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.

It's not me, it's you.

Dear Art Exhibit Venue,

We need to talk.

I heard you were having a juried exhibit.  I was happy to hear it and after reading over your prospectus I thought about entering my work.  These things are always tricky to figure out.  I read about the juror(s) you selected and the cash awards you were offering.  I checked the dates on my calendar and compared those dates to the other exhibits I had already scheduled.  I looked to see what work I had available to show during that time and carefully considered how your juror(s) might respond to that work.  As you know, I make a lot of 3D work so I also checked over your size/weight limitations and thought about how I might get my work to you if it happened to be selected. 

I’ll be honest, I also thought carefully about your entry fee.  Knowing that there would certainly be significant costs on my end if my work was selected, I had to consider if those costs would be justified.  Let’s say I pay your $30 - $50 entry fee just to have 1 – 3 of my pieces considered.  If those pieces are rejected, I’ve lost the entry fee and nothing more.  If any of the entered work is accepted I will then need to either deliver the work to your space or have FedEx do that for me.  If I deliver it, there’s the terrible cost of gas and the distance to your venue from my home to consider.  There may also be a big loss of my time again depending on where you are in relation to me.  And while FedEx is my preferred delivery service (other than me) they are not in the habit of delivering work or insuring that work for free.  The bottom line is that one sculpture getting accepted is going to cost at least $50 in delivery.  Those upper echelon venues only make me pay to deliver and they generously cover the cost of the return shipment, but you, well, you ask that the artists cover the cost of delivery and return shipment.  That’s another $50 minimum.  So we’re looking at $150 from my wallet in a best case scenario. 

That led me to consider your prizes and awards.  I know you say I’ll get all sorts of fame and publicity just from being in your show.  You say it’s the biggest show in town and you get tons of humans to move through your space to see my work.  That could be good for me.  And yes, my work will be for sale so there’s always the chance that someone would want to buy it.  And if that happens, I’ll forget all about that $100 (since I wont have to spend the extra $50 for return shipment…unless I prepaid return shipping through FedEx in advance).  But the truth is, I’ve been getting in these shows for a long time now and that fame and publicity you promise hasn’t really made me famous or well publicized.  In fact, you’ve downright broken that publicity promise quite a few times.  What about those prizes you offer?  Well, they sound good, but they’re almost like the lottery, right?  Especially those BIG, “life changing” award amounts some of you advertise.  I cant exactly count on winning the lottery so I have to be realistic and think I could just lose between $30 and $150 if I enter into this relationship. 

Listen, you know I need you.  You know I need to get my work out into galleries where people can see it.  You know I need to have my work validated by my peers for professional purposes.  And you know I can’t resist even the slightest possibility that I could win that big prize and become an overnight sensation.  So if you create the exhibit and you dangle that carrot, you know I and many of my friends will likely enter.  Hopefully it comes as no surprise to you that you’re not the only one for me.  There are between 6 and 10 others each year.  That puts those costs closer to $1,000 for me each year.  I’m not gonna lie to you, it makes me wonder if your venue is worth it.  I mean, is your town really an arts destination town?

All this makes me begin to think about how you treat me.  This is what it really comes down to isn’t it?  You may have a small gallery in a small town but if you’re very nice and very professional, I’m going to stick with you.  You may have prestige and name recognition, but if you treat me poorly and act like my work doesn’t matter, I’m going to be done with you pretty quickly. 

You gave me pretty strict instructions in your prospectus.  You want me to be professional.  You want me to enter by following a very specific set of instructions and you want me to do it by a certain deadline.  You expect my artwork to be excellent quality and you expect that I’ll deliver it to you by another set deadline.  You want me to come back again for the reception and then again to pick up the work after the exhibit closes.  And you expect me to be on time for each of those appointments and to have my own materials for packing and moving.  And you know what?  I think that’s fair.  I think those are very reasonable expectations for you to have of any artist.

But here’s where we went wrong:  I have expectations too. 

When you said I could deliver my artwork at that very specific time, I expected you would be there to receive it.  I understand that life happens and maybe something came up, but for three, four years in a row?  Come on now.  That lunch break happens at pretty much the same time every day doesn’t it?  But if you couldn’t be there for some reason I expected that you would either let me know well in advance or that you would leave some very specific instructions for another venue employee to handle the receiving of the artwork.  I know we talked about the money I’ve invested in this exhibit but we haven’t even touched on the money I’ve invested in this particular work of art.  This is, after all, an art object.  It is quite valuable, especially to me.  I spent days, weeks making this thing and spent hundreds of dollars on the materials and now I’m handing it over to a “volunteer” or some other person who appears to have never touched a work of art before.  This kind soul makes it clear they had no idea they’d be handling art today.  Do I need to sign something saying I delivered it in perfect condition?  No one knows.  Will it make it safely into the exhibition?  I certainly don’t know and this leaves me feeling very uneasy about you.  If I had a nickel for every time this has happened, I’d have a LOT of nickels.  Seriously, there are venues where artists have running jokes about the staff never being on time or even showing up for appointments.

