Mr. Martyka

It was hot and I was nervous.  I was walking into my freshman level 2D Design class at 6:30 pm in mid August, 1990.  I knew exactly no one taking this class with me.  I had no idea how to find the basement of some on campus apartment building where this class was supposed to be located due to construction on the art building.  I had no idea who or what the teacher was going to be.  The thin printed schedule sheet simply said “Martyka”.

I found the stairwell and entered the dark, pipe laden basement and among the desks strewn about the open area I saw one other human.  He was a middle aged man, neat and prepared with lots of supplies.  I assumed this was “Martyka”.  Boy was I wrong.  I spoke and quickly realized this was not the teacher.  He was Bill or Billy for now.  Within a week he became “Billy Goat”, as Mr. Martyka was fond of assigning more appropriate names to some students.  The room filled with other people that were more my age and then he appeared.  It was as if fear and dread were personified.  His face was angular, almost dangerous.  The rest of him was hidden under baggy jeans and a long sleeve plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  His wrists, hands and fingers had the look of machines.  His eyes patrolled the room and he sized us up quickly before opening his mouth and completely terrifying us just as any good professor will do on the first day of class.

That moment we were stricken.  His eyes scanned and penetrated us.  I’m certain he could see through skin, walls, and steel.  During the excruciating 3 hour studio class, you could feel his eyes when they fell on you.  They easily found their way into the deepest, darkest boxes and files in your brain.  They carefully flipped through each of your insecurities and secrets and gathered the intel Mr. Martyka needed to effectively challenge you for the rest of your life.  This razor sharp teaching mechanism was the thing that made you hate him and love him at the same time.  You wanted to be invisible to him and to fly under his radar but at the same moment you wanted so badly to impress him and garner his artistic respect.  It was a terrible and wonderful thing to be his student.

Some students fled from the challenge.  When they did, he let them go.  Pursuing was not his game.  But if you stiffened your spine and engaged with him, Mr. Martyka would meet you where you were and he would dig his spurs into you until you became great. 

Critiques were brutal.  That first semester we had about 15 students in class and on critique night we would pin our compositions to the wall.  After each one had been properly flogged, he would do one last thing before dismissing.  He would carefully assess each work and he would take each one down from the wall and then put them all back up in order from most effective to least effective. It was complete and total agony.  Yet, it was that moment in each critique that I so looked forward to.  I wanted to be first.  I worked my butt off because I hoped to one day be the best.  I hid it well but Mr. Martyka knew.  He always knew.  My compositions were in the bottom half of that lineup for most of the semester.  The second to last project that semester my design was second place.  The last project, mine was first.  I had done it.  I had pleased the master.

I took another class from him during my junior year.  Printmaking took a similar path but this time with a smaller group of students.  This meant he had more time to spend needling each one of us.  As we all tried our best to please him that semester, it was as if we had each started over at ground level.  No sketch was good enough.  All of our ideas needed to be pushed farther.  When he approved an idea to be printed it always felt as if he gave up on us ever getting it right and told us to move on just so we could meet the deadline.  It was a terrible feeling. That semester he taught me the importance of keen visual observation.  He taught me to have impeccable craftsmanship.  And at one memorable point during a critique he actually told me my print was “very good”.  It was a sublime moment.  I had pleased the master again.

At least that’s what I thought at the time.  I thought it was that moment when Mr. Martyka was happy with my progress.  Of course, Mr. Martyka was really happy the moment I started trying.  He was happy I engaged with the process and worked to make all my ideas better.  Whether we ended up first, third or second to last, his goal was to help us improve. 

Mr. Martyka was an exceptional artist.  His work was so meticulous and impeccably crafted that I still can’t quite understand how he did it.  To compare his X-Acto skills with that of a top-notch surgeon would fail to do him justice.  Even calling him a master artist is not an adequate description.  He was a painter, a printer and a sculptor and he was great at everything.  And so very proficient.  To this day I don’t believe the man slept more than two hours in a 24-hour period, ever.  But as great as he was and as proficient as he was, he could have focused all of his attention on being an artist and he could have achieved even greater fame as an artist. 

Twenty-something years later I realize this.  I realize that he chose a life of service over a life of fame.  I realize that to a great extent we, his students, were the reason he chose this.  He chose to pour his life over into the lives of his students.  This he did out of love.

