who do you think you are?

I was recently invited to be on a panel of artists from South Carolina to discuss creativity, sustainability and care as each topic relates to artists and their work.  This was a “homecoming” event created by the SC State Museum, designed to bring the state’s artists and creatives together to be encouraged and edified.  

These three topics are more or less continually on my mind as an educator of college level artists.  Each year I have the privilege of teaching young artists how to adopt healthy studio practices as they prepare for creative lives after graduation.  Part of my preparation for teaching includes staying current on best practices for artists in terms of mental and emotional health.  

In this role as an educator, I have to be careful to balance my personal thoughts and beliefs with the current social dialog and research.  As an older white male who was raised in the conservative South, I tend to see things a bit differently than many of my younger generational students.  My goal is to provide honest and helpful advice that I actually believe in.  Sometimes, this advice runs in opposition to the trending social media hashtags, “hacks” and sound bites.

I understood my role on the panel and how it differed from my role as an educator.  On the panel, I was among peers who had very different life experiences, backgrounds and thus, advice.  I was happy to offer my take while completely absorbing theirs.  Many of them offered helpful and evidence based suggestions and I hope to share some with my students next year.  I was happy that the suggestions and discussion points at this event were not just regurgitations of social media psychology and I hope that the SC State Museum will continue to host events like this in the future.

In the past few months, I’ve had more personal discussions with fellow artists about my work ethic, my general approach to studio practice and mental and emotional health.  I am careful to make sure these friends understand that the advice or experiences I share are mine and that I only know that they work for me.  I understand that I am different from you and pretty much everyone else.  Like all the advice that we get, we should take what works for us and flush the rest.   

Another thing to consider is that my advice may change radically over time.  Let me explain…

In January of 2020, I started to have a bit of a moment with myself.  I had just finished several seasons of a long, drawn out TV show and I realized I had quite literally wasted many digits of hours sitting on my butt, watching someone else tell me a story.  I kept thinking that my time would have been better spent telling my own stories, and starting on January 1, that’s what I set out to do.  By the time the world shut down in March, I had completed more new drawings than I had completed in recent years.  

Being “forced” to be at home for the next 3 months heightened my awareness that I would not live forever and that, as an artist, I had work to do while I was here.  I listened to a lot of music, I had a lot of fun outside, I spent a lot of time with my family and I created a LOT of art that year.  I did not watch TV.  

In the months that followed, I happily told people who asked (and many students who did not ask) that the TV was their enemy.  This included YouTube, as I was just learning then that a whole generation of Americans had grown up depending on YouTube for everything from movies to TV shows, to DIY shorts.  It was amazing to me how many hours they could watch YouTube in one day.  

Full disclosure here:  I have a long-standing beef with the TV.  In college, I sort of woke up to the fact that my roommate and I were spending hours a day watching shows and movies in our dorm and only spending a fraction of that time working on our studio art projects.  I did a little research on the topic for an Education course and immediately swore off the TV for the last 2 years of undergrad.  To this day, I’m more of a deliberate TV viewer.  I hate the idea of having the TV on for “noise” and I still believe that watching TV so much makes you dumber.

I understand that we need to update our terms for the world we currently live in.  What I would have considered “TV” back in the day, could now easily be broadened to include video games, social media or simply “screens”.  To the creative mind, all of these are obstacles that stand between you and a healthy studio practice.

When my kids grew into teenage years and started trending towards self-isolation in their rooms, the TV became a way of luring them out and spending some fun time together.  My daughter and I started watching silly things together and this became a nightly habit.  Soon we lured my son out of his room to join us and to this day, we have a pretty regular nightly time together watching something on the big screen in the living room.  

So if you ask me today if you should spend time every night watching TV, I would tell you no.  I would suggest that doing so would be an impediment to a healthy studio practice for most artists.  And I might even tell you this while I’m sitting in front of the TV, spending time with my kids.  Because for me, right now, this is the healthiest thing I can be doing.  

Of course, I’m also disciplined enough to set aside a large amount of time each day for creative work.  I’m still creating unprecedented amounts of new drawings and sculptures and also having a very respectable number of exhibits of my work.  I know what I can do and how I can carve away time to spend with my family.  Just like GI Joe said in those 1980s feel-good commercials, “knowing is half the battle”.  