When you said you were an art venue, I expected you were being honest about that.  You said this was the biggest thing in the region and that people from all over would come to see it.  You said the work would be on exhibit for the public.  You didn’t mention that the exhibit space was literally a wall or shelf in a local business.  At least you didn’t mention it until my work was accepted.  You expect professional quality art but you want to exhibit it over a table at a restaurant?  That really makes me reconsider that entry fee.  Oh and I’ll need to coordinate the delivery, exhibit, return of my work and the contract with that local business?  Are you kidding me?  I’m sure you were thinking it was fine and that nothing could go wrong.  Surely no customers would touch the weird sculpture with sauces on their little 5 year old hands.  There’s no way it would get dropped or scratched or lost while being handled by the restaurant owners, right?  Lucky for me it wasn’t dropped or scratched.  It did however get lost.  For about a week no one at the restaurant seemed to know what I was talking about when I asked why my sculpture wasn’t returned on the date stated on the contract.  “Sculpture?  What sculpture?  Oh, that thing?  I haven’t seen that in a week or so.  I think the artist came and got it.”  Also lucky for me you had at least one competent employee working for your event who immediately made it her job to find the sculpture and return it to me.  It had been dropped in a box and shoved under a shelf in the kitchen.  Nice.  Well on your way to becoming a world class exhibition!

In these types of juried exhibits the artists are putting themselves out there to be judged and categorized by the quality of their work.  I wonder what would happen if you were to be judged and categorized by the quality of your work?

In our relationship, if I fail to live up to reasonable expectations, you toss out my entry and keep my money.  You may even reserve the right to stake an ownership claim on my work if I don’t pick it up on time…it says so in the contract.  But what happens when you fail to live up to reasonable expectations? 

We will stop entering your shows.  And when our artist friends forward the email and ask if we are entering, we will feel obligated to tell them why we wont be signing up for more abuse this year.  Your reputation as a respectable venue will suffer.  Will other, younger/emerging artists enter to take our place?  Maybe so but unless you change your ways, they’ll be ready to wash their hands of you soon too. 

Its not that I want to end our relationship.  You do have some good qualities.  But you need to know that there are lots of up and coming venues, some of which are being steered by working artists who are very familiar with these types of relationships from both sides.  They’re treating me really nice and even respecting my artwork.  Heck, they not only show up at the designated time, they offer to help carry the artwork.  They care about more than just their gallery or their job (or their lunch break).  They care about the artists and the artwork.

Maybe there’s still time to save this thing.  Really all I want is to be treated fairly and for you to have some respect for my artwork.  And as a gallery, museum or exhibition space shouldn’t that already be one of your goals?

So if you see my entry next time, you’re probably doing it right or at least I’ve heard you’ve really changed.  If not, I’ll put all your tshirts and albums in a box and you can pick them up later.

open studio sale !!!

You're invited to this year's Open Studio Sale on July 12.  I'll have all sorts of strange things available for purchase.  Each year I create special items just for the studio sale.  This year I've created a line of steel mugs and flower vases.

 mugs are 4" to 7" tall

vases are around 10" tall

*mugs and vases are safe for flowers and whatever else you might want to put in them but they are NOT food safe.  Awesome, yes - food safe, no.

there are also some steel flowers and bowls left from last year

And of course there will be tons of drawings of all sorts and lots of sculptures available.  There's even a rumor that Blue and Violet will be selling some of their own drawings this year.  Heck, I might make some snacks for you to eat while you shop and look around.  

This is the one time each year I invite people to my hermit house so come on out while you can!

coastal tour

G and I took forever to decide where we were going on our summer vacation this year.  We always go to Myrtle Beach.  And by "Myrtle Beach" I don't literally mean the Myrtle Beach city limits.  In my world "Myrtle Beach" or "The Beach" is a name applied to any beach location on the Grand Strand.  We do North Myrtle a good bit, but mostly we go to Surfside Beach or Garden City Beach.  I have a long and wonderful history with Myrtle and we even honeymooned there.  It is our comfort place and we go as often as we can.  

We've tried other beaches.  I've been to beaches in Jamaica, Puerto Rico and all up the Gulf Coast, eastern US coast and even into Canada if you count the Great Lakes.  My preference is Dirty Myrtle.  People joke about it being the Redneck Riviera and how dirty the beaches are.  I've said before that these people are beach elitists and apparently they are quick to overlook the exact same problems on their own favorite beaches.  Uncultured and uncouth as we are, we love Myrtle Beach.  

