cancer free for several years and then a small spot showed up on her skin. She beat that too. Another surgery and another recovery and then she just carried on with her life. Several more years went by before another spot showed up. This time was just a few weeks ago. Now she's had that spot removed, she's just finished radiation treatments and she's beating this one too - just like it's another thing on the list for the day. You know, wake up, water the plants, run by Walmart, beat cancer, and get the car washed. It's pretty amazing.

As rough as this has been on her she will not allow you to feel bad for her. Every week she's up and out delivering cakes and pies to what she calls "the old folks". She goes out and checks in on little old ladies who can't drive and she takes them out to lunch. She drives them to their medical appointments and she makes sure they feel like someone cares about them.

This is also LJ. She's not flattered at all by the way I portrayed her in abstract sculptural form and she didn't mind telling me so. This was part of the water tower series I did a few years ago and I'm getting it ready to sit in public again for a while.

I just thought y'all should know that LJ's pretty cool.

cooking

2010-09-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

THE SandySingletary was kind enough to drive halfway across the state to teach me how to mix her secret recipe glazes. There was math involved but we endured.

The pickle buckets were transformed into sacred containers of ceramic color. It looks like muddy water now, but soon this mud will stick to a vessel and become glossy blue.

I also mixed up a nice little bbq chicken pizza last week. I realize this is completely unrelated to the glazes but this pizza was delicious.

a quick post

2010-09-08T18:59:00.000-07:00

eyes

ears

nose

county lines and cows

2010-09-05T18:33:00.001-07:00

That's the front entrance to the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art (GHIA) in Augusta, GA. Augusta was just as I remembered it.....hot and too far away. After class last Friday I crossed several counties, two major rivers, a state line, and countless cow pastures before dropping off "The One With The Hole In It" and arriving back home.

The opening reception is September 17 and the show runs through the middle of October.

info at: www.ghia.org

tiny avetts and art stuff

2010-08-24T17:00:00.001-07:00

Looks like the kiddos were happy about their Avett Brothers "I and Love and You" T-shirts. Blue heard his first Avett concert from the womb and saw his first one before his first birthday. Violet is terribly jealous but just as happy about her shirt.

That's Lucille on the table. While we were at concerts last weekend, she was working. Saturday night she was awarded 1st place in the sculpture division at the 37th Annual Juried Exhibit sponsored by the Spartanburg Artists' Guild. She'll be on display at Carolina Gallery, 145 W. Main Street, Spartanburg through September 18.

There will be more sculptures and drawings making appearances around the country over the next few months:

*Sept 12 - Oct 15, 2010 - 19th Annual National Juried Exhibit, Art Institute & Gallery, Salisbury, MD
*Sept 14 - Oct 10, 2010 - "Sculpture in the 21st Century", Towson University, Towson, MD
*Sept 17 - Oct 15, 2010 - "A Sense of Place 2010", National Juried Exhibit, Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, GA
*Oct 1 - Nov 15, 2010 - "Without A Map" National Juried Exhibit, Northbrook Public Library, Northbrook, IL

the avett-cation

2010-08-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

alicia, ginger, georgie, sandy

What started out as "Girls' Weekend" somehow became "Girls' Weekend with Doug Driving". I'm not sure exactly how I got talked into this, but I had sworn off concert going in large venues and informally declared myself too old for standing in a crowded room for hours. I tried to get a couple of guys to come with me so I wouldn't feel quite so out of place but both of them were better decision makers than I.

So. The Avett Brothers were playing 3 nights in a row at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach. I love the Avetts, but I really love the beach and that surely had something to do with my decision to tag along. We all understood we were too old to drive 4 1/2 hours to see a concert and then turn around and drive back home so this trip would mean a mini-vacation. Ginger secured a place to stay and we all signed on.

We headed out Friday morning - at least I think it was still morning after Ginger temporarily lost sight of her car keys and we had to do a bit of backtracking. But let's not dwell on that, right Ginger? Sandy met us for a nice lunch in Columbia and then we piggy backed the rest of the trip to the coast. Sandy was one of our newer Avett converts but on this trip it was Alicia who had never seen the Brothers live.