Even so, Mr. Martyka was the walking definition of gruff.  He was tough, he took no BS and I’m pretty sure he never looked both ways before crossing a street.  Cars were afraid of him.  He had carefully crafted walls and defenses around him and lucky was the person who was given even a brief glimpse behind them.  In my final two years of undergrad I caught a couple of quick peeks.    When I was thinking of going to grad school I set up a meeting with him and we had coffee at a local shop.  That night he trusted me with a very moving personal story and I never saw him the same way again.  Inside that Tin Man was not only a heart, but it was a huge, loving and kind heart.  During grad school and in the 8 years I was privileged enough to teach with him at Winthrop I got a few more peeks behind the curtain.  As a teacher I saw how he loved his students through his teaching.  Funny how clear it was from the other side.  His students still sat there paralyzed by fear but now I could see how he lived to pour his knowledge into his students.  I saw that this was how he showed love.

From 1979 until last Wednesday, Mr. Martyka created works of art at Winthrop University.  Each semester for those 37 years he created students who left his classes as better artists.  As wonderful as his paintings, sculptures, prints and cut paper collages were, his students were without a doubt his greatest works of art.  He would blush at my saying so, but I am a proud and thankful work of Paul Martyka. 

Matilda

I get bored easily.  

Really, really easily.  If a few seconds go by and I don't have something that I'm currently doing, my mind takes off on a mission to find an entertaining task.  If ADD/ADHD had been a thing when I was a kid, I'm sure I would have been labeled.  Every once in a while this sort of thing will distract me from a boring task like finishing a sentence, but most often this desire to keep my mind engaged is a good thing.

It seems to me that our society is afraid of boredom.  Give the typical American under 50 years old just a couple of seconds of silence and they'll pull out their phone to cast out the demons of boredom.  Most of us are given to the lie that scrolling through miles of nonsense online is actually doing something.

But what if that silence, that boredom is actually really healthy for us to experience?  We had these wood doors in our house growing up.  They were stained dark brown with even darker brown organic wood grain lines.  I remember staring at the wood grain and letting my eyes and my brain work together to create images, sort of like you do with clouds.  There was an almost Virgin Mary on the back of the bathroom door for most of my childhood.  

When we are afraid of being still, we miss the opportunity to see things.  Some things are only visible after you sit and stare at them for a time.  And now, some 35 years later I still remember some of those wood grain images but I cant tell you 5 things I saw on my phone 30 minutes ago.  

I'm so glad we didn't have hand held electronics when I was young.  I hate that my kids have them now.  We made pretend guns out of sticks and had wars.  We hammered together rotted boards into dangerously high ramps and raced our rickety bikes off the tops only to crash down on the other side in a huge pile of laughter.  I live in fear that my kids' biggest adventures will involve Mario or happen inside a Minecraft world.

I went off to college in 1990.  My only phone was connected to the wall of my dorm with a cord.  I took my new-fangled electronic typewriter with me when I moved in.  Our freshman dorm was a cinder block cell and we shared a bathroom with maybe 20 other dudes on our hall.  When we were tired of watching TV, we walked around campus or sat in the rocking chairs on the porch of one of the historic buildings and talked about goofy things for hours.  

I met that guy when I moved in.  I had no idea who he was, but someone had put us in the same room together because we were both art majors.  Chad Costello.  That's what I knew about him when we moved in...just his name.  I learned more about him over the next 4 years as roommates.  As it turned out, he was cool and when I got bored in that cramped dorm and came up with some hair-brained thing that we should go do, he was always game to go do it.  I like to think those goofy things helped us bond.  That's an actual Polaroid instant photo, by the way, and I think it came from Stan's camera.

And that's Stan.  He was doing an impression of our water frog, Jeremiah.  Stan transferred in as we started our third year.  He was also an art major and in the art ed program with us.  He became part of our core group of friends.  Once we got to know him, we opted to get a bigger apartment (because we left that tiny dorm after our first year) and the three of us roomed together for the last year or so.  But during that third year when we were still in the smaller apartment, Stan would come hang out with us a lot.  If I was the person to cook up goofy ideas of things for us to do and Chad was the person to laugh and say "Yes, let's do that!", Stan was the one to say "Yes, and let's make it even more fun by also doing this!".  

That summer we all had a mandatory Maymester class in the education program.  We found ourselves with no studio classes, very few people on campus, and a lot of extra time to fill.  That was a fun summer.  And it was that mix of friends and time that gave us Matilda.

