Has it really been that long?

I’ve been busy the last week or so working on a website. (jonroarkart.com) All these years as an artist/illustrator and I’ve never had a website. Oh, I loaded my photo albums in Facebook with art as I produced it, and sometimes in step-by-step images as it was being worked on. I did the same thing with my student’s work, hoping to give my students and the school some publicity. We did some wonderful work over the years and some pretty spectacular projects in the last three years and they deserve to be seen. Of course last year was interrupted 9 weeks before the end and on June 1 I retired with Prosecco in the front yard with neighbors (socially distanced of course). My next door neighbor got out his trumpet ( I think it was the trumpet-he plays everything) and played Sinatra's “My Way” and there’s no doubt I did it my way almost all the way. I actually had four distinct careers, some blending and mixing together with others, but I end my career with a Journeyman Gravure Photo Retoucher card (after a four year apprenticeship pre-Photoshop), a stint as an art director for The Design Group in Lynchburg where I learned so much about both design and Mac computers and the software beginning to appear on the scene, before moving on to being Art Director for High Peak Sportswear helping a small sportswear printer begun in a garage to become a Top 100 in America screenprinter. During that time I taught graphics at my alma mater, Lynchburg College (and assistant coached soccer for my pal and old friend Chip Berry) and finally moved into the final fifteen years of my career, teaching art at Heritage High School.

When I began at Heritage the art department was in a bit of a mess. Students thought they were in charge, the teacher before me had done something with $1500 in supplies but we never discovered what, we had no real graphics capability despite having a printing program and I was a neophyte teacher wondering what I had gotten myself into. I spoke to an even earlier teacher friend from HHS (not the supply missing one) and he said, “Hey, you have a lot of tools and your own style, make it what you want it to be.” So I did. Playing soccer teaches you to be flexible and adaptive and those skills came in handy as we moved from a new teacher nobody knew to a partnership with my pal Larry Hart, the Cultural Arts chair and Theatre Department head at Heritage. I had a lot of fun working with him (I refined my Central Virginia cussing skills also) and we got art students involved in theatre and I did most of the graphics. My first goal stated to Roger Roberts and Mark Miear when they hired me was I was going to change all the graphics going out with our name on it. So I began that task with theatre, posters, brochures, tickets, etc, etc. We tried to look at what our other HS in Lynchburg did and at least equal it. I wanted nothing that left us to look halfway done. So we tried to get a whole new look to the place. I remember in either my first or second year, our theatre students did a competition piece based on the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh. The set design was four 4 foot by 8 foot columns that were built on a wheeled base so they could be spun around. We lined the columns up together and a small group of my students painted on one side Van Gogh’s "Wheat field with Crows.” Then we rotated the columns and they painted Sunflowers based on Van Gogh sunflower paintings. You get the idea. I forget which images we used on the others but the wheat field by this group just blew me away. So this is 8 feet tall by 16 feet wide. Pretty cool. Onstage they are rotated to create different Van Gogh paintings depending on the subject in the play. Tracy MacLauchlan, Whitney Vest, Joel Benjamin, Catherine Jones and Derek Engelke were the artists as I recall. There may be others but it’s almost fifteen years ago. That single project got me believing my students could do just about anything we tried. We painted castle rocks for Beauty and the Beast, Conrad Huband built a construction for the Holocaust Awareness contest and won after he and several others had won a prize together the year before, Ryan Leeman did an astounding watercolor of a building in downtown Lynchburg and I learned. It’s not just good enough to learn about their limitations, you need to know your kids and help them learn their limitations are not where they think they are.
It was tough, though. I regularly had a student list of approximately 150 in five classes in a tiny room and even the best students are still teenagers, with every proclivity the teen age human brings to the table. So stress, loads of stress.
And it finally hit me in about my fifth or sixth year, when I showed up one day in April having a heart attack. Oddly enough, it was the day after my principal had told me I was teacher of the year for our high school. Too much pressure? I don't know. I finished out that year, gave thanks and on my first day home after graduation (the next day) I woke up and when I tried to stand up, couldn't bring my head above my waist. This is two months after the heart “event” as the cardiologists call it.

Pianos designed and painted at Heritage High School

So off to the Doctor, and then the hospital for several days of visitation with Morpheus because they hooked up this cool machine that'd let me control the pain medication. The second night they moved me (and my machine) from one Lynchburg hospital to another in a Lynchburg Fire Department ambulance. Red and blue lights, me in the back asking them to run the siren with the driver and attendant I'm certain asking themselves if they have a three year old onboard. Yes they did. A three year old with a pain machine. So the next day they give me some other juice that really sends me off to dreamland and when I wake up I have a tube sitting next to my bed about a half-inch wide and three inches tall. In it I see a shark’s tooth. It is touching both sides of the tube. So it's a half-inch or so in size. Pretty good sized shark’s tooth. Sort of like the ones you buy on a necklace at the beach? The serrated, jagged edged sort of brown tooth in a triangle? Yeah, that’s what I was looking at in that clear plastic cylinder. I thought, “I’m still on the juice, why would there be a shark’s tooth in here?” And I laid back and snoozed. Awakened by a doctor and nurse later, I noticed the tooth still there. So I asked why there was a shark’s tooth in my room. The doctor looks at it and says, “No, that is your kidney stone.” And now my mind is silently examining my body for an incision. Which I cannot find. And isn’t there. So I will close this paragraph with that image because I no longer want to think how they got that thing out of me. With no incision, it only had one path and I'm imagining that path is not large enough. We’ll leave it right there.

