another year

Snuggled up between Christmas Day and New Years Day is the weirdest time of year.  I'm lucky to have a job that doesn't force me back to work on Dec. 26 so these days are at my disposal (mostly).  I get up without an alarm, don't worry about what day of the week it is and spend my days drawing, sculpting or doing fun things with the family.  People joke that no one knows what day it is and that we throw routine out the window during this time but I usually have a good idea of what day it is and while my routine is slower paced, I still go through a list of tasks each day.  There's also that nagging darkness and often a cold snap that forces us to turn even more inward than usual.  I love Christmas and am pretty neutral about New Years so it's usually a good time of year for me.  Still, there's the desire to look back on the year and to plan for the new one that always gets me a bit nostalgic.  

Age and busyness has given me a pretty short memory.  I can tell you what the lady's eyebrows looked like at the drive through window in June but I have a hard time remembering what I did last week.  Realizing this weakness in memory, I know it is a good idea for me to look back over the year to have that memory refreshed, especially about the good things.  It's easy to remember those bad things, right?  I'm not going to forget my Aunt LJ's last weeks but I should be careful to not let that bad thing flavor my memory of the entire year.  

Lucky for me we all carry a camera with us every moment of every day.  Memories being rustled up is as easy as opening the photos app on my computer.  I did a little scrolling through that yesterday and I've recovered some memories I'd like to place here for future reference.  You're welcome to read through them as well.  For the sake of organization, I've broken the year down into a few categories.  

Family:

We started the year off right with an impromptu trip to Atlanta.  G had to work but the kids and I were off and we wanted to see the KAWS Prints Exhibit at the High Museum so we took off on the morning of the second day of the year and had a fun little trip.

We got a decent snow and we piled on our mismatched Southern winter layers and stayed outside until we were numb.

We took a couple of vacations to the coast and just like everyone else, we stopped by Buc-ees on the way.  What a strange place.

We got to see mom at least a couple of times each month which I realize is a luxury not everyone has.  My mom is awesome.

And when the kids and I got out of school and G had some days off too, we all got to spend more time in the same room watching our list of must-see Christmas movies.

Friends:

It was a rocky year for my friend Colleen but I am grateful that she was living right on the edge of campus this year.  She couldn't get out much but she did make a couple of visits and we all got to see the famous pooch Poppy a lot.  

Violet and I got to see Willie Nelson in one of only 2 concerts I went to this year.  We had the wonderful surprise of finding jon, Lori and jon's mom as we walked in.  jon was a constant friend this year and added so much to my life.  We'll probably talk about him again soon.

When I get overwhelmed with work, I forget to plan them but I really enjoyed my "Coffee With McAbee" episodes this year.  I got to talk with so many great humans this year but I've chosen to share the image from my visit with Cessquatch (Brandy).  Everything about this one was story-worthy and it was so great to pick up with the last laugh we had and keep it going for a couple of hours.  She's a good one.

She's actually one of many good ones I'm grateful to know well.  Anne, Katertot, Sean and Whisk (not pictured here) are all part of that great group of students I had during my first four years at Lander.  In a way we grew up together.  I got to travel with Anne, Katertot and Sean so you'll see them again but I've opted to put this one under "friends" instead of "travel" because with the adoption of Katherine on our trip, we had a core travel group who spent as much time laughing as we did adventuring.  These friends made the trip so much fun.

And no talk about friends would be complete without mentioning Jana and Dan.  They are so filled with kindness and love and I'm so happy to call them friends.  Dan helped me install a sculpture in the spring just as a favor.  He invited me to be a part of his music festival.  Jana has tied a jet engine onto my art career and has recommended me to just about everyone she knows.  They are amazing friends.  And they have amazing kids...the super-sweet and creative Forest who let me draw on her walls and the hardcore parkour Oscar who is certainly made of of 50% rubber and 50% fearlessness.

Art:

It was a great art year for me.  This sculpture got accepted into an international juried exhibit of public art and then won an Honorable Mention Award.  It's still in the Riverfront Park in North Charleston if you want to go say hello.

