sharing secrets

Several months ago, I was invited to have a solo exhibit at The Arts Council of York County in Rock Hill, SC.  This was significant to me because of my history with Rock Hill.  I always say yes, so I said yes and began planning the exhibit.  Devann, the Gallery Manager, was really great to work with and she helped get everything approved and organized so that the show could be what I wanted and what would serve the community best.  When the time came to load up artwork and install the show, I was very busy but also very excited.  

The semester of classes had just ended and I had a couple of other art happenings going on.  My mind was in a million places as I drove into Rock Hill on a Sunday morning and as soon as I could see the Winthrop water tower, nostalgia kicked the door open and started flooding my brain with memories.  

I went to Winthrop in the fall of 1990 as an undergrad art student.  I graduated in 1994 and left town.  Then, in early 1999, I drove back into town to meet with one of my mentor professors to talk about grad school.  I enrolled in a class to get back into the groove in the fall and then was formally admitted into the MFA program in January 2000.  I worked full time in Spartanburg and commuted through grad school.  I graduated in spring of 2023 and continued teaching adjunct for the next 7 years.  That spanned a lot of trips into Rock Hill and seeing that water tower when I was close to campus.  

Devann helped me unload the artwork and within a couple of hours, I was drawing on the walls.  One of the first things I drew involved a valentine style heart and I can’t think of hearts without thinking of the late Paul Martyka.  Mr. Martyka was my 2D Design professor in my very first semester and what a wake-up call that was.  He was the most challenging and enigmatic professor and a real art and design legend at Winthrop.  Even today, you say the name “Martyka” and you’ll get a strong response either positively or negatively.  

Mr. Martyka was a great teacher and he wisely told us to never draw hearts.  Also, no stars and no glitter, though I may have just added the glitter part when I became a professor.  I genuinely think he would have decapitated you if you used glitter in his class.  So I drew the heart and immediately thought of him.  I wondered if he would appreciate my use of hearts, stars and glitter in this body of work.  (As a side note, there is glitter in this exhibit and you get bonus points if you can find it.)

I can’t think of Mr. Martyka without thinking about a moment I shared with him on my trip back in 1999 to talk about the possibility of going to grad school.  We met officially and he gave me advice.  Then we adjourned for coffee at a local shop and he suddenly became very human.  In a moment that I still don’t quite comprehend, he lowered his guard enough to share a very personal story with me about his recent loss of a young granddaughter.  It was a heartbreaking story of her untimely death followed by an eerie moment of him discovering a blooming violet in the middle of his yard under a pile of leaves.  The violet was the granddaughter’s favorite flower and he told me he knew this was a message from her indicating that she was at peace and that he could let her go.  

I was stunned by the magnitude of such a powerful story being shared by a man who shared absolutely NO personal information with his students when I was in undergrad.  This was a moment I would recount in my head for years as I learned more and more about loss and love and grief.  It was a story that immediately came to mind when I thought of him while drawing on that wall.  

When I do murals like this in exhibits, I have no preconceived plans about what I will draw.  I take my sketchbook and I allow myself to be inspired by the artwork and the place.  Without hesitation, I began to draw an animated skeleton, a ghost, a heart, and a violet in bloom.  This was my head nod to Mr. Martyka.  I hope he would be proud of me.  

During my freshman year, Tom Stanley was introduced to me as the Gallery Director at Winthrop and he was a frequent guest speaker in our Art Education classes.  His wife, Kathe was one of the great local K-12 art teachers and Tom was a great speaker.  When I came back for grad school, Tom was still doing the gallery job and soon he took over as Department Chair.  He kept hiring me back as an adjunct and was kind enough to promote me to other universities when they were looking for full time professors.  Tom recommended me for the job I have now and I have no doubt, I was considered because of him.  

After I went to Lander full time, Tom continued to support me in various ways.  He was very generous in donating several of his extremely wonderful paintings to Lander in recent years and just last summer, he and Kathe surprised me by coming to a public art event reception to see me.  