Still we get the urge to explore from time to time.  And when the time came to book our vacation this year we had the exploration bug.  G spent weeks on the internet looking up possibilities.  We looked over the options and we decided to try Harbor Island.  We had never been to Beaufort and never seen the Sea Islands so we made our plans to remedy that.

 We loaded up early on Friday morning.

 Our first day of vacation just happened to be National Doughnut Day so we charted a path to a Krispy Kreme on the way to the coast.

 After the free doughnuts coursed through our veins we made it to Harbor Island in no time enjoying the bridges and marshlands along the way.  We were both a little anxious to be spending such a sum on a condo we had never seen but I unloaded the truck trying not to think about it.  When I finally looked off the balcony the view was pretty much as the internet said it would be.

 There was a long boardwalk from the condo to the beach stretching over a large dune and wildlife area.  And there was a beach but this is where we learned that some humans have very different definitions of the word "beach".  

 The Johnson Creek Tavern was on Harbor Island and after our initial disappointment with the water situation it provided us with a nice little seafood dinner while we watched the tidal marsh and the nesting osprey outside the window.

 Aided by our full bellies we marched back out to the "beach" again to get a better look.  The tide had backed out a little by now and there was a good bit of sand, but this "truly ocean front" beach lacked any discernible surf.  Every once in a while a ripple would get large enough to tilt over onto the sand.  Apparently that was a wave.  Blue and Violet live for jumping over and through waves and they were thoroughly disappointed.

 The exploring was good and there was a lot of beauty to take in.  The sand bars and wildlife dominated the landscape.  The ground moved with snails, crabs and birds.

 And anytime you have sand, water and sky, you have the makings of some great views.

 The Harbor River empties into the Atlantic at the top of Harbor Island.  The river is more like a tidal marsh to be accurate.  It seems the location of the island's many sand bars keeps the one thing away that we needed...waves.  Small waves would break  far out on the horizon but only small ripples made it to where we stood.  

 The location of the "beach" on or near the tidal river also gave the kids a wonderful pluff mud bath every time they went out to dig.  After wave jumping, digging is the thing for them.  There was about 2 inches of sand and then black pluff mud filled the gap between us and China.  The kids didn't mind so much until they realized they couldn't wash off the smell.

 Still, it was vacation and we wanted to make the best of it.  Violet kept a positive attitude.

 We had planned to cool our heels most of this trip.  This was the reason for the months of research and careful email exchanges with the owners.  Balcony sits are great moments for our vacations.  We sit and read, draw, sip drinks and watch people and animals and relish the fact that we have absolutely nothing else that we should be doing at that moment.  Much to our dismay, the tiny ripples were not audible from the balcony and there was not enough of a breeze to keep the millions of biting bugs away.  

 Distant afternoon storms brought a little breeze and some shade.  We soaked up those moments as they came.  

 While the kids played, I made sand things while G read her huge book.  The kids love for me to make things just so they can destroy them as soon as I'm finished.  And since we were looking out for the sea turtles, the fast re-leveling of the sand was not so bad.

 Harbor Island is a Loggerhead sea turtle nesting area.  This is prime time for the big mothers to come in from the ocean at night and deposit their eggs in a hole at the edge of the dunes.  These ladies and their babies deal with enough obstacles already so we didn't want our sand things to give them any grief.

 After day two on the marshy beach we decided to check out the Beaufort waterfront.  We arrived right after a quick passing rain cloud so it was nice and cool out.  

 There was a toy store and some BBQ so everyone was happy.  Beaufort was nice.

 Deciding to make chicken salad from...something not so chicken like, we took off on day three in search of more exploring.  We stopped by the Sheldon Church ruins on the way to Charleston for the day.

 If you've never seen this or heard about it, you should Google it now and make plans to see it one day.  It's free, easy to find and very cool.  It seems the historic church was burned twice and there are lots of very old historic folks buried there.

 In the morning light the whole place is very photogenic.

 There were some mosquitoes and fire ants living there, but we managed to escape most of them.

 Blue was more intrigued by the old well than the ruins.  He was amazed that water came from this pump.

 As we talked about places to day trip we realized that the kids had never been to Charleston.  We always seem to go when they stay with grandparents so we thought they'd enjoy doing the touristy things.  They loved the carriage tour even though it was hot and they didn't seem to care about the history.  Blue apparently listens much more than he lets on because he repeated a lot of the historical information back to us later that night.

 They also had their first trip to Hyman's Seafood.  Of course they had chicken strips and fries so I'm not sure that even counts.  And the middle plate at the top there is signed by Ric Flair.  Wooooooooooooo!

 They loved playing in the fountain.  G was smart enough to bring extra clothes.  