I got to do another solo exhibit of "Even When It's Dark" at Francis Marion University this summer.  It was so much fun to do and it got to be up for 3 months.  I was invited back in the fall to do an artist talk and a little workshop too.  Very fun.

The Edisto Blackwater Boogie was the music festival that Dan created and invited me to be a part of this year.  I had no idea how that was going to go and it was very intimidating, but it turned out great.  I made four drawings to raise money for charities and then got a drawing commission from someone who saw me there.  Also very fun.

Before I left for Europe, jon texted me and said he was going to get his van painted this year and he wondered if I would be interested in drawing on it first.  Of course I was interested and after my trip I made that van into a mobile art unit at the BBQ Festival.  It was so much fun.  jon was also kind enough to come in the fall and do some photos for us and he drove the van!

Students:

My students are a constant source of entertainment.  There were funny moments like this one with Kyle and Maggie in the studio.

And moments like this when we did a photoshoot on the steps of the State House (featuring Kennedy and Hannah) on a field trip.

There were also several moments like this when my people show exactly what they really are.  We had several Ninjas of Kindness events on campus this year and this group turned out so many times to help spread joy to strangers.  

We brought back Slogging this semester and while the turnout was rather light, we did have some fun times being active outside.  We got a few good miles in this semester.

I have to mention Victor.  I got to help Victor a lot with his dinosaur sculptures, especially last minute when the big one decided to almost die.  Victor never let things get boring and we miss him for that.

And these three.  The Fun Girls.  I got to hang out with these three for all four of their college years and they were almost always doing something fun.  They found a way to have a good time wherever they were.  They graduated with Victor and I miss them too.

Travel:

I got to go to Barcelona and Venice this summer with school.  I had zero responsibilities and that made the trip so enjoyable for me.  There was a beach!

There was so much art.  The Sagrada Familia by Gaudí was a transformative experience.  

There was much fun to be had.  We ate all the foods and drank all the drinks.  We followed a stranger into a basement and lived to tell the story.  I think I did a Tik Tok dance with Jessica.  Good times.

Venice was magical.

Sean was a great roommate and the whole crew was a great travel crew.  We had such a great time.

Running:

Don't roll your eyes, running is a huge part of my life.  I ran every day this past year and have been lucky to continue my runstreak to about 4 1/2 years now.  One of the notable runs was in subfreezing temps during the snow.

I ran the Greenville Half Marathon and finished in 1:43 and I'm very proud of that time.  See all those guys behind me?  I beat them.  

I love running on vacation.  It's a great way to explore and see things that are off the beaten path.  I got to run in Barcelona and Venice and I loved every mile.  Turns out sometimes there are very high crackheads off the beaten path and they're way faster than you'd expect.

I love running with my kids.  Blue opted to switch to the Field events this year and he's been throwing heavy things instead of running so now Violet has to suffer alone.  This year she really made a huge jump in her running and started to enjoy it.  I know, right?  It was amazing.  We did runs just for fun and even ran some longer distances just because she asked.

And just a couple of weeks ago, without even training, she ran her fastest 5K ever and won her age group.  I ran my fastest 5K in a long time but didn't get a trophy because there were 4 really fast old dudes.  Ugh.  But Violet getting first place was more than enough to make me happy.

Of course there were other things that happened that were wonderful and great, they just didn't fit neatly into a category.  I met really cool people, saw really great art, had moving conversations, gave a eulogy, caught myself on fire a few times, played some music, made some art I'm really proud of, the family stayed healthy, and I laughed a lot.  It was a very good year for me.

I hope it was a good one for you too.  Take some time and remember.

the funk, and not the good kind

It feels like a good time of year to be really vulnerable and honest.  Maybe it's the short, dark days, the desire for annual reflection, or maybe it's the ridiculous cloud cover we've had in our normally sunny spot, but my mind has been drifting towards the funk lately.  Specifically the art funk.