That's Matilda.  Also a Polaroid instant photo.  This was way before digital so these hard copies are the only documentation we have of her.  Matilda was a life size paper maché cow.

They couldn't keep us out of the art building that summer and one day while walking from the art building that was next door to our apartment building we passed the giant dumpster and noticed a big wooden saw horse hanging out of the top.  That was the moment our friendship dynamic kicked in.  It may have been suggested that we take it and make something cool out of it.  Someone agreed.  Someone else agreed and may have suggested it be a life sized cow.  

The next few days are a bit blurry.  We worked together like a machine.  We dragged that saw horse into our two room apartment.  It fit perfectly in our kitchen/living room, though it took up most of the space.  The door would open, but you'd have to squeeze between the leg of the saw horse and my chair just to get around the room and into the hallway.  On the other side we had just enough room to open the refrigerator door.  Perfect.  That night we brainstormed what it was going to look like and how we were going to get enough materials to complete it.  We made a couple more trips back to the dumpster to get some extra wood for the armature.  We nabbed some paper and glue and we went to work.  A few days later we found some balloons to make utters that would actually work and we painted her white and black.  

She was beautiful.  

And that's when we realized we had a life sized cow in our small apartment.  The old apartment building had a cool courtyard and it was decided that Matilda needed to live there.  We scoped out the site and headed back to the room to move her.  

And that's when we realized she was much bigger than our door.  We briefly considered taking her out the window but it was decided she would not survive such an uncontrolled and possibly violent fall.  We were nothing if not expert problem solvers.  Say what you will about not having the foresight to think about getting a giant cow out of a small door, but we had the entire problem solved in a couple of hours.  A hand saw may or may not have been borrowed from the sculpture studio while we amputated two legs and then surgically reattached them in the hallway.  The skin was repaired and repainted and she was ready for her new home.  She was good as new, though a bit groggy from the anesthesia.

 That's the college aged me (with hair) milking Matilda in the hallway right before we carried her outside.  Afterwards we sat in the rocking chairs on the breezeway while Matilda grazed in the courtyard.  Matilda was a great friend to us that summer.  She taught us about the importance of boredom.  She showed us the power of stillness.  Sometimes when I'm wasting my minutes scrolling through my phone I can still hear her faintly mooing, "Put it down and make something."

Today Chad is a minister in Florence.  In his line of work he knows a thing or two about the power of stillness.  Stan teaches art in Walhalla and runs www.endoftheroadstudios.com with his artist wife, Robin and they make stuff every single day.  I think Matilda would be pleased.  

because i can

When asked why he started running across the country, the fictional Forest Gump answered, "I just started running."  If you didn't use your Forest Gump voice when you read that, go back and try it again.

I enjoy running.  I could sprint fast as a kid and I liked outrunning other kids in races around the yard.  In organized football, running fast was pretty much my only talent.  I wasn't interested in running as a sport in school but in college I ran for fun and exercise sporadically.  Stan and I got a little more serious about it during our last two years of undergrad, running regularly on a 5 mile course trying to get 20 miles in each week. 

After college I would run every now and then when I'd decide I was eating too much bad stuff.  Running made me feel better.  I began to see it as a stress reliever as well as good exercise and I found a really nice course at our old house and started running more regularly there.  

Eventually I got the nerve up to register for a 5K.  This was my first encounter with "real runners".  These people had running clothes.  You know, clothes that were designed and sold for the purpose of running.  They had fancy shoes and matching outfits and because it was a very cold December morning, most of them had those tight running pants.  I was not one of those people.  I had on a pair of exercise shorts, a tshirt and some old shoes.  I liked running but I always maintained that I was not a "runner".  What that meant to me was I didn't have fancy running shoes or clothes.  I did not subscribe to any running magazines.  And I certainly did not eat or drink anything specifically designed to enhance my running.  Running was fun and when you run fairly regularly it's easy to explain why you run.  It's exercise.  It's fun.  I enjoy it.  

A few years ago we moved to the Middle of Nowhere with several acres of land.  Just after we moved in I realized that I could run around the perimeter of our property and have a pretty awesome running track.  3 1/2 years later, I'm still running that track on a daily basis.  Sort of accidentally, I started logging at least 3.1 miles every day.  When it's cold, I run.  When it's hot, I run.  When it's raining, snowing, sleeting, thundering, I run.  When life makes it difficult to make time for my miles, I still run.  When we travel, I run somewhere else but I still run.  I haven't skipped a day of running in 3 1/2 years.  And when you start doing something like that, something that seems odd to everyone else around you, you start having to answer the question of why.  The answers have more or less been the same.  I enjoy running.  It's great exercise.  But even I can admit that there must be more to it than that to run every single day.  

