1 July 2009
stay, relax
I am either a really great teacher, or the absolute worst. It was only Tuesday of the second week of our workshop – total crunch time – and instead of pushing my students hard to get things done, or even just getting out of the way and letting them work, I’d planned two separate social events for the day. To start with, it was Leah’s birthday (she’s one of our Core students) and we planned an afternoon Field Trip of sorts down to the lake where Betsy lives. I mean, I told them to bring their cameras, of course, but we all knew it was about ice cream and swimming, not Photography.
However, like the other days, the morning started with a buzz of printing. A few students have actually made decent 3-color gums, with one student, Evan, cleverly working in a color wheel. Jim is making progress on his 3-Process Color Print, but there’s still balancing to do, and he may need to use a different yellow paint to get it to work right. Laura has moved from graphic floral gums into 3-color prints and a new panoramic pinhole camera. Leah has quietly made amazing images of the crazy flying machine she built. Zen is painting on faded Cyanotypes; Steve is doing negative-positive prints on black paper; Beth is sewing onto gridded images; Betsy is layering images of patterns and faces; Ayla has one of everything; and Andy’s busying himself with gum prints of Michael Jackson (made while wearing one rubber glove.) Almost everyone has made real leaps in conceptually combining the imagery and techniques, so I should just relax. Of course I know I’ll be hovering over them individually to get them to finish something perfectly awesome in what little time we have left, but they’re pretty damn awesome already.
I made some progress on my own prints, but still need to bind this book of four-leaf-clover silhouettes I’m making for the auction. I wasted a bunch of the day stressing about all these other things to do (the 4th of July parade is Wednesday!) but still went forward with our party plans. Right after lunch I went and bought tons of ice cream and nice beer at the grocery store in Spruce Pine. It’s weird that you can buy beer and wine here now, since it’s been a dry county for all the years I’ve been coming… Even weirder that I didn’t end up spending too much of my own money which I usually do when I throw a party or something here. One night last weekend Jim had taken me aside and handed me $100 for the “Social Fund.” He told me he didn’t want the young students worrying too much over money and what to buy, so we could drink well together. “I only do this for classes I like,” he said.
At Betsy’s we all gathered and stuffed ourselves on ice cream. Most people swam, but none as much as Boo Radley, Leah’s dog, who freaked out every time someone dove in, and ended up doing laps between the dock and the shore until he was exhausted. We lounged, we lolled, we lay in the sun, and by the time we left (to make it to dinner, of course) we were all so relaxed. I carried that with me for the rest of the day, and into the night.
Our class party continued (in its mellow way) with an outdoor screening of Time of the Gypsies under the trees and stars, a half moon rising above the mountain. We tossed ourselves on blankets as the night grew colder, and drank wine and chartreuse and the good beer, too.
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