My undergrad roommate, Chad and I skipped class one day and took a daytrip to Asheville back when we were in school.  We looked at a bunch of art and in one of the hip galleries, we saw a painting by Tom.  This was the first time I really thought about my professors and mentors being real artists and what that meant.  I was so proud to find Tom’s artwork in the real world.  When we walked the halls of the Art building at night, you’d most likely see Tom working on paintings in the hallway.  His office was small and dominated by a very cool (at the moment) transparent Apple computer and a collection of folk art.  When he painted, he often spilled over into the hallway.  Eventually he started using the hallway as his studio where he would paint themes of architecture and ships.  

When I think of Winthrop, I think of Tom.  He had to be a part of my nostalgia trip to Rock Hill for this exhibit.  This ship/house is my figurative high five to him.

When I went back to school in 1999, my first semester back was Shaun Cassidy’s first semester in town.  He was the new sculpture professor.  He was British, he was funny, he yelled a lot and he was great.  I learned so much about teaching from him.  I was really fortunate to have a great undergrad sculpture professor and a great graduate sculpture professor.  

One of the best things about Shaun was that he was such an active art maker.  He was ALWAYS working.  When he wasn’t making 3D things, he was making hundreds of 2D things.  When I graduated, we agreed to trade artwork.  I gave him one of my favorite sculptures and I got a very cool framed 2D work from him.  He was always experimenting and he had discovered a way of putting many coats of paint on a piece of paper, placing that paper over an object and then sanding away the layers of paint to reveal a ghost of an image of the object.  The one I got was called “Mr. Rabbit”, as it was a sanding/rubbing of a stuffed rabbit toy.  My nod to Shaun is my own version of Mr. Rabbit.

One of the only times I drove back to Rock Hill since I stopped teaching there was for Alf Ward’s celebration service. Alf was also legendary but not just in Winthrop lore.  There’s a full post about him somewhere on this blog if you search his name.  If you don’t want to bother, just know that Alf was also British and that in his lifetime he counted several Rolling Stones, Steve Winwood and Christine McVie as personal friends.  (If you’re young, you should Google those names.)  Alf was Department Chair when I was in undergrad and he continued to teach his mastery of metals to generations of students long after I departed with both degrees.  You know how you can remember specific words spoken by someone for many years after the moment has passed?  One of my high points in life was when Alf complimented my steel sculpture in a faculty exhibit when I was teaching.  The king of metals liked my metal sculpture.  There was no higher praise.  I was elated.  

During one of several talks I got to hear Alf give, he told stories of enduring German air raids as a child.  He told us about the characters Punch and Judy and their symbolic life now among his paintings.  At his celebration service, one of his paintings had been reproduced as the card for the event.  The painting featured Punch and a little lamb wearing a pointed hat.  That image became very important to me.  Not only have I referenced Punch in one of my ink drawings in this exhibit, I also wanted to include the hat wearing lamb in the mural.  That one is for you, Alf.  Thanks for the compliment.  

I mentioned Devann already.  I met Devann for the first time on that Sunday for installation but because we both earned our MFAs from Winthrop, she felt very familiar to me immediately.  I joke that this is “trauma-bonding”.  All of the gallery people were encouraging as I drew on the walls and I can’t begin to tell you how important that is.  I wouldn’t want people to know this, but an artist can feel very insecure doing an installation like this.  I’m drawing with no plan, no pencil lines and absolutely no guarantee that it will look right.  Every mark is public and terrifying.  The encouragement is so helpful and Devann was a constant source of positivity.  She would walk through the gallery and smile or laugh and say something nice.  On one of her passes, she joked that I could draw her and her crazy hair.  I hadn’t noticed any crazy hair, but I instantly began planning to include her.  I let my mind run with some fun ideas for a while and soon I found a perfect spot.  The cool bird with “crazy” hair is my head nod to my new friend Devann.  (She was also fond of the tooth image.)

It was during my third year of undergrad at Winthrop that I took my first Sculpture class.  Up to that point, I was focused on 2D art.  I loved to draw.  I got to have Marge Moody as my Drawing 1 professor and she taught and encouraged me well.  When she included one of my drawings in a student show, I knew I was going to be a drawing person forever.  Then I walked into the Sculpture studio and felt like I was in a cleaner version of my dad’s shop.  I felt at home but I also already knew how to work all of the equipment.  What I did not know is that I was now a sculptor, too.  

