When this summer "break" is over, I'm going to need a vacation.
Last Wednesday, I spent some time preparing Phoebe for her trip to be installed for the UPROAR festival of public art in North Carolina. I normally just tie my outdoor sculptures in my trailer, but I wanted to see if I could avoid the trailer and maybe just tie her to the roof rack this time. This would make exploring easier if I didn't have to worry about dragging a trailer everywhere.
It worked! It took a little engineering and problem solving, but I got her up there and secured for the long road trip. Once she was loaded, I got to take another vehicle to Greenville to see Ryan Adams on his Heartbreaker '25 tour. That was very cool and I'd love to tell you about it if you want. No time for that now, let's stay focused.
UPROAR is a cool public art festival that started two years ago in the Carborro/Chapel Hill/Hillsborough area of Orange County, NC. Every two years, they select 60 artists to install public artworks for several weeks and encourage visitors to come to the towns to see the art and vote for each one. Viewers can scan a QR code at the site of each work of art and score them. There are all sorts of smaller awards, but there's a big $10,000 viewers choice award and another big money juror's choice award. They start with a big kickoff party and end with an awards celebration. It's a cool concept and I really enjoyed doing it during the first year.
When I saw they were doing it again, I was happy to enter. I was even happier to be selected again. There are, of course, pros and cons to every exhibit and I don't mind sharing those for this one. The pros are pretty easy. It's a national juried exhibit and it's cool to be chosen. You get to showcase your artwork and it's heavily promoted to the public during the exhibit with tons of PR. There's a monetary stipend that helps offset the costs of transportation and during the first year of it, they also covered 100% of the hotel expenses for out of town artists. The cons are mostly just from being an out of town artist. It's a 4 hour drive for me to get there and in the span of a month, I have to drive there twice to deliver/install and retrieve the artwork. Since I have to attend the events as well, it requires a hotel stay of at least one night and in some cases, two nights. I'm really not even sure this is a con because I enjoyed the change of scenery during the first year and I got to explore several towns that I had not had the chance to visit.
The people are also a pro. Katie Murray is the brain and muscle behind the whole thing. Of course, she's assisted by a great team, and she and they are all wonderful people to be around. The whole thing has a cool, fun vibe and none of it takes itself too seriously. This is my kind of thing. So yeah, I was happy to be able to do it again this year.
So Thursday morning, I slept in after the concert and got packed and loaded up for a trip. There was an official schedule of installations and I was scheduled to install at 8am on Friday morning. When the install helper guy emailed and asked if I would be able to install at 8pm on Thursday, I was happy to agree. He was concerned about the heat advisory and I was more concerned with not having to get up at 5am to run before being at the site at 8am. I made sure to arrive early to check in to my hotel and grab some dinner before going to install.
I expected to get some weird looks on the road. I saw lots of smiles on the interstate but on the way to install Phoebe, I stopped at an intersection right in front of a tire store. One of the workers was standing outside near a car and he looked over at the sculpture on my roof right as I looked at him. I saw his mouth form the words, "What the hell is that?" before the car in front of me moved and I had to leave.
I had some really good BBQ just down the street and was very happy with the sculpture site, located right in front of Weaver Street Market. Here's the before photo.
And here's the after photo. The whole installation took 10 minutes and most of that was leveling the concrete pedestal and carrying the sculpture across the street.
In that 10 minutes I sweated enough to completely drench my tshirt and almost completely drench my shorts. I was thinking about a celebratory dessert or cocktail, but I was too embarrassed to go anywhere looking like I had peed myself, so I went back to the hotel and relaxed after a shower.
The schedule change freed me up to have almost a whole day of exploring and art viewing on Friday. I got up and had a good, hilly run near the hotel and got to-go coffee at La Vida Dulce, this cool place I found during my last visit. Then I drove to Duke University in nearby Durham to go to the Nasher Museum. The museum was under a lot of construction and there were some galleries closed while new exhibits were being installed. I still got to see a lot of cool stuff. I felt like I was in a visually receiving mode and I was noticing all sorts of things that feel important to me right now. I took lots of photos and made notes in my sketchbook.
I found a thrift shop before leaving Durham and driving back to Chapel Hill to go to the Auckland Museum at UNC. They had a lot of their collection out and had a cool Japanese ceramic exhibit as well. I'm a pretty quick museum visitor and I was able to do all this and still be back at my hotel for a shower and an afternoon nap to help me get ready to be social later that night.
The artists were promised food and drink tickets at the kickoff party and I was thrilled to see a lobster roll truck in the parking lot. I LOVE warm lobster rolls. They're expensive and I had to throw a few extra bucks in with the ticket but I was happy to do so. It was so good.
The kickoff party started with a parade of the artists along with a brass band and a whole bunch of cardboard puppets created by students in the summer camps happening in the area. It was a great idea and a lot of fun. I know some of my students who I forced to suffer through participating in a cardboard puppet parade would love to know that I had to walk in my own. There was a big thunderstorm about an hour before the kickoff party and that made the temperatures much cooler for being outside. It was the perfect weather for it.
I know the importance of networking and forcing myself to interact with and talk to people at these events, but I still dread it. I was a one man show here and didn't have any buffer people with me to talk to or joke around with. A couple of other introverts wandered over and we made awkward small talk. Eventually I was found by an extrovert and had an extended conversation there before managing to escape. The skies and radar were threatening more rain so I decided it was time to make my way out gracefully. I spoke to some people on purpose and started toward my car when I saw Kathe and Tom Stanley walking my way. I was so happy to see them! They surprised me at the first one a couple of years ago. A short drive for them after moving to Durham. They're so busy and active and I was thrilled to be added to their schedule for the day. They re-energized me and I stayed and talked to them for a while before continuing with my escape.
My celebration that night included a stop at Freddy's for a greasy burger and fries. Cut me some slack, I ate the lobster roll pretty early in the evening and I ran some extra mileage that morning. I also had a "milkshake" that was pretty much just cold milk by the time I got it back to my hotel.
The next morning was Saturday and I woke up pretty early and couldn't go back to sleep. I got up and ran a little over 5 miles and enjoyed the cooler temperatures. I didn't enjoy the hills quite as much. I showered and packed up to leave and had time to go have a real breakfast and coffee at La Vida Dulce. Then it was time to hit the road, but not toward home. I had a whole second part of this trip still to go before going home. In another 4.5 hours, I'd be in Charleston, SC.