These shows were sold out in advance and we had no interest in camping out in the August sun all day to get up front, so we accepted the fact that we'd hang out near the back of the auditorium. This freed us up to take our time getting there. We had a nice dinner after the thoughtful gentleman of the group got completely soaked in a summer downpour trying to get the ladies a better place to eat. It's OK, I'm not bitter. But we took our time and cruised into the House of Blues after the doors opened and walked right in with no wait. Then it was a short walk to an open area just a few feet from the stage. We were in luck and we were feeling pretty good about how things worked out.

And then things got better. When the Brothers took the stage, they were in good form. They always give off a ton of energy but Friday night they were outdoing themselves. The setlist was great, the room was electric, and the sound was amazing. There were even a couple of stagedives.

scott surfing on the pit-dwellers

joe comes to the rescue

and he's back on stage

There's no way to describe an Avett concert to someone who's never experienced it. Banjo, cello, upright bass, crowd surfing, screaming, and family values all somehow mingle together into an experience for the eyes, ears and mind. I could tell you it was wonderful or amazing or awesome and it just wouldn't communicate the experience.

I mean, how do you describe a classically trained cellist and and upright bassist rocking out this hard? Whatever it is that these guys give off in their playing....it's contagious. It makes even the most stoic concert goers sing along and sway to the beat.

And apparently it makes people want to come back. And I mean....come back the very next night.

Ginger has done this before and I've mocked her pretty hard about it. There's no way you could get me to go see the same band two nights in a row. Just like there's no way you could get me to tag along on Girls' Weekend.

Alicia and Sandy had to see them again. We explained the shows were sold out and while they might be able to get one ticket or maybe two, there's no way we would be able to get five tickets to a sold out show. Especially not a couple of hours before the show started.

In less than five minutes Alica and Sandy hopped back to the car with five tickets and some leftover cash. We're still not certain how this happened but we just figured our luck was still working for us. We grabbed an even better dinner and walked on over to the House of Blues again right at the same time we'd arrived the night before. We figured we'd walk right in without waiting and everything would be the same.

We figured wrong. This was the line in front of us waiting to get in. The other half of the line ran in front of the building and there were at least as many people in line behind us. I was starting to think I was too old for this again.

Still, once the line started moving we got in relatively fast and once again we walked right up to the corner of the stage and got even better standing spots than the night before. But my knees did hurt and my feet were aching and I was seriously considering buying one of those little motorized scooters like you see in Walmart to transport me around for the rest of our weekend.

Saturday's show did not match the level of greatness of Friday's show. Sure, it was still great and you'd have to call it a wonderful concert by anyone's standards. There was even a moment when Georgie was jumping up and down to the music and that almost never happens. These guys leave nothing in the tank when they perform and their efforts are appreciated.

Just look at that expression on Ginger's face during the show. I realize it's a fake smile, but Ginger hates it when I take her photo and under normal circumstances she would have hid her face. Here though, in her preferred environment, she's enjoying herself too much to waste any effort on me.

A few odds and ends:

1. Sandy embraced the laws of physics and chemistry and managed to get a bottle of wine to explode inside her car. If she gets pulled over in the next few months she's guaranteed to get a field sobriety test.
2. Apparently when Girls' Weekend involves going to the beach this does not actually mean the girls will ever really see a beach.

3. If you are talked into tagging along on aforementioned Girls' Weekend with promises of actually going to the beach, you will end up following 4 ladies around at the factory outlet stores instead of putting your toes in the sand.

4. Should you ever get the chance to road trip with someone who owns a restaurant and bakes chocolate chip cookies on a daily basis...this is something you should certainly do. They will bring cookies and you will enjoy them.