Mary Mintich was the Sculpture professor and she was also a bit of a legend.  She was a very small, very quiet lady who wore fun socks with Birkenstock sandals every single day.  She loved to tell stories and she had a very old fashioned way of teaching with words more than with actions.  She could explain things to you in several different ways until it clicked in your head.  As I was a young student just discovering that my professors were basically famous artists, I started to notice their artwork.  Mary’s work was always larger than her.  She combined things like fine metals and resin to combine minimalist geometry with organic imagery.  It was so good.  I would make excuses to go to her office to look around at her work stored in the room.  

Space is always an issue for sculptors and Mary had a sculpture in the hallway just outside her office for many years.  It took me a while to realize it was created by her, but it stood guard in the hallway for the four years I was there and probably many years before and after.  I would love to know where it is today.  The sculpture was a tall pyramid with a mirror finish front.  Near the top was a metallic resin cloud intersecting the pyramid.  It was beautiful and elegant.  I have recently discovered some significance related to this sculpture that will likely result in its own post.  Until then, this sketch of her sculpture is my nod of respect to her.

One of the obstacles to planning an installation like this is finding a free place to stay for several days.  I’ve had hotels put me up in return for some social media publicity.  I’ve had inns and B&Bs put me up as a donation to the exhibition space.  A school was kind enough to put me up in their special alumni housing.  This time, one of the arts supporters in town offered to allow me to use their bonus apartment for the week.  At the end of the first day of installation, I met Gale and Henry and one of their cats.  They let me in their house and offered me food, tea, coffee and anything else I might need.  They stocked the apartment with water, orange juice and cinnamon rolls.  They led me to the apartment and made sure I knew where everything was and gave me a key.  They were so much more hospitable than a hotel.  Gale also had a Winthrop connection.  She worked at the Ida Jane Dacus Library on campus, partially during the time I was there as a student.  

They were so kind and loving to me, they had to have a drawing too.  I have now forgotten the cat’s name twice but he was a cute cat sleeping under the dining room table when I visited and he was very important to Gale and Henry.  He had successfully endured chemotherapy and he paid me absolutely no attention at all.  He fit perfectly with the mural imagery.  Those of you who know me, know I don’t draw cats.  I do, however, make exceptions for special people.  The cat dreaming of a mouse is my thank you to Gale and Henry for their immense kindness.

Kevin was in a stacked Sculpture class with me.  He was in undergrad when I was in a grad class.  I remember his sense of humor and I liked him a lot.  He made a giant Lego piece that I can still picture in my memory.  I’ve kept up with him in the years since he graduated.  He’s now married to a professor at Winthrop and he spent years working at a sculpture supply warehouse.  A while back I ordered some casting materials for my students and when he packed the box, he included an original drawing that I still have in my office.  

We joke with each other on Instagram sometimes and back during quarantine, I started giving him a hard time about some flower imagery related to Georgia O’Keeffe.  We goofed back and forth about it while trying not to go crazy during the pandemic.  As I was drawing and thinking about my connections in Rock Hill, I just had to draw Kevin an iris.  That one under the dinosaur is all yours, Kevin.  *blows kiss*

During our last couple of years of undergrad, our friend Stan moved in with my original roommate, Chad and me.  We upgraded our apartment and also upgraded our ridiculous antics.  We built a life size paper-mâché cow in our kitchen.  We started painting all over Chad’s truck and made it a work of art.  

Stan and I started running at night from our apartment, across the adjacent neighborhood and around Winthrop Lake.  It was a 5 mile trek and we did it 5 nights each week.  Each run was a talk session as we decompressed, made jokes and talked about ridiculous things.  Stan’s great aunt was the source of a lot of funny stories.  She was very, very old and because of her health, she was being cared for by family.  One story featured her eating from a bowl of decorative plastic fruit.  She ate some fake grapes.  

She was such an enigmatic figure for me from Stan’s stories, I decided to create a drawing based on her and it hung in our apartment, then in my first house, and now in my school office.  Aunt Gene’s fake grapes live on in this exhibit and one of the grapes is wearing Stan’s trademark glasses.  

