plaster 202

If it's the week before spring break, it must be time to pour some plaster!  You know the drill by now.  Here's how it went this year....

The Wednesday night class was upstairs all anxious about their cardboard molds while I was out on the Sculpture Deck setting up for plaster.  As soon as I finished, the skies darkened ominously and the wind picked up.  Moments later, it was a full-fledged storm with heavy rain, high wind and a little thunder.  The plastic I put down to catch the plaster held a couple of inches of rain water while MG and Hope danced in the storm.  Just as my freshman friends were trickling downstairs with fear on their faces, the rain stopped.  Perfect timing.

They were as ready as they were going to be.

It only takes a minute for things the McAbee induced chaos to begin.

Despite the fear, the stress soon turned into smiles and laughter.

I love the range of emotions during that first pour.

My  new friend Mackenzie mixing.

Ava had a good sense of humor about it all.

This one wavered between wanting to hurt me and enjoying herself.

Happy/sad.

The after photo.

Cathryn had a plaster pour birthday and it was perfect to celebrate with the plaster Sculpture Cake.

The Thursday morning crew before.

One minute later.

Leaders rose up and all sorts of personality types revealed themselves.

Sadly, we forgot to get an after photo.

The Thursday afternoon crowd before.

One minute later.

Hannah was the one that most wanted to hurt me in this class.

No, I don't even try to keep the plaster in the molds.

The after photo.

The Thursday night class.  They had the benefit of seeing and hearing all about it.

Not that any of that helped.

Payton ate a little plaster.  Pretty sure that's not harmful.

The students from the earlier classes came back to offer really unsound advice to the pourers.  It's funny to see them sabatoge each other like that.

The less evil ones just came back to watch and laugh.

The final after photo.

And now all the freshmen have been officially anointed as Art+Design people.  Next year they'll speak fear into the new crop of freshies as they prepare for their baptism in plaster.  The circle of life is cool.

wanna hear an embarrassing story or two?

I’ve got a couple of embarrassing stories to share with you and I have this deep, uncomfortable suspicion that our story time is going to end up in a weird place that I don’t want to go.  Let’s find out together, shall we?  It’ll be fun.

A short time ago, I was in an art gallery reception-type of event.  I knew the artist being honored and his wife and was happy to go and support them with my presence.  Sure, it meant going to a social event and having to talk to people I don’t know at all or very well, but I was happy to do it.  

The event went very well and there even were some other people there I knew.  People I love, actually.  When they left, I decided to make my exit as well.  I said goodbye to my artist friend and then spoke to his wife by the door.  She was talking to someone else and decided to introduce me.  The guy was older than me and had a drink in his hand.  When we were introduced I noticed he extended his arm in my direction.  I met his gesture with an open hand ready to shake.  Only, my open hand did not meet his open hand.  My open hand met his closed fist that he extended in order to give me a germ-free fist bump.  If you’re imagining my open hand cupping his closed fist gently and very awkwardly, you’ve got it about right.  

What could I do now?  My hand was clasped around his closed fist.  His skin was soft and warm.  I wanted to die.  

I remember gently shaking his fist up and then down before letting go.  Please groan with me in pain now.  It was the most horrible outcome possible.  

Oh, it gets worse.  A week passed and another art event arrived.  This one was at school so it was home turf for me.  Generally I’m free to move around inside the school gallery or just hang out on the outside of the glass doors.  I make my rounds to speak to students and goof around and then slip out into the common area to get some air.  It’s a comfortable space for me and I usually have relatively few social surprises.  

The awkwardness I experience most often on home turf is that parents or other student associates will attend and I’ll need to try to speak to them.  Since I live here, I feel it’s my responsibility to speak to them first and that’s a small circle of hell for me.  Because of the location, I can normally get my nerve up, go speak and then retreat if necessary.  

On this particular night, I had done all of those things and was feeling pretty good.  It was the last event of a long Thursday and my mind had already switched over to thinking about the sculpture I wanted to make in the studio the following morning.  I was still sort of adjacent to a conversation with several students and I decided to start making my way towards the exit.  I even announced this to the students and started slowly moving to the door.  As I did, I saw someone approaching and I heard them say, “I bet you don’t remember us do you?”  I scanned the faces of an older couple and couldn’t place them in my memory.  I was immediately certain I had never met them.  I asked the lady who had approached if she could refresh my memory while my mind raced through old (paper) photo files in my brain.  Paper files in manilla folders stuck in paper dividers in the old metal filing cabinet that is my brain.