I've learned a little about perception this year.  I have some wonderful friends who treat me like a mini-celebrity and I've noticed that the friends they introduce to me also treat me that way.  In an unrelated weird moment this year, a grown adult person stood in front of me and said that they were having a "fan-girl" moment about meeting me in real life.  What the actual heck?  

Over my years of teaching I've almost gotten used to students who say they were scared to take my class or that they were intimidated by me.  I remember being intimidated by my professors before I knew them but honestly I still chalk most of my students' misguided fears up to the fear of power tools and welding rather than of me.  Still, when I was interviewed for a student-run magazine this semester, the very first question was about me being intimidating and it was asked by a student who had taken my class at least twice.  Again, what the heck?  

Outside perception is often (always) erroneous.  We say this like we know it to be true and then we flick through Instagram and marvel at how wonderful some stranger's life seems.  I suppose this could happen with me if you looked at my Instagram and really, that's mostly how we "know" people these days, right?  It's definitely a highlight reel of my life.  I looked.  There are lots of drawings and sculptures that I'm proud of.  There are images of fun and cool things I got to do.  There are images of my family.  My dogs.  Lots of running stuff.  

Do you know what you don't see on my Instagram?  You don't see the pep talks I have to give to myself before walking into a social event.  You don't see the immature fit of rage when it's the last straw of the day.  You don't see the lack of confidence I can have in myself.  You don't see the sinking feeling of hearing a student is talking trash about you.  You don't see the moments of extreme frustration when you wonder if anything you do is worthwhile.  Even though you don't see them, they're all there.

Recently I had a couple of days I can't really explain.  I woke up, ran, had coffee and watched as a terrible mood settled over me.  I felt zero confidence.  I think I was up to about 9 art rejections in a row at that time.  I thought about my calendar and realized I currently have no exhibits scheduled.  Who knows if I'll even be able to draw or sculpt anything good ever again?  The semester was ending in a chaotic roar of critiques and trying to help students and I tried to check my course evaluations only to find that so few of my students actually did them that there were no results to view.  I taught 11 or 12 courses this semester.  Not one of them had an evaluation for me to view.  Over the last couple of months I watched my always awesome, always healthy favorite aunt wither away and die.  On this particular day I forgot for a millisecond that she was dead and thought that I would see her at the Christmas party.

There was no Instagram post to document this.  I sometimes forget that I spend a lot of time in my head.  The continuous narrative in there isn't audible to other humans.  What I feel and what I really think - other people don't get that unless I tell them.  They just see the running photo and think "That crazy McAbee is out running in the cold again".  They don't see the funk that's just as fast as me.

The gap between perception and reality is Grand Canyon-ish in size.  That's something we could all stand to remind ourselves of on a regular basis.  

Speaking of reminders, I did get out from under the funk.  The cool art writer Austin Kleon recommends that artists keep a computer folder of successes and good things so that when they have a funky day, they can open that folder and be reminded that they are not crap.  I pass this advice along to my students each year because it's more than just a good way to get out from under the art funk.  The way we talk to ourselves is important and if you ever find yourself saying negative things to yourself, I suggest you stop that nonsense immediately.  C.S. Lewis wrote that we need to "constantly be reminded of what we believe".  That's what self talk is.  We are constantly reminding ourselves who we are and what we believe is true.  Good or bad.

If I'm looking at 9 fresh rejections and wondering if I'm irrelevant, I'm defeated before I even start.  But I can go to a file on a computer and see that I made a lot of stuff this year.  I was in a lot of shows.  I helped a lot of people.  I made people smile.  Then I can remember that what I do is important.  I am reminded that this is the truth.  This is who I am.

And today I got off my butt and finished a new sculpture.  Maybe those 9 people didn't like my art but I can keep making more and increase my chances statistically, right?  (I'm seriously asking, I got a mercy D in Statistics.)

Y'all be good to yourselves please.  We're all out here counting on each other.

laura jean

If there’s any sort of internet in Heaven, Laura Jean will be expecting me to write something about her now.  She represented about half of my readers on my blog and she always made comments to me about things she read here.  Hey Laura Jean!

