more art shenanigans (with awards and doughnuts)

Lander once again participated in the Collegiate Art Invitational Exhibition at the Spartanburg County Public Library Headquarters this year.  Each year, universities in the upstate area of South Carolina are invited to select 6 students from their department to exhibit.  We chose our 6 students and headed out to the reception and awards ceremony a couple of Saturdays ago.  We've developed the tradition of meeting for dinner before the reception and grabbing a few doughnuts at Krispy Kreme afterwards.

This year we decided on Wild Wing Cafe in Spartanburg for dinner.  There were some friends and family in tow, including my family.  This meant entertaining Blue and Violet with Snapchat while we waited at the restaurant.  

 Which eventually led to using the faceswap filter on Katie and Jim with terrifying results!

 I had good intentions of getting a photo of everyone's artwork.  Let's see how I did.  That's Ramey's photo above Metal Megan's steel sculpture.

 And there's Bolt's ceramic brains.

 Katie's graphic design self portrait.

 There's Chelsea and Buttermilk who came along to support their art friends.

 There's Olivia with her painting of herself.

 And there's Kristen with her drawing of Jamea.  That's all 6!

And during the awards ceremony Metal Megan racked up yet another award in her sculpture career with a Merit Award for her sculpture "Restore".  Way to go Megan!

 After Blue and Violet scarfed down some cookies, brownies and strawberries at the reception, we all moved down the street to Krispy Kreme to watch the doughnuts being made.  I took advantage of the signage on the wall to make this statement about myself.

 And this was Jim's prompt response to my photo!

 And this was everyone else's response to us in general.

 It looks like G ducked out of the photo before I took it, but Blue and Violet jumped in with everyone.  

I'm always proud of our students in these exhibits.  It's great to see their work side by side with the work of students from other universities.  It's also good to take home awards!  So proud of all of them.

family, awards, doughnuts!

 If you've read anything here before, you already know that Lander is the best place to get your art degree.  Several of the reasons why can be found in the odd panoramic photo above.  Open the photo in your browser and fully enjoy the table setting filled with faculty and students who are all present by choice on a weekend just because we like each other.  We met in Sparkle City Saturday for dinner at Mellow Mushroom in preparation for the reception and awards ceremony for the 3rd Annual Collegiate Invitational Art Exhibition at the Spartanburg County Public Library Headquarters.  Look closely and you'll also see our server with her seven fingered hand.  Thank you iPhone pano!

 The 3rd ACIAE is a cool event the library puts on each year and is the brainchild of Miranda Sawyer, the library's art coordinator.  The exhibit brings in 8 upstate colleges and universities and exhibits the work of 48 student entries along with 16 faculty pieces.  The invitational work is judged and the library sponsors a great set of awards.  It is a wonderful thing for our students.  We've participated each year and Professor Slagle and I have always attended with a great group of students.  

 This photo is a little more professional, except for the bald guy putting bunny ears on people.  We can't take him anywhere.  Our students are awesome for showing up to an event like this and even better, we have students like Elizabeth, Lindsay and Mia who just showed up to support their ArtFamily.  (L-R: Logan, Kayla, Elizabeth, me, Daniel, Lindsay, Slagle, Mia, Jeremiah, other Kayla, and Braden)

 This is Logan's photo entry featuring another student, Molly as the model.  Logan says the most wonderful things.  Just before leaving the restaurant, she asked, "So, does this library have books?"

There's Jeremiah with his beautiful oil painting.  And if I were a better person with a better memory, I would also be showing several other images of students standing with their work.  Sorry y'all.

 Side note:  Ric Flair is coming to the library on April 17!  Wooooooooooooo!

 And because our students are awesome, they always do well with the awards.  There's a very excited Braden and Kayla up there.

 Braden won the Friends of the Library Award for his sculpture "Allocation".  And he went the whole night without a hat on his head.  Surely a first.

 Kayla pulled in two awards, a Merit Award and the Library Purchase Award for her ceramic sculpture "Remnants".

What better way to celebrate victory (or a Saturday) than going to Krispy Kreme?

We ate a LOT of doughnuts.  And special thanks goes out to the table behind us for the nicest, most polite photobomb ever.  

doing it right

I've written a couple of posts in the past sort of poking fun of the way some galleries or exhibition venues handle certain things.  It's sort of an easy target sometimes.  I am, however, a fair person and when those same types of groups get something right, I don't mind patting them on the back a little.  

