some charleston things

 Back in November after my Wednesday morning class, I headed down I-26 to Charleston to meet up with G.  She had to attend a conference there with a couple of coworkers and I was lucky enough to be able to hang out in the Holy City with them for a couple of days.  When I get to tag along while she has to go to all day meetings, I make it an art trip.  While she listens and learns, I walk to galleries and museums.

 We're completely enchanted by Charleston.  I feel like it's beautiful there all the time.  Even a random street corner can stun you.

 Of course the history and the architecture have a heavy presence there too.  This is something you can feel while you walk around.  You can feel that you're walking through a significant place and that there's meaning all around you.  

 And the places that may not have any sort of historical significance or meaning benefit from their surroundings.  It's like the beauty rubs off on everything.  The ocean breezes deposit particles of beauty all around town.

 The light in Charleston is always great.  One of my favorite things about staying downtown is my early morning run.  The sun comes up over the ocean and casts everything in gold while I make my awkward lap around the city.

 I forget to be tired and I'm pretty sure my eyes get as much of a workout as the rest of my body.

 The Halsey Center for Contemporary Art always has cool things to see.  This place is free to the public and I highly recommend you stop in anytime you're in Charleston.  

 The Angry Bird ceramic pieces were very fun.

 I hit Redux at a bad time as they were in between exhibits but it was still a beautiful walk.

 It's always fun to look for stickers and street art as I walk around.  The Fairey "Obey" things were still up from last year, in fact one was right outside our hotel window.  But the cooler things were stuck on the back of street signs or drawn on junction boxes...or stuck on the front of street signs like the hula hoop guy above.

 I also got a chance to tour the sculpture studio at the College of Charleston.  I'm always interested to see how other studios set up their facilities to make the most of their space.  The people there were very kind and welcoming.  I have to admit I was a little jealous of their high ceilings and big footprint.  

 There's never a bad time to walk on the beach.  The temperatures were warm while we were in town and we headed out to Sullivan's Island after their meeting to catch the sunset.  There were tons of people on the beach, some in bathing suits enjoying the relative warmth.  This guy was getting some sun on his belly.

 I'm a very awkward selfie taker.  

 One of G's coworkers only recently moved here from one of those very cold northern states.  This was her first time in Charleston and it was entertaining to watch her experience it for the first time.  Especially when we got her to try chicken and waffles.  She loved it.  I couldn't talk her into the shrimp and grits though.  I guess you have to ease people into these things.  

art department halloween extravaganza

Each Halloween our department throws a little backyard bash for the students.  We gather at Singletary's house in costumes and hang out around a grill or a fire pit and goof around for a while.  We work our students pretty hard so we like to give them an opportunity to play and relax a little too.  

 To prepare, we load up on hot dogs, cookies and s'mores ingredients and we go into the sculpture studio and make a pumpkin smasher.  That's Queen Elizabeth showing off this year's smasher.  

 We also have to have a steel trophy for the winner of the costume contest.  I threw this one together the morning of the party.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute, right?

 Not only is the party a hit with our current students, often our graduates from the last few years will come as well.  Front and center up there is Ashley "The Whisk" Bush.  Apparently she's dressed as, and I'm quoting her here...."the stripper alter ego of McAbee".  She's mocking my bald head, plaid fashion sense, work boots and my love of Taylor Swift.  Her standard white tshirt says, "cray cray for tay tay".  Very well done Ashley, very well done.

 I'm really bad at taking selfies.  Megan and Krysten were Snapchat filters, Seth was Spiderman and I was an angry banana.

 Seth's nephew comes every year just to try to hit me in the groin.  

 Olivia (OG) led everyone in the Time Warp.

 Scarlet was one of the characters from Orange Is The New Black and Amanda was a mermaid.

 While Ashley mocked me, Haley (H-Dawg) dressed as Singletary.  She even had a small chihuahua with her at all times.

 Slagle was "Antonio" a great Italian dude, Sean was a "sexy lumberjack", Katertot was a comic character I forgot and Cessquatch was Waldo.

 I mean really.  These are interesting people.

 Our house photographer was on hand to take photos of the angry banana, 

 Antonio and Whisk,

 and he caught this action shot of some of the pumpkin smashing.  Apparently Singletary's chihuahuas feasted on pumpkin guts and seeds for weeks after this event.

The banana suit got hot so Olivia Bolt inherited it.  She's a hoot.

How do you know the party is over?  When the cops show up.  

