GCMA Exhibit extended!

I'm thrilled to tell you that my exhibit at the Greenville County Museum of Art has been extended through July 3, 2016.  That's an extra month to go by and see some colorful, goofy drawings and sculptures on your summer break!  Thank you to everyone who has made the effort to go by and see the exhibit already.  It is wonderful to have work in the art museum I grew up visiting and it truly means a lot for my friends and family to go by and see the show.  

 On Sunday, May 1 I gave a little gallery talk for the "Sundays At 2" event at the museum.  G had to work that day and Blue got to skip out for a friend's birthday party, so Violet and I drove into town by ourselves.  You never know what to expect at these things and you always fear that no one will show up.  I was prepared to talk to Violet for an hour if I had to.  Luckily, people actually showed up.  And a good number of people too.  I was honored to have Mom and LJ there, along with several of my students.

 Katertot (with arms crossed) came too!  She graduated a couple of years ago and is applying to grad school soon.  Winston brought his family too.  He graduated from our MAT program a couple of years back.  

 And there were lots of friendly strangers too.  Many of them spoke to me and asked good questions after my talk.  

 Lander's president and his wife also came out to show their support.  Can you even process how cool that is?  They're such good people.  I tried to sneak a selfie with them in the background but I messed it up.  

 During the talk I explained a few things about my process, from idea generation to the technical parts of using the materials.  People often seem to be very interested in the idea generation part.  With abstraction, there are often a lot of questions about why things look so weird and why I don't just portray things realistically.  I enjoy working through the steps of abstraction and explaining how images become meaningful and how they can be blended together in ways that allow them to have meaning that stretches just beyond the reach of words.  

 I talked a little about how many of my ideas begin with very ordinary things I may notice in everyday life.  Things my kids say, doing the laundry or cutting grass may inspire a thought that eventually becomes an important image artistically.  Metal Megan came and took that cool photo of me during the talk.

 Violet did great during the talk.  She even listened.  She vouched for me that the word "underwear" was funny as we discussed the importance of undergarments as one of my thematic images.  I also explained how one of her kindergarten "boyfriends" caused me to have a dad-crisis that directly led to the drawing below.

Oh and I shaved my long beard the night before so I previewed my summer face at the talk.  I even wore a shirt with a collar!

I am so thankful to everyone who came to the talk and everyone who has already seen the exhibit.  I'm also grateful to the entire staff of the Greenville County Museum of Art.  Everyone from the director to the curatorial staff to the education director to the security guards has been wonderful to me.  They are all top notch people.

If you haven't seen the exhibit yet, please go by and have a look.  Admission is free and you can see some really famous things while you're in the building.  The museum is located at 420 College Street, Greenville, SC 29601.  Take goofy photos while you're there and post them and tag them with #dougmcabee and #gcma.

Exhibit at Greenville County Museum of Art

Y'all, I'm having a solo exhibition at the Greenville County Museum of Art April 6 - June 5!

The exhibit is titled "Local Talent: Doug McAbee" and can be found in the Level 1 Gallery.  You can also see exhibits by Amer Kobaslija, Andrew Wyeth and Jasper Johns.  Entry to the museum is free so I recommend going every day!

Seriously, I'd love for you to go and take a selfie in my exhibit or if you're not a selfie person, just take a creative photo.  Post that photo on Twitter, Instagram or that devil Facebook thing and tag me (@dougmcabee on Instagram, @thedougmcabee on Twitter) or the museum (@gcma_sc on Insta & Twitter).  

The GCMA is located at 420 College Street, Greenville, SC 29601.  Their website is: www.gcma.org

Let me know what you think of the exhibit.

the summer of waterfalls: installment 4.5 or how goofing off with my family led to a better artist statement

We had another art delivery in Greenville this week and with we couldn't resist the opportunity to walk around Falls Park and hike a little of the Swamp Rabbit Trail while we were in town.  We added Reedy River Falls to our waterfall list earlier in the summer but if you follow the river around the corner there's a nice little second waterfall ledge to enjoy.  

 It's at least worth counting as a half waterfall, though it's just as impressive as some we traveled to see this summer.  That puts us at 30.5 waterfalls so far this summer.

After a good walk and some time taking in the beauty, we grabbed some cold drinks and made our way to the Greenville County Museum of Art.  The GCMA has always been a favorite of mine.  My oldest brother took me there to see the Andrew Wyeth collection way back when I was a teenager.  The Wyeths are pretty much always on exhibit there somehow or another and they are as welcome a sight as an old friend.  These classic, realist paintings are usually well balanced with some really old stuff and a healthy dose of contemporary art.  We went a few months back and spent some time with Jasper Johns.  Jasper was present in the current exhibits as well and he was joined by William H. Johnson, Dave the slave potter, Yoko Ono, Eric Fischl and the kids' favorite, Ron Rozzelle.  They've even opened up new gallery space upstairs and I was thrilled to see my friend Diane Kilgore Condon's exhibit in the "Local Talent" gallery.  Admission is free and Greenville is one of the coolest towns around so I highly recommend you go see this museum any time of year.

I don't know any artists who enjoy writing an artist statement.  The artist statement is a necessary evil in the life of an artist.  If done well, it provides an honest glimpse into the mind of the artist as they create their work.  It declares the intention of the artist.  It answers the "why do I do this?" question that every artist has to answer for themselves.