 The clothes were not for the fountain.  She brought them because we planned to hit one of the area beaches while we were there.  We all desperately needed waves and a real beach.  We drove out to Folly Beach and spent a good bit of time looking for shells and jumping waves.  And getting sand and broken shells in our underwear.

 When we were done beach happiness abounded.  And for the beach elitists out there, Folly was great but there were just as many bottle caps and cigarette butts per square foot as at Dirty Myrtle.  If you're headed that way this summer, there's also a beach renourishment project going on so be ready for the giant rusty pipes to be stretched across the entire beach front.

 Sorry, this photo is slightly out of place.  It should have been up there around day one.  This post is already so photo heavy that I don't have the patience to move it.  

 The next Sea Island to the south is Hunting Island State Park.  Our research said that this was a popular beach site for residents and visitors to Beaufort.  The next day we made a day of it.

 The north end of the island has suffered some pretty significant erosion and the tree carcasses have been left where they fell.  It reminded me of Capers Island.  Absolutely beautiful place.

 There were a few people on this end of the island but it was not crowded by any means.  We had plenty of space to spread out and play.

 This beach was a real beach with waves and everything.  These two were very happy.  G and I were also pretty thrilled by it all.  We found about 30 sharks teeth during the day.  

 Hunting Island lighthouse is right in the middle of the island.  It's the only lighthouse in South Carolina that allows visitors to climb to the top.  Blue and I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  He loved every part of the lighthouse.  

 He won't go near a roller coaster but running up and down these old stairs was nothing for him.  He didn't even act scared at the top.

 He was pretty proud of his accomplishment.

 He did freak out a little when we came down and looked back up to see how high we were off the ground.  I think that just made him more proud.

 Beach happiness abounded again.  Skin darkened and smiles grew.

 I'm not sure why, but these two love to be buried in the sand.  Since babysitters are scarce at the beach, we took the opportunity to go have a quiet dinner.  I'm kidding.  They took turns breaking out of the sand like the Hulk.

 I love the coast.  The light, the horizontal lines, the sounds.  I love it all.

 We have a couple of friends who moved near Hilton Head a couple of years ago and we decided this was a great chance to get to see them.  We drove about an hour to Bluffton and had breakfast for lunch at the Sipping Cow restaurant at Scott's Market.  Really good food.  Highly recommended.

 We walked the outlet stores and checked out the riverfront at Bluffton.

 We found this really cool church right on the water.  Very photogenic place.

 We had dinner with Mike and Brooke and their two kids and did some catching up and laughing.  Then we drove out to Hilton Head and checked out the beach there.  I hadn't been there since high school.  It's changed a lot.  Good waves and good beach.  

 The next day was Violet's birthday.  She talked all week about how she was going to be queen for the day and we'd all have to do whatever she said.  She got up and wanted to put on her pretty dress and then she wanted to have birthday pie for breakfast.  When the queen speaks the peasants listen.  

 The queen then demanded that we go play in the sand.  Blue obeyed like a good peasant.

 As did I.  I'll say this for Harbor Island:  people leave you alone when you're building a sand thing.  Perhaps it was because we were "renters" (to be pronounced like the guy in the old John Candy movie) or maybe people just keep to themselves, but I certainly appreciated it.  I love making things but I work in the Hermit Fortress of Solitude.  It was nice to not be bothered with humans while playing in the sand.

 The queen then commanded that we go to Outback for her birthday dinner so they could sing to her.  We obliged.

 We topped off the birthday with a walk out on the "beach".  The sky was phenomenal.

 Our last day on the island started out with a very cool find.  I got up each morning to run before the heat was unbearable.  Most days I saw the turtle team out looking to see if any mothers had made their way up to lay eggs overnight.  Friday I saw the team excitedly working to mark a new nest.  These were the tracks where the turtle dragged herself up to the nest.

 And this was the trail she left as she went back out to sea.  The turtle didn't make the large Xs.  I mention this because Blue couldn't understand why the turtle made big Xs as she left.  The turtle team marked the tracks with an X so they'd know the nest had been marked.

 After breakfast we decided to go back to Hunting Island for some real beach.  Mike and Brooke were kind enough to give us a pass to get in for free.

 This time we tried out the south end of the island.

The beach was clear of trees but there were fewer sharks teeth and more humans.  The waves were perfect for jumping and for wake boarding.  When we'd had all the sun we could stand we packed it in.  After cleaning up and having a snack I packed the truck up and we made our way inland to Columbia for dinner at California Dreaming.  

Now that we've thoroughly explored the Carolina coast from Currituck to Hilton Head we unanimously agree that we'll be going back to Myrtle as quickly as possible.  You can have your Swiss chocolates and high class beach resorts.  We'll be having Hershey bars on the Grand Strand.