I can talk with a middle aged artist and suggest that the way to stay healthy as a creative is to know yourself and schedule your days accordingly.  I can assume that in 40 or 50 years of practicing being a human, that the other person has a pretty good idea of who they are.  This doesn’t work as well with 20 year old students.  But perhaps this is a good reminder for us all.

I don’t have the advice you need to be successful.  The 20 year old YouTuber or IG influencer doesn’t have the answer to your problems.  What works for us may not work for you.  In fact, it most likely won’t.  We are different people with different experiences and different needs.  Yes, TV will actually rot your brain (and habitual viewing is also terrible for your physical health) but there are days when watching a funny show for 15 minutes is exactly what you need.  I work and go all the time but if you try that, you might die, and I’m only half kidding.  

What we all need is to know ourselves.  Be honest with yourself.  What do you want?  What are you willing to do to get it?  Did you make progress toward it today?  What will you do to make progress toward it tomorrow?  Is what you’re doing right now helping?  Are you treating yourself in a sustainable way to reach your goals?  

Another thing that deserves its own paragraph is that you are constantly framing your own narrative.  If you see yourself as not being enough, not being lucky, not being successful, you will become all those things.  If you see yourself as hard working, grateful, blessed and achieving, you will become all those things.  Take a day and pay attention to yourself narrative.  How do you talk to yourself?  How do you tell your story to your friends and family?  You are in the process of telling your story.  It will eventually happen just as you’re telling it.  See yourself as meeting your goals through discipline and hard work.  See yourself treating yourself well and being kind to yourself.  You will become your story.  

trip day 15

 Trip Day 15:  headed home

For my last run in Venice, I decided to try to find a landmark visible from the water.  The "Building Bridges" or "giant hands" sculpture is visible from the Arsenale location and also from vaporetto rides around that side of the island.  I've seen the sculptures from a distance, but never close up.  Since I didn't do any research, I just assumed I could get close on foot.  I found a close location noted on the phone map and set off in that general direction.  Going on foot in an underwater city is not as easy as finding your way on a quad in Santorini.  The map didn't seem to understand locked gates and private property.  I did get to run a long distance on this crazy metal walkway over the water, but I did not get close to the sculpture.  In fact, I couldn't even see it.  My phone also paused my run so my distance was messed up.  After 45 minutes of running, I knew I was well over my 3.1 miles and I gave up and ran back towards known territory.

One of the cool things about the Biennale is how there are pavilions and exhibits all over the city.  This one was right under our noses outside our coffee shop and I didn't see it until the last day.

It's also interesting how you find familiar things all over the world.  I don't know if Shepard Fairey stuck this one personally or if a disciple did but it was cool to see Andre the Giant's face outside our apartment.

We got our last good coffee in Italy and sat on our suitcases to get them to zip.  Then we got on our last vaporetto ride to the bus station.

We said goodbye to the beautiful landscape.

And soon we were boarding a big tube with jet engines that would fly us over the Atlantic Ocean.  The less you actually think about that, the better.

We were stuck in the middle rows again for the long flight.  We were more exhausted this time and we both caught a few naps along the way.  I woke up once and noticed we were flying over Beth's house.  I waved.  

Then we were somehow more exhausted when we landed in Chicago.  I was disappointed that O'Hare didn't have any Cubs merch available where we were.  Blue wanted something from Chicago and I've been a Cubs fan since I was a kid.  The only merch I found was a feminine sweatshirt and a mug with the skyline on it.  Boo.

I loved my trip and wasn't thrilled about not being in Europe any longer.  I was even less thrilled that the closest thing we could get in the airport for dinner was freakin' McDonald's.  I will admit that the bacon quarterpounder was pretty good, but I was still bitter.  This was a far cry from tiramisu, cannoli, pasta and souvlaki.

I knew we were at the correct gate for Charlotte when I saw a guy with a Lynyrd Skynyrd tshirt.  There was also a dude with an American flag tshirt.  The sky was pretty, though.

Now it was time to be home.  Violet was looking forward to seeing the dogs and sleeping in her bed.  I was too, but I was sad to be leaving the land of limoncello and gelato.  We were a mere 1.5 hours away from Charlotted and then another 1.5 hours away from the dogs.  

