a chaotic year

Hey y'all, check on your friends in academia.  They're probably not OK.  

This academic year has been so chaotic that when it finally ended (or at least, we had graduation) I felt weirdly unresolved.  Part of that is that I'm still having to do school stuff and even drive there several days this week, but it's also because it's just been impossible to process all the weirdness in real time.  

I process most of my days on the commute.  Sometimes through music or a good podcast, but sometimes I talk to myself out loud.  When there's more to digest, I take care of that in my sketchbook by logging some events and documenting the happenings for future reference.  This year has been a Lego type year, though.  Each strange and unprecedented event was followed by another and they just kept stacking up to build this very tall, very unstable tower.  I feel as if I've just been dodging missiles one right after another with no time to really reflect on the events.  Since that's one of the goals of this blog, I figured I owed it to myself to sit down and really recall and reflect a little.  One way I do that is through images.  I open my camera roll and thumb my way back to August before slowly scrolling through the academic year.

Dude.  It's crazy how much has happened.  So much has changed.  And then I get distracted by all the funny photos and crazy events that are documented on my phone and I forget that I started out trying to process the weirdness.  

Like, remember when I had to do surgery on one of the welding machines and we treated it like a real operating room situation?  Remember when Elena hated me on the first day of classes and then we became school besties?  Remember when MG and I had a snowball fight while delivering sculptures for an exhibit?  So many good memories.  See how easily I get distracted?

Anyway, we'll look at some photos together.  Let's start with a few things that just happened to me...

I got to be a part of Wim Roefs' memorial exhibit.  I was proud to be grouped with so many cool artists.  

I won an award from the SCAEA.  It was a big surprise and I was really honored.

I had a solo exhibit of my drawings and that was pretty cool.

I (we) got to visit Emily at her school and hang out with her.

Oh dude, there was a whole hurricane situation with school canceled for a week.  We lost power, had a bunch of trees down and I did a jigsaw puzzle obsessively on the dining room table.

Freakin' Walter joined the family.  What a chaotic mess he is.

Violet ran in state XC and did great.  She had a great year despite constant hip pain.  Today she had an MRI for that hip pain.  Still not out of the woods on that.

Blue went off to his first year of college.  The cool thing is that the college is the same one I work for.  It's been really cool seeing him several times each week.  

Then we have all the student related things in my camera roll.  This was really the thing that saved the academic year - the students.  There's some sort of tide that rolls in and out with student groups and this year, the tide was high.  So many great students who provided me with so much entertainment and joy.

This was our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast.  We had toast and popcorn, just like in the Thanksgiving special.  

Shine tormented me with cats and weird music all semester.

Babushkas!

Halloween costume fun with Payton and Mac!

Art hiking with the cool kids.

Ali got her masters degree.  I'm so proud of her.  I love her.

I took the cool kids to a jewelry workshop with Katie Poterala and they made very cool things.

Freakin' MG.  What a blessing to us all.  I got to spend 4 years with her talking about all the controversial religious things and helping her really understand what she needed to be making and why.  It was all so much fun.  Well, except the fact that she holds the record for the number of urgent care visits.  Everything else was great.

MG also made me another award and I was just as honored to receive it as I was the other one.  This seriously meant so much to me and I haven't fully processed that yet.  

The spring Art Gala was so much fun.  This group is the coolest.

We had a whole year of ninjas of kindness missions.  We made people uncomfortable and made them feel loved.  A win.

I got to teach all these people to weld and this was just one of three classes of Sculpture 1 this year.  I LOVE seeing people realize sculpture is amazing.  This was a fun group.

I'm not even sure what this was but it made me super happy to find it on my phone.  I think it was a film camera shot on exam day?  

So yeah, some really negative and irritating things happened throughout the year.  It was annoying and unnerving on many occasions but these students and their antics made all of it worth it for me.  If you want to know about the bad things, maybe take me out for a drink and I'll tell you.  The tea is hot and I'm all about spilling it in the right environment.  But today, let's just think about these happy times instead of dealing with the negativity.  

professor

 I'm neck-deep in my busiest semester of the academic year and I opened my computer today to check mail and saw a calendar invite for "Professor Doug McAbee".  I think I was having a moment because I looked at the words and lingered longer than usual.  