Singletary's house has no parking and she lives on a tiny street.  We don't carpool here in the South so there were tons of cars blocking the entire neighborhood in.  We had to pause for a few minutes to get half the people to go move their cars before the party could resume.  Hopefully the neighbors will forgive us before next October.

casting experiment

Some students sent me an internet link to a video over the summer.  The video showed how to make a small charcoal forge for about $50 from common items bought from a home improvement store.  

We all know the internet is full of lies.  I assumed this was questionable information despite the tutorial video so I did a little research and figured that it must be really close to the truth.  At least close enough to give it a try.

 $50 later I took an afternoon to make the refractory chamber and lid.  An old fire extinguisher that was rotting in the sculpture room made a perfect crucible and an old hair dryer and some duct tape gave us a blower.

 Luke took a keen interest in these parts lying around the studio.  He asked some questions and had the same amount of disbelief I had.  But he also had the same amount of interest I had.  It didn't take much encouragement for us to start carrying things out on the sculpture patio.  Everything assembled as expected and soon we had the heat to melt our aluminum scraps.

 Fire is always interesting to watch but molten metal is awe inspiring.  

 The blower did it's job of heating up the coals and blasting a nice little orange flame up and out of the vent.

 Once the aluminum was liquid, we poured it into the mini muffin pans.  This gave us small nuggets of pure aluminum that would be easy to melt down when we were ready to cast a sculpture.

Apparently Luke was ready to to cast something pretty soon.  A couple of days later he showed up saying he bought some foam and he wanted to give it a try.  Later that day he came back to the studio with a small owl carved out of foam.  This was not part of my plan for this already busy day, but how could I resist such an opportunity?  Again we carried the parts outside and got the charcoal burning.  

 While the aluminum ingots melted in the forge, we grabbed a small bucket and filled it with sand.  We scooped out enough space to insert the foam carving and carefully packed sand around it in the center of the bucket.  The sand we had on hand was pretty coarse but we didn't exactly have time to run out and get more.  As soon as the aluminum was ready, we poured it onto the exposed foam and into the mold.  

 The foam instantly burned away and the liquid aluminum took it's place in the sand.  We grabbed the exposed aluminum with the tongs and lifted the cast owl out of the sand.  

Luke took a wire brush to the owl and cleaned it up.  Not bad for our first try.  We're going to have a lot of fun with this in the near future.

fall art hike 2015

What do you do when you plan a hiking trip and it rains for weeks on end?  What do you do when the night before the hiking trip you get sick?

You go hiking anyway.  

 We had tons of students sign up to tag along on my hiking trip this semester.  Lots of new people planned to go and the weather only kept a few away.  G and the kids were planning to go but the sickness swept through our last the week prior and dragging everyone out in the rain didn't seem like a good idea.  

 That's the group at Hooker Falls at the start of our day.

In a somewhat clockwise manner around my head we have Jamea, Cessquatch, Katertot, Chelsea, Sean, Sebastian, Kristen, Elizabeth, Laura, Oscar and Lindsay.

 Almost everyone but me had a giant camera and all those photographers had to get their shots.  Oscar broke the rules to get this one.  I fussed at him.

 Cessquatch, Sean and Katertot were our returning alumni for the trip.  Because they know how to have a good time.  This is what happens when you tell them to pose.

 Triple Falls in the background.  The rain was nice enough to hold back and the temperatures were in the upper 60s all day.  It was a perfect day for a hike.

 Cessquatch tells me that at this very spot, the lady from the Hunger Games movies did something in the filming of the movies.  Cessquatch briefly became Catnip Evergreen and posed for this historic shot.

 At the far end of our out and back hike was High Falls.  The rains for weeks had the water raging over the rocks.  The mist from this one was like a driving rain.  

 I donned my rain jacket for the first time to get close to the base of the falls.

 Lindsay fell and had to walk with wet foot all the way back.

 This was Jamea's first hike with us.  She seemed to enjoy herself.  She also tried to push me over every cliff we came to.

 We had lunch at the base of High Falls and then headed back down the trail.

 The trail had some muddy/completely submerged areas but we managed to move through without losing anyone.  

 Sean's umbrella came in handy for standing under the waterfall.

We always find a way to leave the Mighty S on our hikes.  The fall foliage provided this opportunity.  Katertot and Sean displayed their ultimate coolness by wearing their Sculpture shirts.  Well done guys.

 Just as we approached the parking lot again, it started to drizzle on us a little.  Even that didn't keep this group from wanting to do more exploration.  I was beat after a long night and was ready to find a nap.  Everyone else drove over to Caesar's Head to take more photos from the overlook before heading back to civilization.  Coolest group of art majors around.  Next semester we'll do it again.