museum shenanigans

Last Friday was College Art Day at the SC State Museum in Columbia.  Art Departments from colleges and universities all over the state set up tables at this event and provide information to several bus loads of high school art students from the midlands area.  The cool thing about this recruiting opportunity is that it is student led.  The museum asks that students from each department be present to talk to prospective students.  I'm the faculty volunteer and this usually means I carry the box into the building.  

 Once the box is carried inside, the students take over and set up the table to their own specifications.  This year we had Katherine (The Gazelle), Sabrina (Captain Side Eye) and Jamea (J-J-J-Jamea) as our student representatives.  

 When I first started doing these recruiting events for Lander years ago, no one had ever heard of us.  If anyone had heard of the university, they had no idea we had an art department.  This was high school students, parents and even some high school teachers.  But thanks to some creative swag and some good publicity over the years, now we get swarmed when the students arrive.

 Students and teachers alike come to see what kind of stuff we're giving away this year.  And once the swag brings them over, our student reps engage them with personality and win them over.  Some of these high school students come every year and we know them by name.  They've known for years they were going to apply to Lander.  It's great.  You may also notice in the photos the empty tables in the background.  Universities who don't bring students, don't have good swag and lack in the personality department....they don't exactly bring the kids to the yard.  

 I'm just there to have fun.  And stack cups to the ceiling.  Being fun is the key.

Don't get me wrong, this is a lot of work.  I get out easy and I still have to register everyone, organize lunch orders, convince students to go and put in a long Friday of being social.  The student reps miss a day of classes and have to make up work.  This is also the Friday before spring break for us so they have to put off leaving a day early for break and drive to Columbia before heading home.  They get up way earlier than usual for this and they have to put up with me all day!  To reward this extra work, we try to make it as fun as possible.

 After the high school students head back to their buses and we pack up our table, we get to enjoy the museum for free.  There's always a good art exhibit to coincide with College Art Day.  This year it was the 50th Anniversary Exhibit of the State Art Collection.  There was a Jim Arendt.

 And a Tom Stanley.

 And a lot of other cool stuff.  Oh, and Armir, fresh back in the country from active duty in the Air Force, joined us to hang out most of the day.

 This very small sculpture won us over.  We spent a lot of time trying to figure it out.

 The regular museum exhibits are also pretty fun.  Especially when you're a bunch of goofballs.

 Our curiosity led us to the top floor where we could see a lady working on the big telescope.  She motioned for us to come inside and she showed us the surface of the sun on a computer monitor.  The telescope showed some cool activity on the surface.  You could see gas eruptions coming off of the surface.  It was very cool.

 We also got to see the Leo Twiggs exhibit "Requiem For Mother Emanuel".

 A couple of years ago 9 people were killed inside Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston.  The person responsible doesn't deserve any recognition but I mention this person only because this series of batik paintings follows the progression of emotions from immediate horror to complete forgiveness.  This person worked out of hatred but may have accidentally done more for racial peace in our state than any activist.  

 This piece by a different artist was just outside the exhibit.  It may have been as moving as the other 9 paintings.  My students moved through this one quickly and didn't want to discuss it.  I had some ideas about the exhibit before I saw it in person and I have some ideas now.  We could discuss over coffee sometime.

 Once we were all museum-ed out, we headed out for an early dinner in town.  I let the students pick the restaurant, but we made a quick stop at Publix to get a red velvet cake personalized for Sabrina.  She's having a birthday over spring break and she failed to come by the sculpture studio for the traditional, non-edible sculpture cake.

 So we surprised her with a personalized cake after dinner, complete with a poor rendition of "Happy Birthday".  

After dinner and cake, Armir told us we had to try "Insomnia Cookies".  None of us had heard of it so he navigated us across town and we got a dozen cookies, mostly to take home to my kids because we were all stuffed.  The cookies ended up being free which was really cool of them.  Apparently you can order them online so go to insomniacookies.com and support these nice people.  