So that’s, what, nine of the images from the exhibit explained?  It’s just a small sampling of the imagery in the show from the murals and also in the drawings and sculptures.  Does everything have a deep meaning like these?  Maybe.  The fun thing for me is that none of the images have a singular meaning.  Everything can be interpreted multiple ways and that’s the joy of it all.  You don’t have to know the scoop to be able to enjoy the narratives.  I do hope you’ll visit the exhibit before it ends on June 7.  I can almost guarantee you’ll leave in a good mood.  

long week, long post

An interesting and helpful piece of information about the exhibiting artist life is that exhibition calendars run 1-2 years ahead.  Shows that are planned today may not actually take place for many, many months in the future.  I work as a full time professor and I work as a full time artist.  My life stays so busy that if I find myself just sitting still, I immediately begin to feel like I’m forgetting something.  

Once scheduled, these art events exist in my head as very abstract objects.  I register the dates and I can visualize what that will mean for me in terms of activity, but these are future activities.  They’re not real.  They are entered into my phone calendar, but more than a month away, they’re really just mysterious shadows of things to come.  

There’s an upcoming solo exhibition that’s been abstractly existing in my phone and my mind for more than a year.  I can see it vaguely sitting over in that corner of the calendar.  More recently and in a less ordinary manner, another solo exhibition opportunity came knocking and I gladly accepted.  I knew the dates were close, but May and June are definitely two different months so I knew that if there was any overlap in the installation and un-installation dates, I could work it out.  That would be a problem for future me.  I’m also fairly prolific and I have made a lot of new work in the last couple of years, so really, even if there was a conflict, I could work it out.  Or, at least, future me could work it out.  I did realize both were near the end of the very busy spring semester.  That would be ok, right?

Oh, but what about that trip?  I think I’m supposed to travel sometime during that time.  And Blue will be graduating around that time.  And you agreed to lead a sand sculpture workshop out of town.  Wasn’t there a family vacation someone told you about?  What about the MFA hooding and the Lander graduation?  There’s definitely a couple of public sculpture installations during that same time.  Surely it will be fine.  Oh, and I'm officiating a wedding, right?  Future me will work it out.

Future me is pissed.

No, not really.  Future me, which is now, kinda, present me, is very happy to have all of the opportunities he has.  If I'm honest, I'm glad to have reason to be so busy making and showing art and, equally as fun, showing up for my people.  I haven't had an appropriate chance to process all of the recent activity in my sketchbook yet, so, as a means of not forgetting some important things, I'm going to recap some of them here.  

As classes officially ended, I was working during every available moment at home curating artwork for the two overlapping solo exhibits.  I was correct, May and June are two different months, but artwork delivery/installation and pickup/uninstallation for those months overlap quite a bit.  This meant I had to make sure I had enough work for two solo shows.  No big deal.  The tougher deal was figuring out what work I wanted to go where.  It took some time, during which, I realized that I had not attached proper backs and hanging hardware on several of the new works.  I took care of that, got myself organized on the computer and turned in inventory lists.  I packed my mural box, because this first exhibit was going to allow me the freedom to draw all over the gallery walls.  Then, I turned my attention back to school.  

My students were finishing some amazing sculptures, which I hope to share here soon.  We had our final critiques on Thursday and Friday.  I raced home Friday to have a professional photo taken, which is a whole different story for a different time.  Then I drove to Fine Arts night to hear Violet sing.

She did great, of course.  When that was over, we grabbed a late pizza on the drive home and before bed, I loaded the mural box and a few primed wood panels into my truck for the next day's events.

One of those abstract events I had signed up for was a community art event in a city about an hour and a half away from me.  I was invited to do some live drawing.  I found my tent and got set up.

For 3 hours, I interacted with the public and worked to complete this 4' x 4' drawing...

I also worked on a couple of smaller ones but didn't finish those.  Since I had focused most of my time since January making 12 new sculptures, it was nice to remember the feel of the paint marker in my hand and get my steadiness back, even if it was in front of people.  I knew I was going to need that skill again very soon.