the new office

2010-08-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

All those lasts have now turned into firsts. First day, first meeting, first time cracking my head open in the bookstore and bleeding all over myself. I'm told the dust will settle soon and the days will become more organized. Until then, here's what 4 or 5 trips to Greenwood can amount to:

in this photo: chihuahua bobble head, some hooligans and the hand sanitizer

in this photo: hudson the hawk, the 3 stooges, the avett brothers and my orange chairs

in this photo: the mac and the pc having a staring contest, the magic 8 ball and my autographed photo of mean joe greene

more perks

2010-08-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

Our tour of I-26 continues with :

farmer's market

feeding biscuits to the southern lizards

breakfasts overlooking the garden

georgie in the water

steel sculpture and steeple

big boy

shopping

parking space

touristy things

loud planes

dining with famous folk

the perks of unemployment

2010-08-10T14:20:00.001-07:00

Summer is kind of nice when you don't have to get up at 5:00am every day. As I'm between jobs....I have two weeks of technical unemployment and here's what I've been doing:

late afternoon swings

delivering art downtown with blue

celebrating birthdays and watching blue get his first gift of "monies"

hanging out with rum swilling pirates in Columbia

teaching blue to drive the ship

violet escaped from the zoo

blue and i hand fed the giraffe. i was just as excited about it as him.

we saw elephants too

we have nightly nerf sword fights, but blue got to play with the real thing

end times

2010-08-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

turning in my keys

last work coffee

the last box of stuff

last guard dog lick

and the last log off

now is the time when we dance

2010-08-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

The economic landscape of the musical industry has changed vastly over the last decade. For many aspiring singer/songwriters the idea of getting signed to a major label is no longer “the dream”. The internet and it’s many new connection sites have allowed musical artists to attract attention and income with some do it yourself practices. There are even websites available with the specific intent of helping musicians raise money for a recording project through pledges of financial support from their fans.

photo from Clem Snide's Facebook page

More creative musicians are even developing their own ways of raising money for projects. Going in a totally self reliant direction, one such example is Eef Barzelay and his band Clem Snide. This band enjoyed some respectable commercial success a few years ago and they ended up suffering with their label through the downward spiral of the music industry. They reemerged recently and have struggled a bit to find their economic footing in a very uncertain market.

After their last album was released Barzelay seemed to realize the potential support already existing in his fan base. Seeking to tap into that resource, a new offering was made on the band’s website. For the price you’d expect to pay for a tour shirt Barzelay decided to offer to make fans a personalized 3 song EP album. Fans simply request their 3 favorite songs by the band and Barzelay sings and plays those songs acoustically on a one of a kind recording. Fans get an impromptu mini concert on their iPods and the band gets funding for the next album.
Sure, the band gets money for their effort, but that’s not the noteworthy aspect of this deal. What Mr. Barzelay has done here is stumble into one of the more attractive and important facets of fine art: the ability to make personal connections.

Think about the music you enjoy or maybe the books you’d list among your all time favorites. We all must realize that there are very real and specific reasons why we like things. When you think about those favorites, chances are you like some of them because you feel you can relate to the story or the song or the author in some way. You’ve been in a situation just like the one described in that song. You’ve felt just like the writer did when he wrote that chapter. These are personal connections.

photo from Clem Snide's Facebook page

Barzelay takes the idea of a personal connection one step further with the personalized 3 song EP. The recordings are rather raw. You can hear the tape start and stop before and after songs. You can hear him tuning his guitar. And just when you get the feeling that you’re sharing some small interior space with the artist, he calls you by name and makes some one-sided small talk.

I ordered one of these EPs mostly for the opportunity to contribute to the next album financially. I chose my 3 favorite Clem Snide/Barzelay songs and asked for one to be dedicated to my kids. I didn’t know if he’d actually do it but this song in particular has made a personal connection with me regarding the huge shift that the birth of a child can cause. Just like you, I felt like I knew exactly what the writer was saying in that song.

Violet, Blue, & G dancing (photo by me - not dancing)

After a few weeks an email showed up from Mr. Barzelay with the EP attached. I turned up the volume and watched the kids shimmy and sway to the music. Then my son heard his name spoken on the recording by the guy who was singing and he froze in his tracks. First his name, then his sister’s name, and then a short little chat about what the song meant to him when he wrote it. Now, of course, Blue requests this record every time we get in the car. Personal connection made.

Great art has the ability to tap into that shared area of consciousness. There are feelings, thoughts, desires that translate over state lines, cultural biases and religious beliefs and when an artist gets lucky enough to make those connections with other human beings - that is truly the measure of success.

*Get your own personal connection to a great singer/songwriter here: http://clemsnide.bigcartel.com/