That's me.  "Professor".  I'm a professor.  

I've had this title officially now for 15 years and I still remember vividly the day I moved into my first academic office and saw that title and name printed on the room label.  I couldn't believe I was finally a professor.  An actual professor.  

I was working full time as a graphic designer while earning my MFA.  There were a lot of sacrifices during that time and a lot of worry too.  I hoped to get a teaching job after graduation but there was so much uncertainty surrounding that idea.  I lived in a county with at least 5 colleges and a couple of art departments but I already knew that those jobs were coveted and even if you waited around until someone died, there was a line of people waiting for that one job.  I knew that if I got lucky and landed a good job, I'd almost certainly have to move and then there would be so much more change.  I didn't like change.  I didn't like new situations.  I had a lot of fears and a lot of anxiety.  

Some of that anxiety was about school.  I saw myself as an average achiever from a small town.  I did ok in college, but I was mostly taking classes I loved so it was easy to do the work.  I knew I had artistic ability and I knew my professors were good.  I was confident about that while in undergrad, but grad school seemed like a whole other thing.  I didn't know a lot of people with graduate degrees.  I would be the first in my immediate family to earn one and among my friends, only the religious, seminary ones were getting grad degrees and, just between us, I didn't even think that counted.  No shade to the friends.  

Grad school was going to be high level classes with professors who were experts.  I was going to have to make an impressive body of work but I was also going to have to write a 20+ page thesis document to accompany the work.  I'll just be honest with you here, I feared I wasn't smart enough to do it.  I mean, I don't know that I wrote 20+ typed pages total in my entire K-12 and undergrad years.

In hindsight, making the work was difficult but not nearly as difficult as the writing.  I can write you a funny story on command but writing in an academic style and citing physical references for all my points was not something I enjoyed or had any interest in beyond that thesis.  In the way that worked for me, I put it off as long as I could, buckled down and wrote the bulk of it in a weekend (at the beach) and then spent a couple of months making it good enough to get the signatures of my committee members.  

I couldn't believe it when it was over.  I was thrilled.  I graduated and was already teaching part time at that institution while continuing in my full time graphic design job.  I immediately began applying for teaching jobs and waiting for someone to be interested in hiring me.  

That lasted 7 more years.  Every week I would scour the internet looking at a huge list of individual .edu websites for job postings.  Every week I'd apply for the jobs I was even remotely qualified to do.  This was back in the days of mailing actual applications too, so it was a bit of work.  

I'm not sure if you can imagine what it's like to apply for a fairly specific type of job for a total of 8 years and month after month, year after year get zero interest.  Every few weeks I'd get an email or sometimes a stamped letter with the word "unfortunately" in it.  And those were the nice ones, many places weren't even organized enough to send you the rejection letter.  7 years of rejections.  

This process was made a bit easier because I had a full time job.  It would have been much worse if I hadn't had that.  I feel sure I would have given up hope.  

It was the struggle that made the success worth appreciating.  I mean, can you even begin to imagine the hope and anxiety I felt when I got an interview?  The weeks of waiting on the decision to be made.  The happy dance I did when I got the job offer over the phone?  The long, anxious wait between that offer and the contract arriving in the mail?  

Even after signing the contract (and taking that cut in pay) I worried that the deal would somehow fall through before I arrived on campus to see that sign on my office with my name on it.  I had an official email address and had been looped into so many email conversations about the upcoming academic year and still I worried.  Was I smart enough?  Could I really teach these classes at this level?  Were they going to hate me at this new place?  Where would I live?  Where would my kids go to school?  How do I act at the new faculty afternoon social?  

Even when I saw the sign on my door, there was a voice in my head that corrected the sign and said that I wasn't a professor yet.  I was technically "Assistant Professor".  I didn't know if I'd be able to meet the requirements to be promoted to Associate Professor and eventually to Full Professor but that was still years away.  I decided to focus on each year, each semester, each class as it came.  