The lady was quiet and had a kind face.  The man wore a straw fedora and a smile and I immediately loved him.  Did I know them?  From where?  Why were they here?  Who were they with?  I worked the context clues like an old street informant on Dragnet.  They were near a student I knew well.  Did they know her?  It was looking like I was talking to a grandparent that maybe I had met at a gallery event years prior.  This was not exactly a comfortable situation, but I was on home turf and I wasn’t rattled.  I meet a lot of parents and grandparents.  No big deal.  

The kind lady quietly said that they were the parents of a name I could almost recognize when she spoke it.  Almost.  I repeated it back and saw paper files and folders flying through the air in my head.  Who was this person?  Why did the name sound familiar?  As one of the folders hit the inside of my skull and photos flew out, I caught the glimpse of the face of the name she spoke.  I wasn’t 100% there yet, but I did have a connection.  I felt the pressure to respond that I remembered and I did remember the name and the face.  I know I started speaking as it was all still registering and coming together.  

“Oh, I do remember!  How is he doing?” were the words that came out as I was remembering exactly how I knew this person.  

So, the memory that that was in that brain folder was this:  This guy was a guy I met exactly one time 14 years ago.  I had been teaching part time at the school I graduated from and I accepted the full time job at my new school.  When I arrived on campus at the new school, I was introduced to several students who were hanging around in the week prior to classes beginning.  This one guy, I had been told, was a great art student with a lot of promise.  He was not feeling fulfilled in the old art program and was moving to the same school that I was leaving in search of greener pastures.  We were literally just passing each other as we traded schools.  His girlfriend suggested that he meet with me before leaving.  He made an appointment and we met in my office that day.  We talked about why he was unhappy and I gave him some pros and cons that I could see about both schools.  He shook my hand and left my office.  The next day, he packed his bags and left for the other school.  I never saw him again.  The girlfriend stayed and I taught her for the next couple of semesters.  I think I heard that they parted ways.  That was the entirety of my experience with this person.  

Back to the moment.  I’m standing in front of this adorable couple of gray haired humans and I had regained that memory of the name they spoke.  I’ll be honest and tell you that I was already starting to question how they even knew me.  We had never met.  I had met their son once for about 15 minutes, again, 14 years ago.  Why did they even know who I was?  How could they know me, better yet, recognize me?  

I wasn’t sweating like I would in most awkward social interactions, probably falsely comforted by the home turf.  “Oh, I do remember!  How’s he doing?” were the words I said.  The lady’s face fell into what I can only describe as a sadness that she was all too familiar with.  Her husband spoke up and said with a stillness, “He passed”.  

Yeah.  I wanted to be anywhere else immediately.  What had I done?  How did I get myself into this?  I was literally just trying to leave and now I’m neck deep in emotion.  The lady and the gentleman said several times over the next few moments, “He used to talk about you a lot”.  I was comforted by their grace towards me, even as I could feel their still tender pain.

Luckily, and I do mean luckily, I did not ask the next question that came to my lips.  I wondered what happened.  14 years is a long time and there was a global pandemic a few years back.  It could have been almost anything.  The young man would be in his mid 30s now.  Lots of young people die.  It could have been anything.  They didn’t specify or leave any hints that I could find.  Or, at least, I didn’t notice any hints as my head was spinning out of control.  I had scrambled to recognize these beautiful people, been put on the spot to remember their son and now I was barely treading water as I learned of his death.  All I wanted was to leave.  

The next morning I texted the student/friend who was in the exhibit and asked how she knew the people.  She explained and I asked if she knew how the guy died.  

Suicide.  

If you’ve ever wondered why social interaction is such a big deal to me and people like me, this is your answer.  I dread social situations because it seems like every time I subject myself to them I walk away drenched in sweat after having shaken a stranger’s closed fist and asked a beautiful couple how their dead son is doing.  And then, because my brain is the way it is, I will dwell on these experiences for months.  Agonizing over every single detail.  Why.  Did.  I.  Say.  That.

Here comes the left turn.  