When you think of a county library you probably think about books.  We are probably all aware that libraries do much more than just let us check out books, but we still think about those things being closely related to books.  They host book signings and story time and maybe they let you use their internet and computers.  In the much larger cities the library may also find a way to host art exhibits, though even those mostly involve hanging art on the walls near the books.  

A couple of years ago Miranda Sawyer had an idea to host an art exhibit at the Spartanburg County Library headquarters.  This exhibit would showcase the work of students enrolled in universities in the upstate of South Carolina.  Miranda pitched her idea to Todd Stephens, the county librarian and he had the wisdom to give the idea the thumbs up.  Several months later the exhibit went up in a special area of the library with 5 area universities participating.  The reception was a high class event and the students who attended were very impressed and quite proud to be part of such a cool thing.  

The success of that exhibit spawned more annual juried exhibits.  A renovation allowed the exhibit space to be separated from another area of the library by a glass wall.  Then a couple of new exhibit spaces were created on other levels of the library.  That one idea to bring art to the library quickly turned into multiple visual art exhibits on display at any given time.  In fact, if you visit the library before February 26 you'll get the privilege of viewing several photos and prints by internationally known artist Andy Warhol.  Not bad for a local library.  

But this was more than just a good idea.  It was a good idea identified by several good people.  It was also thoughtfully planned and executed by those good people.  Miranda and Todd were joined by Derrick and Amanda and probably several others that I haven't met yet.  These guys are all very friendly and helpful and honestly they are a joy to work with.  It's so nice to deliver artwork to people who are willing to help you carry it inside and who care very much about the safety and preservation of the artwork.  It's so nice to bring students to their first ever reception and awards ceremony knowing that there's going to be live music and great catering to fancy up the situation.  The students I've brought so far will never forget these great experiences.  

So go to the Spartanburg County Library at 151 South Church Street in Spartanburg.  Go downstairs and see the artwork, check out the Warhol exhibit and then go upstairs to the Administrative offices and see the rotating exhibits there.  If you see an employee, be sure to tell them you came to see the artwork.  And if you happen to run into Todd, Miranda, Derrick or Amanda, shake their hand and tell them thanks for mixing visual art with books.  


And then go to Krispy Kreme.

bbq, awards and doughnuts

Last Saturday evening was the reception and awards presentation for the 1st Annual Juried Exhibit at the Spartanburg County Public Library.  As the name implies, this is a new event created by Miranda Sawyer, the graphic artist at the Spartanburg Library main branch.  Miranda is also responsible for coming up with the Collegiate Art Exhibit hosted by the Library each spring.  She's to be commended for linking the public library with art exhibits and creating new venues for people to experience art in their everyday lives.  

Since we were making the drive into civilization, we decided to make the most of it.  We buckled the kids in and headed to Sparkle City and made our way to one of our favorite BBQ restaurants, Southern BBQ.  This place is located about 30 seconds from our old house.  Talk about convenience.  

The kids have always called it "The Pig Place".  In fact, they call almost all BBQ places "The Pig Place".  You know, they're always decorated with pig characters and pig paraphernalia inside.  We have yet to explain to the 4 and 7 year olds why the pig is used for BBQ decor.  

Being 30 seconds from our old house also required that we drive through the old neighborhood.  We lived there for 16 years so I guess we got pretty attached.  All the old neighbors are still there, the house is still red, and our flowers are doing quite well, if you were wondering.

Soon after that we were downtown.  We drove past Krispy Kreme where we were taunted by the "hot now" sign.  For the poor souls who do not speak Krispy kreme, the "hot now" neon sign lights up when there's a fresh hot batch of glazed doughnuts coming off the rollers.  The hot doughnuts melt in your mouth at this elevated temperature and it's possible for one human to ingest exponentially more doughnuts when they are hot than when they are at cooler temperatures.  G and I have been trying to eat healthier this summer so we tried not to notice the bright orange neon sign.  Silently each of us vowed that if the sign was on when we left, we would stop.

With the doughnut close call behind us, we walked through the exhibit and viewed the art.  Keeping energetic kids well behaved at events like this can be a challenge.  And since we do this a lot, we've developed some activities to help pass the time.

We make faces and act goofy (as you see in the image above), we walk around and pick our favorite pieces in the show, and we people watch.  "People-watching" sounds so much better than spying or creeping, doesn't it?  It's my favorite thing to do at these events.  And if there are no artist name tags involved, I love to stake out a position near my art and watch people as they view it and talk about it to other people.  So I picked up my sticky name tag at the front and promptly stuck it on Blue's shirt.  Problem solved.