Laura Jean was my aunt but I’ve never been happy with just that as a descriptor.  Every time I’ve ever had to try to describe Laura Jean to a new person in my life, I’ve always said, “but not like your aunt”.  Laura Jean was my dad’s older sister, born in the 1930s and as a result of the times, she became a leader and protector for her younger sister and three younger brothers.  She lived next door to my family and since she lived alone from the time her mother died in the 1970s, she was more or less a part of our immediate family.  Sunday lunches, holiday gatherings, birthdays…Laura Jean was invited to them all.  In addition to that, I had this job for a while that took me past her house in the afternoons and I got to spend several afternoons each week hanging out with her.  So yes, Laura Jean was my aunt but she was also my neighbor, my third parent, and she was my friend.

When I was little, Laura Jean’s house was just an extension of my house.  There was a very worn trail through the grass between our houses and I’m sure I walked that path at least once a day.  I’m not a person who remembers a lot from being very young, but I do have a vivid memory of drawing on notebook paper on an end table in Laura Jean’s house when I was tiny.  My first drawing memory.  Her open carport was a regular place to play when I was younger and a regular stop on our bike adventures when I was older.  There was always a refrigerator in the utility room or in the carport and she kept it stocked with soft drinks and popsicles so she could offer us treats.  Actually, most of the cousins or friends with me at the moment would enjoy a fresh cut watermelon she would crack open for us on a hot summer day.  I hate watermelon so she’d get me a popsicle.  

She worked second shift at Spartanburg General Hospital (now Spartanburg Regional Medical Center) where she worked in the Emergency Room.  She was the head nurse and though I know she would object to such language, she was the epitome of a badass.  We always heard her friends tell us stories about how some crazy, drunk person came into the ER wanting to fight everyone and she would walk over and grab the crazy person by the arm and drag them out of the hospital like a rag doll.  She was a fierce leader and by all accounts, a wonderful boss.  She made lifelong friends in the ER among nurses and doctors.  

I was embarrassingly older when I realized everyone in the world didn’t call her Laura Jean.  I kept hearing people refer to “Laura” and I didn’t understand why they didn’t use her whole name.  Turns out only her family called her Laura Jean, spoken in one breath with no pause so that it sounds like “Larjean” if you’re from South Carolina.  

She loved dogs and ALWAYS had a dog until the final years of her life.  When I was little it was two big Dobermans that she kept in the fence behind her house.  She would come home from work around 11:30 pm, unlock her door, and send “Lady” inside to inspect the house.  Once it was all clear, she’d feed both dogs and go to bed.  I went with her to pick out a few dogs in my life and I got to watch those dogs get absolutely spoiled with treats.  Laura Jean treated dogs as well as she treated people and she loved to shower them both with treats.  One of those happy dogs had a belly that almost dragged the ground because of those treats.  

Laura Jean loved to shop, especially for groceries and oh my goodness she loved her a coupon.  One of her greatest quirks was that she would get a coupon for something or see something on sale, something that she had zero interest in, but if it was a really good deal, she would buy it.  If she had 40 of them already in her pantry, she would buy 5 more to get 5 free.  The thing was, she never bought this stuff for herself.  She was always thinking of who she could give these great deals to.  She was always thinking of who might need them.  She was always thinking of others.  When I went to college, Laura Jean would send me a large paper grocery bag filled with groceries every single Sunday when I drove back to school.  She would also send things like toasters, plates, bowls, cleaning supplies, and whatever else she thought I could use.  

She did the same for everyone she knew.  She grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash and I’m sure she ate one or two but mostly she grew them to give them away.  She was constantly taking a bag of produce to her friends.  From the many apple trees between our houses, she provided apples to the majority of Spartanburg county.  