How did that guy I met once for 15 minutes, 14 years ago, talk about me a lot?  What did he possibly have to say?  I have no idea what I said to him specifically.  I say a lot of stuff.  Some might even say that I say a lot of stupid stuff.  It’s sobering to think that something you say once on a random Tuesday might ring in someone’s head for years.  It might be the only story they tell about you to others.  It might be the thing they base their career path on.  It might be the thing that drives them to be kind or terrible to others.  

When I finally stop torturing myself over the terrible social interactions, I’m going to get right on torturing myself over my words.

This is why I’m a hermit.

the sunday scaries

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed people posting on social media about having the “Sunday Scaries”.  Apparently this is when you get a sense of dread, anxiety or fear on the last day of your weekend.  I suppose in some cases, this can ruin ½ of your weekly number of days off.  

Dang.  That sucks.

I’ll confess to thinking about work on Sunday.  I start to think about the week ahead and the specific things I need to do.  I’ll think about projects and specific students that I need to check in on.  By Sunday evening, I’m checking and responding to school emails.  I just did that right before I started typing this.  

I’ll also confess this:  I look forward to Mondays.  I look forward to the week ahead at school.  I love my job.  I love my students and I love teaching.  Tomorrow, I’ll have a couple of hours of office time to catch up on bigger email requests and to work on maintaining the Sculpture Studio before class.  Then I have a class that I love.  After that, I get to listen to a new episode of This American Life on my commute home.  Mondays are pretty sweet.  

I know this isn’t how everyone feels about Mondays or about their jobs.  I understand that it can seem a bit insensitive and arrogant for a person who loves their job to wonder why everyone doesn’t work a job they love, but if you’ll allow me a bit of space here, why don’t we all work jobs we love?  

When we all went into quarantine 4 years ago this month, heck, it may even be close to the very day, we watched the news as a virus stretched across the globe and killed a ton of people.  Some were people we knew.  Many of us lost loved ones and the rest of us worried about them.  Most of us sat at home and got a bit of a reality check.  It’s just a job.  It’s not your life.  Your life is separate from your job.  And many of those jobs went on just fine in our absence or we were able to do from home. 

This was a major time of re-evaluation for me.  I do love my job and I think my students enjoy having me as a teacher.  However, if I could no longer do my job, it wouldn’t take long for someone to be hired in my place.  A couple of years would pass and I’d be all but forgotten.  It’s a job.  I am not my job and neither are you.  

The average American lives 70-ish years.  Most Americans are lucky enough to not have to begin working a career-type full time job until their 20s.  The average American works 40-ish years.  Let’s think about that a minute.  You have 70 years to live.  You’re toddling around or in school (against your will probably) for the first 18 years.  You probably signed on for 4 more after that.  Now you’re 22 and in the prime of your life.  You start your career working at a lower level, working hard, trying to make a good impression so you’ll be noticed.  Maybe you work extra hours.  You do that for 40 or so years.  Now you’re 65 or more and your health is in decline.  If you’re lucky, you’ll live a few years in retirement.  Then you’re dead.  

For those 40 years you’re working, you’re spending 5 days each week at that job during the bulk of the day.  The people you associate with are people you interact with there.  Your job quickly becomes the major part of your life.  Weekends are a blur because you have 2 days to do all the things you didn’t have time to do Monday through Friday.  

How is it that we’ve willingly signed over the majority of our lives to a job?  Especially a job that we don’t love?  This job you have right now, is that how you really want to spend your life?  

I know I’m lucky/blessed to have a job I love.  I understand that some of you are working towards a job you think you’ll love.  Maybe you have to put in a few years at a job you don’t love to make it to the job you do love.  That’s cool.  Maybe you got the job you thought you wanted but it turned out to be a bummer.  Maybe you’re realizing that this job is just using up all the good parts of your life.  It will do that.  

I remember the week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks hearing news anchor break from his report by saying something about the fragility of human life and that this should be a wakeup call to us all.  That if you’re not doing what you love to do, maybe it’s time to rethink your life.  I remember hearing that again in April of 2020, because, honestly, who has a shorter memory than us?  

Maybe it’s time for you to rethink your life again.  This job you have, do you think that’s why you were put on this Earth?  Is that how you really want to be spending 40 years of your life?  