Slowly I discovered that "imposter syndrome" isn't really a thing.  That feeling of wondering if you can really do it, if you're really an artist, if you're really a teacher, if you can really do the job...that's just called being human.  The people who seem to just automatically assume they're smarter and more qualified than everyone else, those are the ones with a syndrome.  They're not normal.  They're also not smart.  No shade.  Ok, a little shade.

Good things may not come easy.  I can assure you that they will not come without a ton of help from the people in your life.  I can tell you stories about how many people who are not me are really responsible for me having this job.  Knowing you persevered and knowing you had people to help you will make your eventual success more satisfying.  

love, really

 

Last Thursday morning, a group of my students grabbed a stack of handwritten signs and stood out in the plaza as their peers hurried to their 9:30 classes.  They stood there, smiling, and holding signs that read “I love you”.  

I watched as students we didn’t know walked by.  Some paid no attention at all.  Some looked and called out “I love you too!” as they moved on.  Many others read the signs, tried to hold back a smile and continued walking.  

This has been on my mind for many reasons.  In the last few weeks, I’ve written several potential blog posts that have been fueled or at least inspired by the nonsense going on in our political and quasi-religious landscape.  Those writings have just been sitting around on my computer and the longer they sit, the less likely I am to post them publicly.  I hate politics and I don’t want to be one of those internet naggers whose posts you skip because you know they’ll leave you feeling more rage and unrest in an already stressful day.  But, dude, there’s something in this that just won’t leave my brain.  I may end up posting this one.

Those students stood there on Thursday with numb fingers from the cold and declared to every human that walked by that they were loved.  They didn’t just say they loved the art majors or the white people.  They didn’t just say they loved the ones who believed what they believed or used the old fashioned pronouns.  They stood there and said that they loved everyone.  

You know who’s not doing that these days?  Christians.  Ok, I’ll be nice and use quotation marks.  “Christians”.  There’s at least a large number of “Christians” who are supportive of declarations, votes and initiatives that treat other humans unfairly.  Pick your favorite one, there are some that single out trans people, some that single out the handicapped, some that single out non-white people, some that single out women and some that single out just about any group of non-male, non-straight, non-white people.  Pick an executive order.  Pick a hot-button topic.  Yes, this is politics on the surface, you’re right.  I understand that political parties will pick these “issues” to defend or deny and sadly, I’ve grown to expect as much.  My problem begins when “Christians” get involved.  

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:37-40

I’ve seen Bible references used for all sorts of things, usually completely out of context and with no regard for the culture in which they were written.  But this one, spoken from the mouth of Jesus, seems to often be overlooked, along with the numerous other verses about loving others.  How we love other humans is directly tied to how we love God.  That’s not an interpretation of the quote, that’s what it says.  Everything else in our lives depends on love.  That’s what it says.  

If you call yourself a “Christian” then you believe  in the Imago Dei.  Your church doctrine says that you believe that humans were created in the image of God.  If you actually believe that humans were created in the image of God, you would never be ok with humans being treated unfairly and without love, respect and honor.  You would not be able to support taking away free meals from students to save money.  You would not be able to support non-citizens being shackled and put on planes to send them back to countries where their lives are in danger.  You would not be able to support laws that say humans don’t get to decide what happens to their own bodies.  If you believed in God, you would believe in love for everyone who walked by.  You would want all humans to be treated with the same love, kindness and respect.  

If your religion believes in tough love, conditional love and people needing to qualify to be loved, it is not Christianity.  Your religion is probably Capitalism and it will turn on you just as quickly as it turned on others.   

Oh, you came here for the art stuff?  Well, this is actually it.  Every work of art I create contains messages to help the people who see it.  Not certain people with an MFA or just the people who go into galleries.  It has always been important to me to create art for everyone at every level.  This is why public sculpture and murals are so important to me.  Public art has the ability to stand in a public place and hold that sign.  It has the power to let all humans know they are loved.

I invite you into a little self-reflection.  Would you be able to hold that sign and stand in a busy plaza and mean it?  Or do you really only have love for people who are like you?  