There are only so many photos you can take of strangers before you're escorted out by security, but here are a couple.  The image above shows a guy viewing my drawing "Dog" with a friend.  He leaned in close, cocked his head sideways and started laughing.  He said something to the friend but I couldn't make out what it was.  

I would love to know what these nice ladies thought about it but they spoke in whispers.  They seemed genuinely perplexed, but they gave it a respectable amount of their time before moving on.  Well done, ladies, well done.

And the night got even better as it went on.  During the awards presentation upstairs, each of my two drawings received awards.

"The Green Grabber" was given the Library Purchase Award and will go into the Library's collection.  

And "Dog" was given the Friends of the Library award.  

The juror for the exhibit, Will South, is the Chief Curator of Art at the Columbia Museum of Art.  In his video juror's statement, he was kind enough to mention my work and to call it "hysterical".  I take this as a huge compliment as one of my goals with my work is always to make people smile. I will attempt to either post the video or at least a link to it below.



OK, you'll have to settle for the link.  Sorry.  

On the drive home we may have driven a block out of the way to drive by Krispy Kreme again.  Why we did this is not important.  The important thing is that as fate would have it, the "hot now" sign was on.

great moments in lander university's visual arts

 We were happy to be invited to participate in the 1st Annual Collegiate Invitational Art Exhibition at the Spartanburg Public Library Headquarters.  Six colleges and universities across the upstate region were invited to submit student art for this event.  Each school selected 10 students and 2 faculty members to participate in the exhibit.  For us that meant that each of our big areas could choose 2 students as representatives.  

The opening reception and awards ceremony was held last Saturday and Jim, our department chair and I planned to attend.  Since we love food, we decided we should make dinner a part of the event so we invited anyone interested to join us at Ike's Korner Grill for the best burger in Spartanburg.  It's been a while since either of us have been to Ike's so Georgie and I were pretty surprised when we pulled into the empty parking lot and saw that they closed at 3:00 on Saturdays.  

After a quick phone regrouping we changed our dinner destination to Venus Pie on Main Street.  Two students, The Tav-manian Devil and The Cessquatch joined the three of us for pizza.  

Danielle (Tav-manian Devil) and Brandy (Cessquatch) at Venus Pie

 I knew it was going to be a good night when I ordered a single slice of pizza and they brought this monster out to the table.  That is a regulation sized fork if you're wondering and I'd already devoured the rest of the triangle before snapping the photo.  The "slice" was the size of a small pizza and there may have been a half pound of bacon on it.  Good times.

 Once we were all stuffed we headed a couple of streets down to the library and entered the cool shin-dig the library put on.  Miranda did a great job with creating this event and putting on a great reception.  There was a cellist, lots of food and tons of people.  So many people that it was difficult to get photos of the work.  I'm going to use that as my excuse for not having images of all the Lander students' work.  That's Andrew's self portrait painting above.

 And that's Andrew looking sharper than I've ever seen him.  He's so dedicated that he drove from an event in Atlanta just to attend the reception.  Our other painting student, Melanie Fennell was also there with her cool painting but I'm a slacker and missed that photo.  Sorry.

 Haley Brunhilda Floyd was also there.  That's her awesome raku deer in the photo above.  

 And that's Megan's ceramic sculpture of a Mrs. Lettuce-Head.  

That's Danielle Tav-manian Devil Tavernier with her cool steel sculpture.  I'm realizing how bad it looks that I photographed all the sculptural pieces and missed all the others. Sorry y'all, I really do love 2D art too.

 And there's Brandy Cessquatch Cessarich with her award winning steel sculpture "Abstract Abode".  Award winning?....

 Yes, award winning.  Brandy won 2nd place in this exhibition for her sculpture and another Lander student Kelly Plemmons won 3rd place for her photograph "Ella Mae's Teardrop".  If you're keeping score at home, that's 2 of the top 3 awards going to Lander students.  I'm about as proud of them as I can be.  

A group photo of the honorable mention, merit award and top winners.  Cessquatch is in the center and Kelly is on the right.  

Mariano was also there with his graphic design entry and Colleen came out to support everyone...which was really cool of her to do.  

I will admit that my celebrating got a little out of hand afterwards.  I had a Krispie Kreme doughnut AND a milkshake from Cookout.  It was a good day to be a Bearcat.