Students talk to me often about types of degrees and possibly changing their majors.  I always have the same question for them:  If you could wake up every day and do whatever you want for the rest of your life, what would that be?  That’s the job you want.  That’s what you should be doing.

You only get to do this once.  

to be like mary

When I thought about today being International Women’s Day, I had a lot of women come to mind.

My mom, of course.  The absolute strongest woman on the planet and I’ll fight you over it.  In her prime, she could outwork the strongest man you could find and I’d put money on her outworking most of them still to this day.  She’s a beast in the best, most respectable way.  

My aunt LJ, who you can read about on this blog somewhere in the past.  Former Head Nurse in the ER who enjoyed physically removing rowdy troublemakers from the waiting room.

My wife, who obviously deserves some sort of medal or sainthood for “enduring” me.

My daughter, who just in the last few weeks, overcame some self-doubt and bounced back to have one of her best track meets ever.  (If you’ve ever run more than a few steps on purpose, you’ll get the importance of this.)

My students, and please forgive my ignorance on how to word this if it offends anyone, who seem to me to be about 90% female in number.  I know that not all prefer the “she/her” pronouns and I also know that some of my more “male” students may prefer “she/her/they” pronouns, but I can personally attest to their strength and endurance in one of the most physically demanding studio areas.  For whatever reason, I tend to have less than 5 guys in my classes each semester.  Women rule the sculpture studio.  These women can weld, grind, chainsaw, hammer, bend steel, carry 50 pound bags of plaster and move very heavy sculptures and they can do it better than most men.  

It was thinking about my students and their general badassery that got me thinking about another strong woman from my past.  Mary Freakin’ Mintich.  

“Freakin’” was not, of course, her middle or maiden name.  In my memories of her, though, it is implied.  He name was actually Mary Ringleberg Mintich and we just happen to be coming up on the 10th anniversary of her death.  

Mary, or Ms. Mintich, was my undergraduate sculpture professor.  Before I reached her class, I would see this older lady walking the halls of McLauren Hall and Rutledge on the campus of Winthrop University.  She was always smiling, never in a hurry, and she was always wearing the coolest socks with her Birks.  To this day, when I think of a college professor, she is the image that comes to mind.  

Her office was on the main floor of McLauren and just outside her door was a large sculpture.  A tall pyramid with a mirrored face and a small, metallic resin cloud near the top.  It occurs to me just as I’m typing this that the cloud image that I have used so regularly in my work all these years was embedded in my brain on those daily walks down that hallway 20+ years ago.  

Inside the office, she had a small fridge and you’d find her having lunch with her friend David Freeman while also doling out advice like the most helpful fortune cookie writer ever.  It was often not the advice you thought you were seeking, but it was always the exact advice you really needed.  

The sculpture studio, though, that’s where she belongs in my memory.  She was a classic art professor, demanding that you sketch and think through every aspect of your project.  She would walk around the class and look at your ideas and from my perspective now as a teacher, I understand that she knew immediately which sketches would be successful sculptures in a few weeks.  She would ask questions you never thought of and she would offer advice that wouldn’t make true sense to you for weeks.  Calling her wise would be a severe understatement.  She was a treasure.  

In 1992, when I had her class for the first time, I noticed that every sculpture I saw her make was larger than she was.  Every sculpture I saw her make also brought the word “beautiful” to mind.  If there was one thing she did better than offering wisdom, it was craftsmanship.  Her work was perfect.  

one of the easiest Mintich sculptures to find on the web

I took every class I could take from her while in undergraduate school.  I even took a class my advisor told me not to take because it was during my student teaching semester and I have zero regrets about that.  Ms. Mintich essentially had to make up a class for me to take that semester and it was a wonderful, one-on-one class that we scheduled around my teaching schedule.  She may have had a soft spot for me since she was also once a K-12 teacher.  She also seemed to like me because I grew up around so many sculpture tools in my dad’s welding shop.  When it came time to teach welding to one of our classes, she decided to keep her socks and Birks on and let me teach everyone instead.

Or maybe I wasn’t special at all.  Maybe that’s the magic of a great teacher like her.  Maybe she had a presence that made all her students feel like they were liked and special.  I wonder how much that feeling had to do with me switching my interest from 2D to 3D.  I wonder if she had any idea how much she changed the course of my life.  That’s power.  

Thanks Ms. Mintich.