I've logged 5,239 miles on my Nike Plus app for however many years I've used that.  This year alone I ran 1,144.5 miles.   I got to run in St. Augustine, Highlands, the Grand Strand and of course, here at home.  I ran in total darkness, raging heat and 18 degrees with snow on the ground.  I saw sharks, dolphins, crabs, deer, rabbits, cats, dogs, hawks, crows and something that may have been a bear on these runs.  I saw shooting stars, amazing sunrises and unexplained flashes in the predawn sky.  When I run I pray and I think and I plan.  And while it's never easy, I really enjoy it all.  

Sometimes I forget why I run.  I mean the real reason.  Sometimes I open the door and the cold air hits me and takes my breath away.  Some days I can hear the rain on the roof before I even go outside.  Some days the humidity is so stifling I can barely breathe.  Some days my legs are sore or my knees hurt.  On days like these I confess to murmuring a little.  I may even complain.  And then I remember why I run and feel terrible for complaining.

I run because I can.  I run because I am physically able to run.  It is true joy to feel the wind against my face as I push forward.  I lift my feet off the ground to move forward and as I glide through the air I feel alive.  I run as a way of giving thanks for the ability to run and for the opportunity to run.  These are gifts and I am truly grateful.  

I have friends who are physically unable to run.  Their ankles, knees or bodies have failed them and they can not run.  I am certain they'd give anything to feel that wind on their face even in driving rain or boiling heat.  A couple of years ago I had the honor of pushing a wheelchair bound student in a race at school.  I saw the smile on her face when we passed people.  I'm a total idiot for complaining about running in a little rain.


Currently I have at least 6 pairs of running shoes.  (It can take a couple of days for a pair to dry out after a rainy day run.)  I still have some basic exercise shorts I wear but I also have a couple that were sold as "running shorts".  I even have some of those tight running pants and long sleeve running shirts just because exposed skin when the wind chill is in the teens is not such a good idea.  I'm still fighting it, but I'm closer to accepting that I'm a "runner" now.  At least now I know why.  

Christmas highlight reel

Here's the scoop on Christmas things that have happened this year:

 Lander hosted a big Christmas shindig this year before the semester ended.  We had a big tree lighting ceremony, an ugly sweater contest, musical entertainment, and free hot chocolate and cookies.  There was a Christmas photo backdrop set up for everyone to use.  I think the bright light washed us out a bit.  

 One of the sweater finalists was Scarlet, an art major who featured the art faculty on the back of her sweater.  

 But it was Singletary and her matching chihuahua that won first place.  

 The art department ruled this university wide event.  We dominated the sweater contest and the gingerbread house making contest as well.  We also consumed a lot of cookies and hot chocolate.

 We normally make a point to take in our local small town Christmas parade.  We found out about it late this year but still tried to make it.  Our schedule that day was going to push us to make it to the square without exceeding the posted speed limits by double digits, so we stopped off in Greenville and ended up eating good food and still being early to their bigger parade.

 One of the singing show people was the grand marshal.  And Santa got his hat knocked off by a low hanging branch right in front of us.  Good times.

 Oddly enough, it was cold the night of the parade.  This winter has been very warm and we've spent most of our days in shorts.  Parade day was cooler so we were lucky enough to have on pants but not all of us had socks since we weren't planning to stand out in the cold all night.  On the way home, hot chocolate and coffee were necessary to raise the body temperatures.  Blue and Violet love to pretend they're drinking coffee.

 The art faculty party was a jon and Lori's house this year.  I was jon's secret Santa and I loaded him up with Miley Cyrus gear.  We have a running disagreement about Taylor Swift and Miley.  I hear he slept in his wrecking ball shirt that night.

 TeamArt is the best.  I love these people.

 Our elf came back with the tree this year.  He love to get into trouble and tease the kids.  He got a taste of his own medicine when Timber dog broke into his gift fortress and dragged him out for play time.

 Elfie discovered selfies this year.

 Some kind of weird light show thing came to Simpsonville this year and we drove up to see it.