Visual artists, however, are not writers.  We make artistic things much better than we arrange words on a page.  (See this entire blog for evidence.)  In fact, our relationship with words is a very tense relationship anyway.  Most of us feel that words are constricting.  They fit us and our purpose like a tight wool sweater, all itchy and gross.  Most of us probably agree that if words were adequate in expressing our ideas we would just spend our time typing instead of drawing.  Still, we are forced by galleries and exhibitors to wrangle some words together as a means of clarifying our purpose.  

This summer I've entered tons of shows and exhibits and most of those required an artist statement.  I fully believe that brevity is my friend in this endeavor but even so, I found myself trying to edit my old statement down to few enough words to fit the listed requirements this summer.  As I wrestled with what to leave in and what to leave out, I really started to question the accuracy of my words.  I started to see that it was time for a new declaration of my artistic intent.  Of course this was terrifying because the last thing I want to do in summer is write about my art.  And while I spent a good portion of my summer making new things, I have this general feeling that I did a lot of goofing off with my family this summer.  (See this entire blog for evidence.)  I was thinking about this one night while lying in bed and I started to see things from a different perspective.

As the full time summer babysitter, I'm not content to keep the kids busy or out of my way.  Because I'm also a parent, I feel the burden of responsibility to help my kids become good people, good citizens of the world.  The whole waterfall idea was more than just taking the kids to cool places.  It was rooted in the need to help my children learn to see and appreciate beauty.  I can certainly see both sides of this when we go.  We walk the trails and listen for the growing sound of rushing water.  Sometimes the kids can't hear it over their own chatter.  We walk and watch for every example of wildlife.  Sometimes the kids are too busy jumping to notice.  We stand in front of a divinely beautiful free fall of water and we feel the cool rush of wind on our faces.  Sometimes the kids cant really see it because they just want to eat a snack.

I've finally learned that it's all beautiful.  The sounds of nature, the wildlife, the waterfalls AND the chatter, the jumping and the snacks.  Heck, there was even beauty in the nasty little motion sickness incident.  Each place, each moment was beautiful.  

My hope is that Blue and Violet will remember The Summer of Waterfalls fondly when they are adults.  I'm realizing, though, that it may not be the waterfalls we all remember most.  Perhaps the things that will stick with us are the sweaty uphill conversations about Legos.  Or the seemingly natural way Violet gets out of the truck and grabs for my hand as she walks.  It might even be sharing the beauty of a peanut butter and jelly and some cookies on a big rock while talking about flatulence.

These are not the things I plan for us when I lay out a waterfall trip.  Yet, without these things each waterfall would be completely meaningless.  These common, ordinary moments have a transformative affect on me, on us all.

I clumsily tapped out a rough draft that night in bed on my phone.  I corrected and sured up those ideas in the weeks since and while I may not have finished a new sculpture or drawing in several weeks, I did manage to finish the new artist statement.

 Artist Statement 2015

My work attempts to find beauty among the ordinary.

Working with common materials like plywood or steel, I seek to use those materials as transmitters of sublime concepts, mirroring the idea that ordinary people can be transmitters of sublime actions.  Using everyday moments and experiences as a starting point, I strive to highlight their uncommon beauty and draw attention to the possibility of their transformative teaching.

Violet and Blue at the GCMA

fun week

This summer is the first summer I've had both kids home with me everyday.  Violet graduated preschool and has been enjoying her very first summer break.  Blue is old enough to entertain himself and I was hoping he'd also be able to help me look out for Violet so I could get some creative work done.  They've both done well and each morning they have their chores and summer school work to do before goofing off the rest of the day.  I've been lucky enough to spend many of my days doing creative work.  After the open studio sale I was in need of a vacation from art so I told the kids we'd spend the week doing fun things.

 Monday I needed to pick up some things from school so after lunch at Cookout I took them to explore the Lake Greenwood State Park.

 It was hot but it was pretty and it had a playground so they were thrilled.

 On Tuesday I took them to Gravitopia and they jumped and jumped until they were completely exhausted.

 Blue even took a few jumps off the high dive this time.

Wednesday was hiking day.  

   The weather turned much cooler and we drove north to Jones Gap State Park.  We walked a mile or so and had a picnic lunch by the river.

 Then we played in the river for a while.  Blue took a bit of a swim and with the cooler air and the chilly water, we were all downright cold by the time we made it back to the car.

 We dried our feet as we drove on up to Caesar's Head State Park.  We walked through the Devil's Kitchen and Violet asked of the man walking past us was the Devil.

 Blue at the overlook with Table rock behind him.

Table Rock

 Blue and Violet on a big rock.  

 The kids still said they were cold when we got home so we loaded up "Elf" and watched a Christmas movie while they drank hot chocolate.

 Thursday we headed to the library for some new books and stopped by the playground.

 This is not the playground exactly, but it's near the playground.

 After a few photos they watched Netflix and read their books.

 Friday G was off so we all went to The Childrens Museum of The Upstate.  The kids love this place.

 And since it's next door to the Greenville County Museum of Art, I forced everyone to walk with me through the museum.

The kids were tired and miserable at this point but we got to see some great Jasper Johns works, William H. Johnson's stuff and a bunch of Andrew Wyeth.  And, the museum staff was great.  There was even a security guard who gave us a mini dissertation on the more recent work of Jasper Johns and his use of imagery.  

Now Fun Week is over and it's back to breaking rocks in the hot sun.