I figured we were flying over my running friend Holly's house or at least her running route.  I waved just in case she was out.  This was the last thing I remember seeing out the window before I fell asleep.  

When we started this epic trip, I had no idea how Violet would respond to it.  She had never flown or been out of the country.  I figured it would be fine but I did worry that she would hate doing all the art things and being around all the people.  Turns out, she loved it all.  Our trip-mates did a great job of making her feel welcome and part of the family.  They helped to make her birthday very special.  

She communicates her impatience to me normally by saying, "I'm bored".  I give some sort of dad response about being creative, but it's really just a way of letting me know she's over whatever it is we're doing (or not doing).  During the 15 days we were traveling, she only uttered those words to me 4 times and 3 of the times, I was also very bored.  She travels as well as I do, so I have no complaints.  I very much enjoyed the trip and I enjoyed it even more because I got to share it with her.  The next Biennale is in 2026 and that gives us 1.5 years to talk Blue into going with us and raising a bunch of money.

 

trip day 14

 Trip Day 14:  last day in Venice.

On our last day in Venice, Violet checked off her 4th European city on her running list.  We had a good run, even if we went in a bit of a circle because I steered the wrong direction.  My bad.

Remember I mentioned that the place we stayed felt a little haunted.  There was a weird statue of a lady in the stairwell that could have been from a Scooby Doo episode.  She was definitely a ghost.  The street sign on our building read "Calle De La Morte" and I didn't need a degree in Italian to translate that.  Since we got to sleep in a bit on this last day and Kennedy and Alayna took their time getting to our building, I had time to look some things up...

I thought it was funny that the photo used on the website was the same photo I just had Violet take of me.  So yeah, lots of people were executed behind our building.  Not unsettling at all.

It was time for coffee at what had become our regular spot.  The barrista already knew my daily order and I was thrilled to have a sticky note put up on their cooler.  

It was Sunday morning and after my coffee, I noticed that the door on Vivaldi's church was open.  I didn't want to be disrespectful, so I peeked in and saw it was empty.  Again, open doors, right?  And even if there were humans who didn't want me to come in, everyone is welcome in God's house, right?  

I'm so glad I went in.  It was amazingly beautiful.

I left some money in an offering box just to make sure I wasn't crossing anyone, but come on, why do I have to go to a boring church?  Where are the skulls and crossbones in American churches?  Get it together Christians!

I am a dog person.  I do not like a cat.  You likely know this.  I was relieved to discover this true sign of the cat cult.  If there was ever any doubt about all cats being evil, this should put that to rest.

Remember that we, as a group, refused to plan anything.  Our "plans" for the day included going to the island of Murano to see all the glass.  Murano is the glass blowing island and it's filled with factories and furnaces.  So much so, that the tiny corner of sand and pebbles near the lighthouse, the "beach", is covered in tiny pieces of multicolored glass.  Without a plan, we hopped a boat and arrived in Murano in just a few minutes.

I was here two years ago and I was disappointed to see that they had expanded the vaporetto station and covered the tiny corner of "beach" near the lighthouse.  Now there was no beach for picking up sea glass.  We decided to look among the big rocks at the base of the lighthouse and we did still find some glass.  It was a lot tougher than before, but we still found enough to make people happy.  

We walked through a good number of shops and noticed yet another restaurant selling french fry pizzas.  These baffled us.  This is not an American thing and I really don't think it's an Italian thing.  I had the feeling someone just said, "hey, Americans love french fries, let's just throw some on a pizza".  I needed to know if it was good.  It was not good.  You don't need to try it.

Then we were off to do more shopping.  We had reached the part of the trip where we only had to pack one more time and we didn't have to worry about not checking bags on the trip home.  We also had some Euros we needed to burn before going back home.  All four of us made sure we had souvenirs for all our people at home.  

The glass is so pretty.  I want one of these crazy glass chandeliers.  None would fit in my suitcase.  We decided we wanted to see a glass blowing demonstration so I asked a guy who was good to see.  He told me to go to the end of the street and see Gino.

We went to the end of the street and low and behold, we saw Gino.

We knew it was Gino because his giant photos were up in the shop.  We paid to see a demonstration and sort of listened in while the group ahead of us got a professional demonstration buy a dude who was not Gino.