 Blue and I got to ride the camel.  This was very cool.  I did not wake up that morning and think there was any chance I'd ride a camel that day.

 At the annual McAbee party poor LJ selected not one...

 but both of the gag gifts I brought for the Bingo/Dirty Santa game.  Sorry LJ!

 There are a lot of McAbees in that panoramic photo.  This was during the hot potato gift unwrap game.

 Christmas Eve was filled with presents and food.

 Christmas day was filled with presents and food.

 Santa was nice enough to bring me a Taylor Swift signature guitar.  It's very cool.

 And after a good  nap we trucked over to the Waffle House for more food.  They had a very merry bunch of employees and excellent waffles.

A couple of days after Christmas we got to meet up with Donovan, Megan, Ginger and Scott.  We laughed, drank coffee and ate giant chocolate chips that Megan apparently carries with her at all times.  You have to respect that.  

more art for the people

This semester has had us busy getting more public sculpture ready to install.  Corey Benjamin, now Mr. Benjamin, graduated from our MAT program and took over the art job at Brewer Middle School just a few minutes from campus.  He worked with his principal to arrange for a public sculpture project to help beautify their school.  Three of my students submitted proposals for work specifically designed for Brewer.

 Jarvis created a big dog bowl with raised bones and letters and a whole bunch of kibbles inside it.  Since his was an indoor piece all we had to do was roll it inside.

 Oscar wasn't so lucky.  His outdoor sculpture near the school library required some digging.

 Oscar's was a dog house with the school initials on the side and a giant book for a roof.

He and Rashaad are really good at posing for photos.

 Rashaad also had to do a little digging.  

 His was a typographic sculpture using the school initials.  It was installed right at the front entrance to the school.  Look how proud he is.

 Kristen (Dread) also got a little digging practice in.

 Her 13 foot tall steel lady was installed at Lander just outside the cafeteria.

Luke also made a cool one near the bridge.  His steel drawing is really difficult to photograph but it features a stump and axe, a sapling and a medium tree to show the cycle of life.  That's his proud face.

 Kayla installed her abstracted dirt dauber nest outside the Learning Center building.  I think that's her proud face too.

 Metal Megan was back again this semester making ambitious steel things.  

For her installation, we got to dig three holes in some very non-dig friendly ground.  She worked hard to get her puzzle piece idea to work with perspective on a large scale.  She did a great job....and that's her proud face too.

 Megan's installation is on the front campus lawn outside the science building.

 And Olivia was back again this semester too.  Well, kinda.  She was in my class but she also took on an ambitious project and wanted to do it in clay, which meant she spent most of the semester in the ceramics room instead of the sculpture room.  I'm not bitter.  

 Not only did she make life sized body parts out of clay, but she also decided to Raku fire them...which gave them an even higher chance of breaking.  And with the help of a little glue, she managed to keep most of her parts together for the installation.

 The body parts, two arms, two lower legs, two upper legs and a bust, are created out of clay and several of them act as planters for flowers and a tree.  This one deals with the impact humans have on nature and vice versa.  That's not Olivia's proud face.  She's almost as goofy as I am.

 Hers is also hard to photograph, but there's a wider shot of the arrangement.

 Daisha also took on an ambitious project.  Her one large origami crane made out of steel turned into two cranes.  And then three.  She did some very precise math and then some very precise work with the plasma torch.  Then she did a lot of grinding and welding.  Then more grinding.  A little more grinding.  Then a bit more grinding and some painting.  Then some digging.  Actually, Daisha did all the digging with her head.  She enlisted her boyfriend to do some digging for her and then poor Jarvis walked by at the wrong time and had to finish up.  

 These three show the stiff, steel crane resting, then loosening up and taking off and finally becoming more organic and flying.

This installation is in the main entrance to campus and will get all kinds of visual attention every single day.  And it was finished just in time for final grades to be turned in so Daisha could graduate last Saturday.   

Public sculpture is very important to me because of the huge impact it has on the general public.  Exposing people to beauty and critical thinking is such a great gift.  But I've also grown to love the impact these types of exhibits have on the artists involved.  There's a sense of duty that takes over when the students realize their work will be seen by everyone on a daily basis.  They work hard to refine their sculptures and then those proud faces come out when the installation is complete.  Even the students who try to be the most cynical and jaded can't help but let their genuine pride show when the work is done.  And on the other side of each of these photos is a teacher who cant hide his proud face either.