Her generosity went far beyond produce.  She was fond of baking banana bread and zucchini bread.  (If zucchini bread sounds gross to you, give it a try.  I liked it long before I started eating green things.)  She would bake several loaves when she had things in season and she’d freeze them.  When people would come to visit or when she would go see an old friend, she always provided a loaf of bread as a gift.  It was very tough to leave her house empty handed.  And Laura Jean was also very generous with money.  She would loan large sums of money to her family and it was common for her to wait a while and then tell them to not worry about ever paying her back.  Other times she would just slip family members a check as a gift during hard times.  She loved to ask me to come “work” for her, which meant cleaning out her gutters or pruning some things with a chainsaw for a couple of hours.  She did this basically just so she could give me money without me fussing about it.  When she decided to give her car to someone several years ago, she just did it and didn’t care what people thought about it.  She knew she couldn’t give everyone a car and she knew people might think it was unfair but she knew she could give a car to this person, so she did.  Laura Jean did what she wanted.  Usually what she wanted was to be the most generous person anyone knew.

About 25 years ago Laura Jean was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was pretty bad and she needed a double mastectomy, lots of chemotherapy, and radiation treatment.  She lost all of her hair and bought a wig.  She got fake breasts that she would wear if she was going out of the house and after a very tough year or so, her hair grew back and she was back to her old tricks again.  She was so tough and it was so impressive how she fought through such a terrible sickness.  The cancer would come back periodically and each time Laura Jean would beat it down.  Each time it came back in a different location and I remember talking with her one day in her living room when she explained that no matter where it was located, it would still be considered breast cancer.  She told me that a patient is never really “cancer free” after having cancer the first time.  She said her cancer doctor told her that she would keep having new bouts with cancer and that eventually it would kill her.  This is how Laura Jean talked.  Very straight-forward and very honest.  More and more as she grew older, if she thought it, she said it.

“It looks like you’ve put on some weight” was one of my favorite ones to hear at family gatherings.  I would bust out laughing and hope the person she was talking to didn’t see me.  If she thought your kid was weird or you were making bad choices, guess what?  She would tell you.  She had no filter and I loved that about her.  I talked to her with the same honesty and she appreciated that.  I told her she had “old people disease”.  She asked what that meant and I told her that it meant that she said everything she thought.  She laughed.  

Laura Jean always looked much younger than she was.  While she was the oldest in the McAbee family, she never looked it.  If you ever saw her going to eat lunch with her friends, you’d think she was far younger than the other ladies in the group.  Then you’d find out they were classmates in nursing school.  Even with cancer, she seemed healthier than most of her friends and as she moved into her 80s, she outlived most of them.  

Her sense of humor was pretty great and that was one of my favorite things about her.  We would sit and laugh most of the time we were together.  While we discussed some major things and some heavy things, we would always find a way to make light of tough situations.  She found humor in her cancer treatments and told me funny stories about going to funerals.  She loved a funeral.  I think she started planning her own funeral about 20 years ago.  She would go to the funeral of a friend and come home with ideas of what she wanted and didn’t want for her funeral.  I hate funerals and I don’t go to them.  She would always tell me that I should go and I would always make fun of her for going to so many.  Each time she traded for a new car over the last decade she would tell me that this might be her last new car.  Each time she got a new photo taken she would tell me she was having obituary photos taken.  She was laughing, but she was serious too.  When her beloved little dog Shugah died a couple of years ago, she told me she wasn’t going to get another dog because she didn’t want to die and leave a dog for someone to have to take in.  When she started having mystery pains in her chest about a year ago she told me that her cancer was back and that she wasn’t going to do any treatments.  She said she was tired.  She said it was just her time.  Again, always direct and honest.  She said whatever she thought.

She would have told you that she was not a tech-savvy person, but for an 86 year old, she navigated the iPhone, iPad, her laptop, Facebook, and Instagram very well.  She might lose an app icon or forget how to unsilence her phone every once in a while, but she was pretty good otherwise.  She checked Facebook and Instagram very regularly and if I didn’t post anything on Instagram for a day, she would text me to check in.  She was perhaps the most dedicated liker of my butt drawings each Monday.  She may have also been the most regular submitter of butt photos which I still think is hilarious.  For an old-fashioned Southern Baptist lady, she seemed to find more than her share of funny butt photos online.  It always made my day when she would send me one.  Even when her health declined rapidly over the last month, she managed to send me two new ones.  

