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.