I arrived back home around dinner time and I started loading up an entire solo show in my truck while dinner was cooking.  26 drawings and 12 steel sculptures, all heading out the next morning to Rock Hill.  After I ate, I took a shower and sat on my butt for a while to rest.  While my butt was relaxing, my mind was racing.  All of the abstractions were become realities really fast.  I like being at home, or at least having a home base of operations and I have daily habits and rituals that keep me balanced, even in crazy times.  We were entering a time when all of those comforts were going to be up in the air.

The next morning I got up and ran.  Then I drove to Rock Hill to begin day 1 of the installation at The Arts Council of York County.  I haven't been to Rock Hill but a couple of times since I took the full time job at Lander 14 years ago.  Each time I drive there now, I get bombarded by memories of my time there in undergrad and grad school.  Even after grad school, I taught adjunct and commuted another 7 years.  Downtown looks like a totally different place but I didn't have the mental space to think about that.  I parked and unloaded with the help of Devann, the coolest gallery manager on the planet.  I quickly placed the 2D work and hung them.  Then I got a sense of where the sculptures would go.  Then it was time to begin the long work of drawing on the walls.  This process can take a week, depending on how much access I have to the space and the square footage.  I knew I had a busy week ahead so without any hesitation, I got right to work.  That first mark happened so fast, I didn't have time to get nervous about it.  

At the end of Sunday, this is what it looked like.  The giraffe was the first thing I drew.  Devann let me stay until 8:00 pm or so before we headed out to get me moved in to my apartment for the week.  Gale and Henry, a retired couple who are big supporters of the Arts Council, were kind enough to offer me their over the garage apartment in the neighborhood adjacent to Winthrop.  This was the same neighborhood Stan and I used to run through to get to Winthrop Lake back in our 5 mile per day running days.  We used to run through there in the spring and smell the honeysuckle and see the dogwood blooms and dream about living in those houses.  

Monday morning, I was up before the sun, partially because of the anxiety of all the things happening, but also because of the loud birds outside my window.  I would have sworn I heard a hawk and mockingbirds.  When I went out for my run, I did see the hawk and also this nice sunrise over Winthrop Lake.

I was bombarded by memories as I ran around the lake and I couldn't be so close to campus without stopping by to check on my chairs.  I installed these guys in the spring of 2000 which means they turned 24 in April.  

They still look pretty good and even they were not immune to the ridiculous cicada invasion of 2024.  

When I do week-long installs like this, I find a good coffee shop and make it my place.  I had heard about Amelie's for years but never had a chance to go until now.  It was just down the street from the gallery, so I got my first coffee there on the way in.  It was great.

But the food.  Oh my goodness the food.  The breakfast biscuit sandwich was my daily meal but I also made a habit of eating their sweets on the gallery floor almost every day.  I think this photo is actually from Tuesday, but everything I had there was delicious.  No, they're not sponsoring me, it's just really good and I get excited about good coffee and good food, especially sweets.  Anyway, back to the story...

Monday was a whole day.  I spent 11 hours working on those walls.  One thing that doesn't really show up in photos or even when you see the exhibit in person, is the physicality of this type of work.  I used an 8' and a 12' ladder to reach the higher areas and worked on my knees to reach the lower areas.  I was up and down all day and my 52 year old self was really glad I was in shape or I wouldn't have made it 11 hours.  This was WORK.  This is what the space looked like at the end of the day on Monday.

Tuesday started just as early.  My body knows when I have a lot to do and it makes sure I'm up in plenty of time to get started.  That early morning run helps to burn off some of the energy and anxiety before I meet my day.  The lake sunrises did not disappoint.  I'll also say that "lake" is not my word.  It's the official name.  This is clearly a glorified pond, but it's enough to be a warm weather feature for students.  We spent many afternoons here in the spring and probably most of a whole summer before our senior year of undergrad.  You're not supposed to be in the water but we did get to participate in one of those "build your own recycled boat" situations back in the day and we sank our boat about halfway across. 

By 9:00 every morning, I had a couple of coffees and a breakfast and I was at the gallery ready to go.  On Tuesday, I worked until 3:00 pm and then jumped in my truck to drive home.  

The graduate hooding ceremony was at 7:00 and I made it to school in time to get in costume and get on stage.  Katherine has been in at least one of my classes each semester since her 2nd semester of undergrad.  We ran a marathon and a half marathon together.  I made her cry a lot.  It was important for me to be a part of her MFA hooding.  It was also a surprise to her since she knew I was working out of town, so that was nice.  That's the "Girl Gang" minus Brinana in the photo.  We'll see Emily a couple more times.  