But when it was our turn, Gino followed us into the furnace room.  He narrated the whole thing and even participated.  It was cool to see the "master" work.  Also, going back to the whole Americans ruin everything idea, there were no safety glasses or gloves.  Dude was wearing shorts.  There was zero protection for the audience.  The guy in the blue shirt even intentionally exploded a giant glass ball just a couple of feet from my head.  It was great.

This guy made a glass horse in about 2 minutes.  It was crazy.

I was well-practiced in asking for selfies.  I caught Gino and asked nicely.  He was happy to step in.  

We were pretty much done except for a couple more photos.  Then the ladies bought some mystery bags on the way to the boat.

When we arrived back in Venice, we decided to try to find the world's most famous book store.  It felt like that anyway.  There were tons of people there.  It was packed inside with books and bodies and there were lines waiting to take photos in Insta-famous places.

We waited in a long line to take a photo and then realized it was just a photo of you sitting in a gondola.  We did that already in a real gondola.  We decided to just step in front of the door and get our photos there.  We can tell you some funny stories about the people in front of us taking a very long time to do a lot of strange poses while a bunch of impatient people watched.

Meanwhile, Alayna, who loves rubber ducks, found a rubber duck store and we headed there next.  And then...

We turned a corner and saw a Swatch store!  I LOVE Swatches.  I have a collection.  I think I mentioned that Violet and I both got Swatches from the Biennale gift shop.  Still we had to go in and look at the bigger selection.  It paid off when Alayna found a Queen Elizabeth Swatch.  She loved it and found out it had been discontinued after the Queen died AND this was the last one in Venice.  She bought it fast.  

We walked in search of a place to sit down for a while.  We passed the bigger church on the water that claims to be "Vivaldi's church", even though we knew the little church around the corner was his actual first church.  This one was having a Vivaldi concert of the Four Seasons during our trip and we tried to get tickets but couldn't.  Well, the door was open, so what do you think I did?  The rehearsal sounded pretty good.  Then I left before I was ushered out.  We sat in a park near our apartments before dinner and people watched.

The people watching was good.

The Tomato Gang all bought new watches on the trip.  OK, I wasn't actually wearing mine, but still.  And, by the end of our trip, Kennedy had purchased her own Swatch online.

The last night in town featured a big group dinner at a restaurant just outside our apartments.  Our table had to get calmaris (yes, it's plural on every single sign and menu).

It was fun to have the whole group together.

And Violet got her fan.  I brought her a fan from Venice last time and now she has her own from this trip.

An incredible day.

trip day 13

 Trip Day 13:  A really beautiful day in Venice

The alarm woke me at 5:30 am.  Our apartment was pretty open and I didn't want to bother people so I turned it off immediately.  Pat and AJ were our roomies.  I stayed with Pat on the trip 2 years ago and he's wonderful.  AJ proved to be just as cool.  Great roomies.  Pat knows I get up early to run and he's usually awake.  He's usually ready for the day when I get back.  Our plans took us to the Accademia today so I ran in that direction this time.  

After a shower and a coffee, we met the group at 7:30 to walk to the vaporetto stop.  We got off at the Accademia and moved through that museum.

The older stuff was spiced up with some Picasso...

and we were promised Matisse, but I only found this one.  It was a good one, though.

I also learned a lot about De Kooning.  We only studied his abstract expressionist paintings in school.  I learned he made some more personally interesting work and also created bronze sculptures.

After we finished with the Accaemia, we had some time to kill so we took our little group on a gondola ride.

Violet was no fan of boats but she seemed to enjoy this one.

Our gondolier was cool and he got a good photo for us.

 

We then explored the maze of streets around the area.

It was still pretty early in the day and we had to wait for some commercial galleries to open at 10 am before we could go in.  I had to check out the butts.

Especially when I realized they were made up of tiny little butts (and fronts).

We got an early start on the Peggy and this is always one of my favorites.  I love the modern and contemporary work in the collection.  

We caught the tail end of a talk being given by one of the interns.  We gave her an Italian "you are beautiful" note.  It's funny to see the reactions to these little pieces of paper.  Some people smile and show appreciation.  Some act like they don't want it and look at you like you're a leper.  She was appreciative and kind.