Because of my antics on Instagram during quarantine, she would also make fun of me for dressing up in female roles for my Art Remix photos.  She loved to take a verbal shot at me at a Sunday lunch and it was always pretty funny.  Last Christmas she gave me a mysterious gift to unwrap in front of everyone.  After tearing off the paper I opened a special case that held her two fake breasts that she used to wear after surgery.  There was a note that indicated these may come in handy for me since I dressed as a woman so often.  Do I have these gifts and this note in the special case in a special place in my studio?  You know I do and you know I will treasure them for many years.  

Laura Jean loved her people.  She was the most kind and the most generous.  Lucky was the person who knew her and luckier was the person who was loved by her.  Luckier still was me, her nephew, her neighbor, and her friend.

the boogie man

 

So I have this cool friend Dan.  Dan had the idea of creating a music festival for musicians that would be all about doing good and giving back.  He found a state park in his area that needed more accessibility, musicians who wanted to play the songs they wrote instead of just a bunch of overplayed covers, and he found some local businesses that he wanted to support.  He jumped through the hoops of asking permission, applying for grants, and organizing a team of people and he made this dream a real thing.  This is year three of Dan's festival and this year he wanted to find a way to include some visual art so he invited me to think about how I could participate.  We discussed some ideas and eventually settled on me doing some live drawing on site during the festival weekend.

I put this on my calendar and and shelved it on one of those back shelves in my brain.  You know how you have the idea about how something will work or what something will look like in your head?  Is that just me?  I had an image of the festival layout where the bands were way up there with lights and attention and the vendors were back in the back just kinda hanging out.  I saw myself back there with the vendors, not taking any attention away from the music.  I saw myself cruising in with some vague ideas, drawing some fun stuff while listening to music and then driving home.  The fun thing about these mental pictures is that they're always wrong.

Violet loves Dan and his music...and music in general...and she didn't have a Cross Country meet that weekend.  She volunteered to sacrifice a day of school to be my assistant for the weekend.  So on Friday morning after my run, we hopped in the truck and drove towards the coast.

Since the festival was just a little bit inland of Charleston and I needed to deliver a drawing to Charleston, we did the two birds, one stone thing and drove to Charleston first.  After dropping off the drawing, we parked on King Street and enjoyed the beautiful morning and that gorgeous Charleston light. 

Then we found a cool little Cuban place called Cafecito for lunch.  Dude, this place was great.  Great coffee and great food.  Highly recommend.

After a quick drive along the waterfront in Charleston, we headed to Summerville and got checked in to this beautiful place.  South Porch Artists Residency is a cool, historic home that offers gorgeous accommodations and studio space for artists throughout the year (southporchartists.org).  We dropped our bags and headed out to Givhans Ferry State Park to get set up at the festival.

This is where things got interesting.  After checking in at the guard gate, we drove into the park and Violet opened the map to figure out where we were going.  She's calling out the things we're driving past and she finds my name on the map with a location.  She says, it looks like we're going to be between the main stage and the side stage.  I figured this was a general location she was indicating until she held the map up and showed me.  Fear started rising.

Then I saw this.  My name was printed in the map.

And then I saw this...

So, there on the right is the main stage.  And on the left is the side stage.  Right there in the middle?  That's my spot.  Fear was immediately replaced by anxiety.  What did I just get myself into?  Violet was laughing.  I was repeating, "oh no, oh no, oh no".  The week leading up to the festival was one of critiques and grading and introducing new projects.  I wanted to put together some ideas for what I might draw but I just never got to sit down and do that.  Now I was sitting in my truck while Violet laughed, wishing I was more prepared.  

Soon Violet shifted into cheerleader mode and started hyping me up.  She told me I could do this with no problem and that it would be fine.  This is the stuff I say to my students when I'm not sure they can do this and I know that it may not actually be fine.  (Please don't tell my students that.)