I’ll also invite you into a conversation.  If you believe you have a sound theological reason to support the dehumanizing that has recently been espoused by our government while also honoring God, I’d love to hear it.  

the state of the mcabee address

The cold, dark winter months make me introspective and with the ever-so-short break from work in December, I usually find a way to vent some of those thoughts here on the blog.  That’s sort of why this thing exists anyway, to record what I’m thinking as I evolve or grow old as a human.  Last January, I wrote a banger of a post that I think needs to get a little more air-time.  I reread it recently and still agree with almost all of it.  If you missed it, maybe take a break and go read it.  I’ll wait.

That post reminded me that I’m now a whole year into needing reading glasses to see close up.  How’s the rest of me holding up physically, mentally, emotionally?  How’s my job situation?  Or situations?  This seems like a good time to check in on myself and share the things I choose to share.

Age:

Of course I realize that having an early January birthday adds to my innate desire to reflect at this time of year.  When said birthday arrived this year I woke up to find myself having completed 53 years of living on Earth.  Do y’all remember 53 year old men when you were kids?  They were so old!  They drove big, steel, boxy cars and wore little derby hats with big coats and said all sorts of things like “I haven’t seen my buddy Carl since WWII”.  

Now I’m that guy.  I’m so old.  

My back hurts if I stand still for too long and my trips to the urinal are more frequent.  As we all know, my eyes need help to see up close and far away.  I think my hearing is fine, although I do admit to zoning out and actually not hearing things that people say directly to me.  I’m also admittedly more grumpy and less tolerant of stupidity.  And that music these kids listen to these days is just noise!  Kinda joking about the last one but it’s not entirely untrue.  

A few weeks ago I ran a 22 minute 5K and I can still outrun both of my kids.  I have managed to stay out of doctor’s offices for the last year and I’m generally very healthy and fit.  I’m also still running at least a 5K every day.  I guess I have no real complaints here.

Motivation:

Last year I created a ridiculous amount of new artwork.  Since that weird 2020 year, I’ve found myself more motivated to make art as often as possible.  This has led directly to more exhibit opportunities, which in turn, creates the need for more art.  Last year I double booked solo exhibits, so I had the motivation of having new work for a show, but times two.  I ended up making 21 drawings and 14 sculptures, which comes very close to completing one each week.  This is in addition to the weekly butt drawings and several gifts and those other full time jobs I have, so not bad.  

During winter break, I did a lot of resting.  I didn’t create any new works of art.  I enjoyed the family and the dogs and the time off.  I do not feel I have to set a goal for artwork nor do I feel I need to try to top what I did last year.  I will tell you that I did enter several more things and apply for more solo exhibits and I can feel the new work welling up inside of me.  My personality is to be driven and consistent.  I expect to be very busy again really soon.  (Update:  In the short time it took to type this up, I realized I have another exhibit overlap and I need to make a new outdoor sculpture.  I may be busy sooner than expected.)

Irritations:

If you read that post from 12 months ago, it was basically me saying “what’s up with that?” about a lot of things going on around me at the time.  Sadly, the world hasn’t become less irritating or dumb in the last 12 months.  Y’all elected that guy by a big margin.  I’d like to think you were thinking with your bank account instead of your racist/misogynistic/xenophobic tendencies and I can’t wait for you to see the tax increases he has planned for the middle class and listen as you continue to complain about the price of eggs and gas for the next four years.  Not that it will matter, because no one will ever convince you that you were wrong.  And the other party winning wouldn’t change a thing.  That’s irritating.  We’re locked into an ineffective two party system and the only people who can change it never will because they’re in the two parties and living large on our collective ignorance.  

You know what else is irritating?  I was in Venice a few months ago and now I’m not.  That’s irritating.  

