pandemic

It's Commencement!

Well, that was a strange and hard academic year we just finished, due to the pandemic, but I’m proud of our community for getting through it as best we could and being able to celebrate a range of accomplishments along the way.

Today is the graduation for our class of 2021! We had a wonderful string of senior thesis shows over the past month - the disciplines of graphic design, photography, animation, ceramics, drawing, and painting were all variously on display in the exhibitions of Courtney Klocke, Anna Uehling, Abby Koch, Kazune Oguro, and Carissa Powell. In fact, Kaz and Carissa’s two-person show will stay up through May 17th if you haven’t yet seen it and want to stop in!

Specialization and Societies

When I was a kid, I really liked reading survival fiction. Hatchet, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, My Side of the Mountain… I was down to be a self-sufficient machine. Nowadays, if you are interested, there are people surviving (or as some like to put it, “sur-thriving”) in the wild for weeks to months with very few supplies on various television survival shows like Alone and Naked & Afraid and YouTube channels dedicated to living a fully self-sufficient lifestyle.

As an adult, I have to share that I really like living in a specialized society. (Also, as a vegetarian for ethical reasons, I dislike the emphasis on killing animals that seems to invariably accompany these solo survival experiences.) I grow a lot of plants, but currently am only growing one food-producing plant (my tomato plant), and that was a gift from a neighbor. I know a lot about art, plants, animals, and ecology, and a fair amount about a range of other topics. Nevertheless, I rely on other people for a lot! I buy most of my food from a supermarket, and am fortunate enough to be gifted pretty much else in my diet (aside from my homegrown tomatoes, though I was gifted the plant itself) from gardening friends. My job - college department chair and professor - exists as a product of living in a society. I rent my house, and pay for water, electricity, and trash/recycling removal services. I make use of modern medicine, and have interests and hobbies that depend upon the participation of others for maximum enjoyment. This very blog is a product of the internet, a social network.

We’re living through a pandemic that wouldn’t be a problem if we were all self-sufficient machines that could permanently isolate (as well as one that wouldn’t be a problem if we were all vegetarian…). It sucks. We should do our best to stop COVID-19 spread through wearing masks, pausing on travel and large gatherings, and in general following recommendations from scientific and medical professionals because having a social conscience is important when living with others. But I love the life that I have - which has not only benefited greatly from but is founded on being a specialized member of a society - and while I understand that there are certain negatives that come along with living this way, I nevertheless embrace it as my desired lifestyle. Viva society.

Approaching the End of the Semester

Well, finals begin at the end of next week for Spring 2020 here at Morningside College! It’s been a lot of work converting in-person classes to online - I spent several hours finding public domain imagery of skeletons and nude models for my figure drawing class, as just one example - but we’re making it through!

Here’s our first fully virtual senior show of the season, courtesy of our skilled student Riley Custer:

And here are some more photos from my walks around Sioux City over the past couple weeks, including a surprising and somewhat misguided street donut offering:

Pandemic Productivity

Well, the world’s been upended. As a professor, this is the first time I’ve attempted to teach online coursework, and obviously the circumstances - these courses were not designed with online in mind, ISP overloads are causing even my own mid-tier home internet to no longer be able to stream high-quality video between the hours of 7am-2am, students have other demands on their time like familial support and sharing devices and spaces - are sub-optimal for sure. The courses I’ve been teaching this semester include Figure Drawing (no live model anymore and no ability to give rapid critiques on what is the hardest technical subject matter, but at least they can do self-portraits and use public domain imagery), Painting I (honestly, not so bad especially since we had a little over eight weeks in person to lay the groundwork), and Senior Art Seminar (I am mourning the loss of accessible senior thesis shows and receptions but am intrigued about how a virtual exhibition could be executed), as well as overseeing internships. We’re all just trying to cope as best we can with these new circumstances, but from the conversations I’ve been having with students I think we’re all chomping at the bit to be able to return once it’s safe to do so. When that will be, though, is still the big unknown.

I know that I am very lucky in that overall I still have my job and am not currently in financial crisis like millions of others due to this pandemic. The quarantining has nevertheless overhauled my personal life, too, beyond the obvious lack of professional and social gatherings. I really enjoy exercising, but more than that, I also need it - when I’m too sedentary, my back weakens to the point that it then goes out. What seems to work best for back maintenance is regular, long, and fairly high-intensity cardio. However, my knees are not able to cope with high-impact exercise. This means that ellipticals are my favorite workout, followed by swimming and riding stationary bikes. (I’m a gym devotee not only due to the access to low-impact forms of exercise but because I really appreciate climate control when I’m exercising - I sweat a lot even in air conditioned spaces. I also like the ability to watch cable television on their machines since I don’t have cable at home!). Because I can’t do any of my gym workouts, I have been alternating long walks around the neighborhood and riding my bicycle in laps around a nearby elementary school parking lot.

I try to stay out for at least 30 minutes each time, but especially on the walks I aim for an hour since I’m not getting high-intensity exercise from them. I haven’t ridden a real bike (as opposed to a stationary bike) in such a long time that I’m basically relearning how to do so and am not great at controlling it yet, but I’m already improving a little! The neighborhood walks have been both interesting and a bit scary - I was attacked by a loose and very territorially aggressive dog a couple days ago but luckily I wasn’t bitten. I have discovered that Sioux City is not the most walkable place due to a lack of sidewalks and crosswalks on some major streets (Gordon Drive, I’m looking at you). A lot of people also block their driveway sidewalks with vehicles. Furthermore, the weather has not been particularly conducive to outdoor exercise. We had a blizzard that knocked the power out for several hours a week ago, and today I was awoken by the sound of hail and whistling wind. It’s also been quite rainy, which is fairly normal for March but does put a damper (see what I did there?) on being outdoors. But needs must! Here are a few coronavirus door signs I documented on my neighborhood walks.

Since I’m still working (and doing so in a different way that was unplanned-for), I have less free time than one might anticipate. Between work, needing to exercise more frequently since the intensity is lowered, and cooking all of my meals, I’m staying fairly busy. I also have a list of chores I’ve been slowly tackling (filing my taxes are next on the list). But everyone needs some form of fun, and I’ve been feeling just a little too stressed to want to begin a new professional piece - though I hope to begin that soon! So instead, I’ve been making a few ceramics. For professional development, I was sitting in on a section of Ceramics I this semester because it was the one discipline I knew barely anything about, and that seemed like a deficit that especially since I also serve as Art Department Head I wanted to address. I learned some about wheel-throwing (there’s much more there than I’ve mastered as of now, but maybe some day!), and a little about glazing. About six or seven weeks in, I gathered that you can add chunks of rust (aka iron oxide) into the clay and they will add value and texture. What values and textures are TBD each time, though, based on firing and other variables - the iron oxide will likely melt in high-fire temperatures and that can cause cavities and vertical runs! That really captivated me - I think because A) I love color, B) I love nature-based chaos as a compositional wild card, and C) I love the conceptual power of rust. It also opened up the world of additives in general, and I decided to attempt experimenting with adding mica pieces, dried clay bits, and potentially other media like vermiculite too.

Obviously the pandemic has disrupted my ceramics progress, but it hasn’t halted it. I’ve been slowly but steadily making pinch pots at home as a low-pressure creative outlet and form of fun. Here are a few images of some of my current experiments. I won’t see how any of these pieces actually turn out until they’ve been through bisque-firing and then glazing, so probably at this point we’re looking at the fall, but it’s something nice to work on nevertheless!