Graduation was Wednesday morning in Greenwood.  I got to sleep at home, run at home and have my own coffee before heading out to school.  Kennedy also commuted to graduate.  

Katherine became officially official and Emily was there to support as well.  Emily was our 1st 3D MFA grad.  Katherine was in the program with Emily.

MG was also there to support, so I grabbed a quick selfie with her before putting my holy garments away and hustling to my truck again.

Three hours later I was back in the gallery, eating an eclair and drinking a cappuccino on the floor.  Thanks again Amelie's.

My goal was to get almost all of the mural done by the end of the day on Wednesday.  I was able to stay late again thanks to Melanie, the coolest director, and while I was very tired, I was also happy to basically meet my goal.  With work like this, I could work on it for a month and keep touching things up and adding more things, but at some point you just have to stop and go home.  I had set some work checkpoints in my head for the week and I did my best to stay on task.  I knew that I still had one secret task to complete on Thursday.

I was cleared to stay through Friday if needed, but my plan was to be finished by Thursday afternoon.  With that in mind, I got up early on Thursday and decided to turn my run toward campus instead of the lake.  

As I ran around campus, I was reminded of my solo runs here as a freshman.  These were the first runs I ever did for "fun".  I remember the awkwardness of walking out of the crappy freshman dorm and feeling like people were going to judge me for trying to run.  I wasn't a runner.  I wasn't an athlete.  But I ran.  Just a few times during that freshman year, but it made me feel good enough that I wanted to run more.  34 years later, here I was, running on campus again.

My roommate Chad and I ditched the crappy dorm as soon as possible and we lucked into a cool apartment here.  We spent 3 years here and added Stan as a roommate when we upgraded to a bigger apartment.  We had so much fun here.  RIP Matilda the paper maché cow!

Good old Rutledge, the art building.  It was closed for renovations during my freshman year and I had my studio classes in the basement of Roddey, where I would end up living for the next 3 years.  

Knowing it was probably my last leisurely day in town for a while, I walked around the corner and looked at the Shepard Fairey mural (and the Obey stickers on the electrical box).  Remember that photographer I mentioned earlier?  He took Shepard's photo in Los Angeles a few weeks ago as a part of the same project. 

I did have my Amelie's coffee and breakfast, but after my little walking detour, I decided I had to be fair and try Rock Hill Coffee before I left town.  It was really good.  No sweet treats, though.  

Once I was all hopped up on caffeine, it was time for that secret project.  I'll have to tell you about that one later.  I spent an hour working on adding a few last minute thoughts to the main gallery and then did the side project.  

Devann and I did a little video interview/artist talk in the space after that and then I did a few more small details, took some photos and then it was time to move on.  I packed up my mural box, cleaned up my temporary apartment and headed out.

I had remembered that I left this sculpture in the hallways of McLaurin when I graduated.  I wondered if it was still there.  I decided to hop in a visitor parking space and walk inside to see.  Still there.  My work has changed a good bit since grad school, I guess.  

So I arrived back home on Thursday afternoon to one dog that was happy to see me and another who was angry because I left him for the week.  I slept, I got up and ran, I cut some grass and then it was time to go to Emily's wedding rehearsal.  

Then, on Saturday, it was time to officiate Emily's wedding.  So many things checked off the to-do list this week.  I am grateful that everything went according to plan or even better than planned.  I am grateful for all the people who helped make my ridiculous plans work out.  I'm also grateful that I didn't fall off that 12' ladder.  

It is now Sunday morning and I think I have earned a nap.  I don't really know what I'm doing this week because at this moment, this week's coming events are all still abstractly hanging in the future.  Sometime today I'll look at my phone calendar and figure out how to make all of those things more real.  I'll also probably remember that I haven't yet drawn the butt for tomorrow and hopefully I'll find the time to do that. 

One thing I do know, the opening reception for my exhibit "Chain Reactions of Light" is this Thursday, May 9 at 5:30 pm at 121 East Main Street, Rock Hill, SC.  I would love to see you there.