Time:

Nothing like turning a year older and seeing a wrinkled old face in the mirror to get you thinking about time.  You know what I hate?  People wasting my time.  I can waste my time, but if you waste it, there will be wrath.  Sounds unfair, I know, but that’s how it is.  See, I have a plan working in my head all the time.  You know the movies where they superimpose the numbers and graphs over the screen to show someone is working out formulas?  That’s seriously going on in my head nonstop but it’s scheduling and time management.  If I leave school at this time, I’ll have this many minutes/hours to draw before I have to do the next thing.  If I watch this show with my kids, it will end at 9:45 and I’ll have an hour to work before I go to bed.  If I have to deliver the new artwork on Friday, I need to epoxy the hangers on Wednesday so I can wire them on Thursday.  That means I have to finish the drawing on Tuesday.  But I’ll get home late this Tuesday, so I have to finish the last drawing on Monday at the latest.  It’s all connected by a delicate string of hope and duct tape.  And really, I know it seems like a good idea for us to all meet together in one room face to face to talk about all the options and ideas everyone has about all the things, but you have no idea how important that Monday just became to my whole delivery schedule.  It’s really best if I don’t go to that meeting after all.  Maybe it could be an email?  

Let’s be honest, it can always be an email.

Joy:

I’m happy at 53.  All you slow driving people voting for the wrong politicians don’t really touch my happiness at this time in my life.  I feel purpose in what I do for a living and in what I do for fun.  Most days, I feel that I am doing things that make the world a better place.  This year I got a great new crop of students in Sculpture 1 and the future is bright for them.  Even though I’m mean and horrible and often compared to Satan, I still get students who choose to be in my classes and even hang out in some school-related ways outside of class.  That feels pretty good.  I got into some shows and won some things and sorta got externally validated a few times and that feels pretty good as well.  

Looking Forward:

At this point in my life, I’ve forgiven you and I hope you’ve forgiven me.  Sure, I believe some strange things and you may think I’m an idiot, but I promise I’ve really considered and tried to understand most of the conundrums I’ve bumped into.  I believe the universe is bigger than human comprehension.  I am skeptical of anyone who claims to “know the truth”, “have all the answers” or “understand God”.  And if that’s you, I still love you, I just think you’re being an idiot too.  It’s cool though, I know you’re not doing it on purpose.  All we can do is our best.  We should just really try to do our best.  

I genuinely believe that loving people and being kind is the solution for most of the problems we face individually and collectively.  I certainly still have my moments of muttering under my breath and gesturing a certain finger at people who temporarily offend, but I think I’m getting better.  

And that’s the state of the McAbee.  Hopefully we’ll meet back here next year.

12 months of fun

Sitting at my desk on the shortest and darkest days of the year, I have many thoughts.  With the mental space provided by a break from classes, the thoughts and ideas I have while running first thing in the morning often find their way back to the surface during the day.  I have written a few blog posts about these thoughts and my mind has drifted to thinking about my year in review.  I guess I normally post something here to record my greatest personal hits of the year and at my age, that’s probably a good idea.  If you’ve seen one of my recent solo exhibits, you have an idea of what the inside of my brain looks like.  Mixed in with all those colors and imagery are memories of experiences and funny stories.  With so much competition, some of the memories and funny stories just go missing.  Like, have I ever told y’all about how my cousin and I turned my first car into a 2000 pound water gun?  We simply bent the windshield washer outlets both to the passenger side and kept the tank filled with water.  Any time we wanted to hose down our friends, we just pulled alongside them and started spraying water on them.  It even worked on the interstate when bad drivers irritated me.  Who wants to lose stories like that?  So, with the help of my photos folder, here’s some stuff I remember about 2024:

1. Let’s start with Zeke.  What a great dog.  He has his own post here back in September, but this year started off with him being an old man who acted like a puppy and quickly turned into his final months with us.  We were blessed to have several months to consider how much we loved him and to be grateful for all the kindness and joy he gave us.  We still love you Zeke.  You're a good boy.

2. Freakin' Walter.  He made a big splash when he arrived late in the year.  Puppies are a full time job and this one is like Plankton...he's 1% evil.  We already love him and I'm already his favorite.