The whole place is buzzing.  We carry our stuff over to the tent and I'm immediately tackle-hugged by Jana, Dan's wife.  Once I recovered from that, everything in the tent looked great.  I tried desperately to NOT think about how all these people were going to be forced to watch me draw and I had no idea what I was going to be drawing.  I tied my new banner up while Violet alternated between giggling at me and encouraging me.

After the banner was up and everything was situated I needed to do that thing that creative people do.  Procrastinate.  This is difficult to explain to non-creatives but if you are a creative person you'll get it.  I had a lot to do and a quick deadline.  It would have been smart to get started on the task at hand right away.  Knowing that, I still would have done literally anything other than getting started on the task at hand.  Violet and I walked around, we looked at vendor tents, we got some food, we ate, we chatted, I panicked a little more and then she started telling me I needed to get to work.  The music started.  I watched a cool duo sing about 20 feet beside us.  I thought about drawing but I didn't draw.  5:00 pm came.  Then 5:15. 

With great hesitancy, I got up, shook my first paint marker, and fearfully put the marker to the surface. Once I made the first mark, I was fine.  The panic left.  Most of the fear subsided and soon I was in my own world.

The sun went behind the trees without much notice from me.  I was in my groove now.  Still, there were many directions I could go with these drawings and I was making decisions on the fly.  This is a terrifying feeling when you're creating and that terror is amplified when there's a few hundred people watching.  I brought some new color markers to try out and I decided to go for it.

Just a little while longer and it was too dark for my old eyes to see what I was doing.  The plan was to finish 2 drawings each day.  Drawing one was not finished at the end of Friday.  Clearly I had a terrible plan.  I mean, starting after 5:00 wasn't very good planning and at that point my plan was very unrealistic.  This is what the first drawing looked like at the end of Friday.  Violet and I had a little clubhouse set up behind the large easels and I joined her back there to rest a little before we drove back to town.  We had been up since 6:00 am going strong and when we arrived at South Porch Artists Residency around 9:00 pm, we were already talking about going to bed.  I had no cell service at the festival and so I flopped on my bed and checked messages, emails and opened Instagram and Violet said she was out.  Our two rooms adjoined and I saw her light go out and heard her put her phone down.  I decided to follow her example and we were both asleep by 10:00 pm.

We're in the thick of Cross Country season so we were up early the next morning to go for our run.  Violet joined me and we took a nice, cool run through Summerville.  I was reminded of all the fun I had there a couple of summers ago doing a week-long installation and then doing a weekend mural painting.  It's a beautiful little town.  Violet had joined me for an overnight trip there during my exhibit and I took her to this amazing coffee shop called Coastal Coffee.  They have a really good breakfast menu but their coffee is as good as my coffee.  Almost no one makes coffee as good as my coffee.  After our run we showered and packed up before stopping by Coastal Coffee for fuel.  

We drove to the festival with a lot more confidence and two very positive attitudes.  One of us also had a bit of a coffee high because he insisted on having a second coffee to go.  It's that good.  This is my mural box.  I love it.  It makes me happy and it really sets the mood for creating.  Once the box was open, I was rolling.

The music had started, alternating between the two stages on either side of us.  By the time I finished the first drawing, it was after noon and the place was really starting to fill up.  There were already more bodies on the lawn and it was only going to get more crowded through the day.  This is what it looked like over my shoulder during the morning.  

Soon it was time to put the first mark on the second panel.  I could feel people watching as I moved to the blank piece of wood and stood before it with my marker.  I felt all their weight as I drew that first line.  But I did it and I felt confident.  I tried not to look at people or even notice when they walked up to watch more closely.  I smiled, I tried to speak if I was spoken to, but most of the day I was in the zone.  The music from the main stage was loud enough to shake my chest but I really didn't notice it.  I couldn't tell you who played until Dan took the stage around 4:00 pm.  

I forget when I took this photo.  Maybe when we stopped to get Violet dinner?  The Fed Up truck was her favorite vendor aside from the Pourly Grounded Coffee dude.  After the good breakfast, I didn't really think to eat the rest of the day.  I picked up a big cup of boiled peanuts but quickly realized I couldn't eat them without getting the brine all over my hands and that wouldn't be good for the drawings.  