Kristina and Magritte.  We started to notice that Kristina, Georgia and Georgia's mom moved through the galleries about the same speed as us.

I will be forever 12 years old about things like this.  It made me feel better that everyone in our group got such a kick out of this too.

One of my all time favorite artists is Calder.  It was cool to see Violet with him.

Then we had a crazy idea.  After finishing what would normally be a day's worth of art viewing, we decided we still had time to do the Biennale Arsenale.  If we did that today, we would have tomorrow as a totally free day.  I was down for the challenge.  Our first stop was this cool exhibit just outside of the Arsenale.

I tried to keep my phone in my pocket as much as possible.

Another of my top two Biennale highlights was meeting Danielle Freakley and being challenged by her performative exhibit.  She gave everyone these ribbons to wear.  The ribbon would identify you as a person willing to participate in her "Please Say" activity.  I don't want to mess up the explanation so please visit www.freakley.net/ps to get the actual info.  As she put a clip on the ribbon and gave it to viewers, she explained that it was a way to initiate playful conversation by essentially asking someone to say something.  This could be as light or serious as you chose.  After getting the ribbon and letting the idea sink in a little, I needed to go back and try something.

I waited for a lull in the line and went back through.  I held up my ribbon and said, "Please say, take a selfie with me."  She looked at me for a second, smiled and said, "take a selfie with me!".  Then she stepped down off her stool and smiled.  It was really cool to not only get an opportunity to interact with strangers, but also to interact with the artist.

It felt similar to my goofball idea of handing people silly little drawings with "you are beautiful" on them.  I was out of sticky notes by this point but I did tell her I loved the idea and thought it was beautiful.  When I did, she smiled really big and told me she had a gift for me.  She reached over and handed me a small bag with her signature charm on a chain. 

That night, I made her a personalized note, though I couldn't get back into the Biennale to give it to her.  I was able to let her see it through Instagram.  I hope it made her smile.

We finished the Arsenale and saw some other very cool things.

And we honestly felt a little free now that we had done all of the art things.  We had a few hours left in our day and a whole free day the next day.  We walked around and explored with no agenda before finding an out of the way place to have a slow dinner.

One of the things I love/hate about European dinners is the slow pace.  The waiters are in no hurry.  They don't work for tips and they don't care how long you stay.  I'm all about getting things done so sometimes it kills me to sit there so long.  Still, I try to enjoy it and relax.  This afternoon it was nice to take it slow.  While we were there, basically eating in the street, I watched the people next door who were hosting one of those wine and paint situations.  This young lady had a noticeable style and she was one of the leaders.  I watched her paint on a canvas and drink wine and offer help and words to others.  I really wanted to go over and participate in some way, but I also didn't want to pay and it was clearly a business.  I found a compromise.  I tore my brown paper napkin and got my pen out.  I drew a skull with bangs and pig tails with cats for eyes.  I added "You are Beautiful" in Italian.  It was a pretty cool sketch.  Of course, I didn't think to take a photo of it.  I got my courage up and walked over to her and handed it to her.  She was shocked and clearly taken aback.  I told her I had been sitting and watching them work and I wanted to give her the portrait.  She was so appreciative.  She told me that she loved it and she could tell it was her.  She loved the cats for eyes and she told me that her cat had died recently and that this would be a happy way to remember.  It's so cool how the Universe lines these things up.  

This was about the time we decided to make stretch our meal out a little longer.  We had drinks and some snacks at this place but then decided to move to a new location in search of good desserts.  When we moved, we saw a cool lady walking behind us and she had a ribbon!  We quickly discussed what we should do and we ended up turning around and sort of pouncing on her.  Poor lady.  We scared her a bit but when she saw our ribbons, she laughed and relaxed.  I said, "Please say take a selfie with me" and she obliged while laughing.

All during our second dinner, we did this.  They would spot people walking out from the Arsenale with ribbons and I would jump up and run towards them holding my ribbon.  It was funny how we didn't even need to share a language to interact in this way.  I got selfies with tons of strangers.  Then we finished our desserts and headed back to the apartments knowing we could sleep a little later.  

This day was absolutely filled to the brim with great things.  Not only did we do several days worth of activities, we also got to interact in beautiful ways with beautiful people.