After that it was time to drive through Columbia's notorious rush hour traffic to officially begin our spring break.  

spring break...almost

 Last Friday was College Art Day at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia.  Each spring, the museum creates a cool day for high school art students.  They get to take a field trip to the museum, see free art exhibits, shop around the art departments in the state and hear from professional artists who went to school in South Carolina.  It usually falls on the Friday before our spring break, so I round up a group of art students and we do a little recruiting and have a lot of fun.  

 This year I invited Drinkwater, Metal Megan, Molly and Scarlett.  Scarlett came up feverish that morning so we ditched her.  This is a student led event so I'm really just there to carry the box of stuff and to make sure they don't get arrested.  

 When the high schools arrived the students streamed in and gathered around our table.  We had the best free stuff and we were having the most fun.  We gave away cups, buttons, sketchbooks and stickers.

 We had special gold stickers too, but if you wanted one of those you had to earn it by doing something strange and letting us post a photo of it on our department Instagram account.  (landervisualart if you're interested)  This young lady balanced a free cup on her head.

 This young lady crushed a stack of sketchbooks while the people behind her tried desperately to figure out what was going on at this table.

This year the Skype interviews with professional artists was particularly interesting for us.  The first one was Lia Newman, who I had a sculpture class with back in grad school.  The second one was Vitaly Odemchuck, a Lander grad who works for Weebly out in San Francisco.  He praised the Lander art department and Professor Slagle.  It was the coolest commercial we could have had.  

 When the recruiting was over we took our team down to the gallery to see the "Carolina Makers" exhibit.  It featured creations made by artists and artisans who live in the Carolinas.  I was particularly fond of the guitars and mandolins.

 Oh and Leigh Magar's hand died, hand sew flag was very cool too.  She was working on it while people came through the exhibit.

 The museum is a very cool place.  They've done such a great job with it.  There's a series of cool old style constellation illustrations on the old mill windows outside the planetarium.

We picked at our provided lunch sandwiches but made sure to save room for a real meal afterwards.  My heart soared when they said they wanted to eat BBQ for lunch.  We mapped the closest place with 4 stars and convoyed there.  Sadly, mustard based sauce is king in the midlands.  I'm not a fan of mustard of any kind, but I am a fan of the BBQ buffet at the Palmetto Pig.  If you're willing to go with the "hot" sauce, it's more of a vinegar base and while it's very warm, it's also very good.  So were the beans and mac and cheese...and the banana pudding.  My team ate like champs.  We all had at least two plates full before dessert.  I was so proud.

 What could be better than a BBQ buffet?  Well, not much, that's for sure.  But I'll tell you, KJ Campbell is.  KJ is the coolest.  I had the pleasure of teaching KJ during my first semester at Lander.  I think I may have taught him every year during his 4 years with us.  He graduated 2 years ago and now works as a graphic designer at WIS-TV in Columbia.  When he heard we were in town, he zipped over to the museum to see us.  

 We caught up on things and chatted a while and then he invited us to come over to the TV station for a tour.

I'm not a fan of TV or TV news usually, but I have to admit this was pretty cool.  He took us right into the on air studio while someone was taping a thing for the news.  We tried to be quiet.  Then we got to go down to the desk and the green screen and goof around.

 We met the weather dude and while I'm sure he's terrific at his job, I think he best be on guard because we were pretty awesome weather people too.  Look at me up there, I'm a natural.  I hear the camera adds 10 pounds to your beard.  

 After our tour we went up to KJ's office and he showed us some of the graphics he's worked on there.  He showed us his very first moving graphic and then he showed us the cool new one he made for severe weather week.  I was amazed by both but the new one was really great.  

KJ is a master of hand lettering.  This is what he does in his spare time for fun.  His office wall showcases these hand lettered quotes done on napkins and scraps of paper.  They're really wonderful.  Metal Megan and Drinkwater are graphic designers and they were awestruck.  Before we left, KJ told us he wanted us to all choose a drawing to take home with us.  

 My choice was easy.  

Thank you KJ!  You rock.