Oh this was very cool.  The Edisto Natchez-Kusso tribe is indigenous to the Edisto blackwater area of South Carolina.  This land was their land before the westerners took it.  Dan invited the tribe to perform several dances with drummers during the afternoon.  It was so cool to see the handmade outfits and to watch the various dances.  At the end of their time, they led everyone in a group dance of unity and it was a great moment.

And then it was time to see Dan play.  

This was something Violet and I were looking forward to.  Dan is a really great singer and songwriter and we got to see him sing and play with his kids at a thing a couple of summers ago, but we had never seen him do his own stuff.  He released an EP of original songs the day the festival began but he was too overwhelmed with things to even remember.  I tried to keep drawing because I had to, but I stopped every now and then to just watch.  So good.

Then it was back to work for me.  When they print the number of drawings you're going to make on the official signs, you kinda have to make all four don't you?  I actually just now noticed the number was printed on the signs.  That would have been even more pressure if I had noticed earlier!  The whole idea of me being at the festival was to make drawings that I would donate to be auctioned off for charity.  By early afternoon, festival goers were coming by to write their bids on a clipboard at our table.  We had some shirts, buttons and stickers out for sale and Violet was doing her best to sell the merch.  I felt so much better when I saw people were actually bidding on the art.  I had that secret doubt voice telling me how embarrassing it would be to make these drawings and no one want them.

Drawing number 3 went very fast and with drawing number 4 I really didn't know what I was doing when I started.  It was important to get that first mark down so I did and then I had to just make up a narrative and a composition on the fly.  It was great!  People who were bidding started asking questions and I got one lady to tell me what she thought was happening in the drawing.  I drew steadily as the sun slipped behind the trees again.  The place was packed.  People were everywhere.  I put the finishing touches on the final drawing and I walked around the easels to where Violet was and announced I was probably finished.  

One of Violet's jobs was to title the work. One less thing for me to have to think about.  She did a really good job.  Here's the result of our work:

"When It Rains"

drawing 1

"Pelican's Playground"

drawing 2

"Storm of Magic"

drawing 3

"Love Takes Flight"

drawing 4

The sun was setting and it was getting dark.  My legs were tired and a little sore from standing in awkward positions for the last day and a half.  We were both over-stimulated and as Violet started talking about what we could eat for dinner, I started to realize that I was hungry.  

We walked around a little to speak to a few people and we sat in our clubhouse and just rested.  We kept talking about food and soon we were packing up and heading to the truck.  We hugged Dan and thanked him for making this beautiful thing and we drove back to Summerville with no music playing.

We thought of a place to eat and when we drove by it was packed out.  Then we remembered Poogan's Kitchen a short drive away.  They were preparing to close but we got in and got our food before they closed.  We both got chicken and waffles and it was delicious.  We were full and happy.  We were also tired.  I think we were a little later than 10:00 pm getting to sleep but we were still in bed early.

The next morning Violet stayed in bed while I ran through town alone.  I didn't get to visit the inside of Public Works Art Center, but I did say hello to the exterior.  It was cool out and the sun was rising over the town.  It was a nice little run.

This was a travel day for us but we were in no hurry so we had a nice breakfast at Vicious Biscuit and then stopped by a few stores before heading out of town.  We were hoping for some Crumbl cookies but we found out they were closed on Sunday.  We needed cookies so we quickly made a new plan.

We decided to stop off in Columbia on the way back and hit up Insomnia Cookies instead.  Not as good but still a cookie.  

Ok, I got a little distracted from the story by food and running, but the point is, we did it.  We said yes to a potentially scary opportunity.  We put ourselves out there.  We were terrified of all the things that could happen but we did it anyway.  We did it afraid.  And when we did all that, it worked.  We didn't fall on our faces (even when standing precariously on a folding plastic chair to reach the tops of the drawings) and we didn't fail.  We met some new people, made some new contacts and we helped a really good cause.  We also had a lot of fun.