3. We’ll call this one “Phoebe/Art/Solo Shows.  When I created Phoebe, I created her with Riverfront Park in mind.  That made it all the more exciting when she was accepted into the juried exhibit there and then won an Honorable Mention Award.  I made a ton of new art this year with 21 new drawings and 14 new sculptures.  I had a lot of good times in the studio.  I also got lucky and had 3 solo exhibits this year.  A very good year for art.  A side shoutout to these experiences letting me meet Devann and letting me spend a week in my old college town.

4. This one will be “students”, but I’ll be honest and tell you it started out just as “MG”.  As I looked through my photos, I kept finding funny photos with MG and I started to remember all the shows and awards she won this year.  It’s really kind of ridiculous but good for her.  But then I kept scrolling through the year and saw so many wonderful memories with my students.  Some of their highest moments and some of our funniest photos.  I was talking to our university president recently and he asked about my fall semester.  I told him it was great and that it was all because of my students.  Sometimes you just get a good group of humans to watch over and I’ve currently got an excellent group.  

5. Speaking of students, Pickle Man gets his own spot.  If you were around campus last spring, you saw him at some point and fell in love with him.  He started off as a student idea for an outdoor sculpture that seemed very ambitious.  I advised Amber in making it, thinking she’d end up making him smaller than she said.  Amber, however, made it larger than she said and I was very supportive.  As it turned out, that was bad for the early decisions we made about his armature, but the fact that he turned out perfect and lasted outside for as long as he did is a testament to Amber’s determination as an artist.  What started out sort of as a joke, ended up bringing so many smiles to campus.  Good job Amber and RIP Pickle Man.  You were a big dill.

6. Family.  So much happened with the family this year.  Blue graduated high school, which came with so many milestone events related to school.  He threw the discus far enough to qualify for State but because he didn’t have to run cross country anymore, it was just Violet and me doing the running this year.  Blue did go to some summer practices with us.  We had a great vacation, lots of shorter trips, lots of fun conversations and we really made a dent in the South Park seasons, even with Blue going away to college.  G and I celebrated our 30th anniversary.  Violet still wants to make music with me and I love that.  Oh, and Blue deserves a shout for getting all As in his first semester of college.

7. You know I have to mention running.  In fact, y’all are really lucky I don’t mention it more.  I love it.  It keeps me healthy and happy and makes me the fun guy you know.  I ran in all sorts of ridiculous situations this year, super early in the morning, in an actual hurricane with trees falling around me, bitter cold, crazy heat, long distances and I still ran a respectable time in my one timed race this year.  Oh, and we brought back slogging this semester and I even had a couple of regulars.  Couldn't find any of those photos, though. 

8. I’ll make this one about the ongoing episodes of Coffee With McAbee but I could just as easily make it about the hot, caffeinated beverage that starts every single day with me.  My love for coffee makes the episodes possible and those episodes have created some really awesome times for me this year.  I had great conversations with current and former students and a few with new and old friends.  For me, this time is sacred and it has become a very important component of my year.  

9. That trip.  Dude.  What a trip.  Going to Greece and Italy was really fun and wonderful but getting to share all of that with Violet was absolutely beyond words.  What a fun adventure to share!  Oh and apparently Alayna and Kennedy got dragged along with us as well.  Tomato Quad Squad for life!

10. A very late entry to the list was concerts.  I had no concerts on my calendar through the first half of the year.  Tickets are crazy expensive now and there are fewer and fewer people I’ll pay that much to see if I have to see them with thousands of other people.  But we did manage a few outings this year in the last half.  Super last minute we got family Weezer tickets nearby and after a great set by The Flaming Lips, we got upgraded to a box with Violet’s school friends.  Then G and I saw Steve Martin and Martin Short and I got to see a bunch of cool people at the Edisto Blackwater Boogie.  Totally worth having to be around people.

So that's 10 good ones in no particular order.  If you or something you're related to didn't make my list, don't worry, you're still important to me and I still love you.  I'm just old and forgetful and there's a limit to how much my hermit brain will allow me to share.  And if the photo that features you didn't make it, know that it lives in my phone somewhere and I genuinely smile when I see it.  Thank you to each person I interacted with this year.  Thanks for making this year a great one.