When school opened in the fall my principal, Dr. Mark Miear had moved me into a new room, between our wonderful Building Trades teacher, Jerry Dudley and our Tech Studies teacher, Rich Glover. The rest of our time in that building was spent in those three rooms.

Opera panels at the Opera Gala

Since then, we’ve illustrated three children’s books, two written by students, decorated five pianos for the “Keys to the Hill City” project, painted a mural of the James River for the Lynchburg Museum System, and have also done a few special projects. The Opera on the James called and asked us to illustrate twenty 4' x 8' panels based on the operas produced by them during their first ten years. These were to be used at their yearly fund-raising gala and the students were allowed to attend an opera. I can honestly say the opera isn't the place you find most twenty-first century teenagers. But they went and they loved it and they did a remarkable job. The Opera asked that the panels be painted in the style of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. So that was really interesting. We also produced a group of portraits for an organization called “The Memory Project.”  I was always looked for some way to get my students involved in something while still teaching art skills. This group sends portraits of orphans or refugees from all over the world and art teachers use the photos to teach art skills while educating students about helping other people. They got photos of the children receiving the art and a video of the deliveries. Not a dry eye in the room. We did it again once we moved into the new school and they received a video from Syrian refugee children living in camps in the desert. I wanted them to learn how to get some emotion in art, empathy for others, caring. I’d ask what they had done each day to make the world a better place. Rhetorical question but just keeping them thinking, and our school has some great kids. They really responded.

Ahmad by Grace K.

This year is almost certainly a very different way to end a career as a teacher. I have a great deal of satisfaction for what our young artists have managed to achieve throughout my fifteen years at Heritage HS but I think I can honestly say that no other art teacher has ended their career nine weeks early because of an international pandemic. I’m sure there are artists (who also taught) throughout history who fell victim to the plague. I have spent my spring trying to avoid that notoriety. But as a personal statement of my time in this career, I am not certain whether my students gained more or I gained more in the process of teaching them. As an artist, I can see the quality that my years of teaching has added to my skills, and at the same time, my fifteen years has helped to guide serious art students and students who are taking art on their road of discovery. Some to amazing heights. For some it was just helping them to come to school day after day. I was raised by good people and I found myself in a situation where good people let me do what I do best, and trusted me to do it to the standards of the good people who raised me. My students have surprised me, the very talented exceeding my expectations and the less talented, still remembering things I taught them.

Our students did garner an award at the University of Lynchburg High School Invitational Art Show this year of “Best High School Art Program.” My personal aspiration every year is that we be seen as a top-notch program. It was really a nice surprise to have that confirmed.

Painting of downtown Lynchburg by Lexi Shretta

With retirement looming at the end of this year it was especially nice to bring that award home to Heritage. I call my time here a success, but to paraphrase what Mr. Vanauken, my history advisor told me years ago at LC. I said, “well, you’re my teacher!” when he pointed out that I had missed some point in Ancient Roman History. He lowered his glasses and looked at me and said, “Young man, I am your instructor. Time shall tell if I have taught you anything.” I get that now too. Playing the long game. It’s been a pleasure to be able to teach in “Number One, Big Orange Country” with the greatest faculty, administration and students.

So there is my first blog post in almost five years. Not that anyone is reading this anyway...

New and Old Part 2

  Since I am trying to make this a more regular venue for my random and sketchy observations, (get it? regular for random?) I am going to try to put down some more thoughts on recent projects. I am partway into my newest egg tempera, but not to a point where I wish to show it, so I am instead going to write about a new 3D construction I am putting together. A couple of years back I was mining a Beatles creative vein and built (at the suggestion of my writer/drummer/creative brother in law Mark Lindamood of Washington DC) an overlarge version of the Beatles Rubber Soul album cover. it is about 32" x 32" and about 5" deep and is in a beautiful wooden frame built by my friend Jerry Dudley at Heritage HS. It was a particularly painful project because when I finished painting the cover and all four of it's portraits on a piece of canvas, I had to cut them out. These were some of the best acrylic portraits I had done at this point (and along with a version of the Let It Be album cover and a 3D version of the Sgt Pepper center spread, probably my only acrylic portraits) and cutting them out of their canvas was simply put, scary as hell. I finished it, gave thanks that it looked so good and said to myself, "Enjoy it, that's the last thing like that you'll ever build."

Rubber Soul in 3D

  Right. So several weeks back, right at the end of fall break, I got an e-mail from my friend Ted Batt the Exhibitions Curator at the Academy of Fine Arts on Main Street asking if I'd be willing to interpret in a piece of art the new logo they were about to launch in a few weeks. The Academy will now be the Academy Center of the Arts and Ted included an attachment with the new multi-color logo. So even though I was really starting to enjoy my newest egg tempera, and hadn't yet even opened the attachment I said, "Yes," because I cannot resist the Academy and the friends I have made on the staff there. The problem is, when I looked at the logo, an idea came to mind - an idea of a sort I was pretty certain I'd never revisit. I wonder if I had been drinking Cabernet or Pinot Grigio when the e-mail came. Nope it was a Bordeaux they were selling at Magnolia Foods, a Domaines Baron De Rothschild (for a very nice price I might add.) I know because I was playing with the Vivino app on my phone and photographed the label. But I digress. The main point is French wine was involved in some manner. Not that I would have turned them down.

  Anyway, I looked at the logo and an idea began forming, and not a simple one I'm afraid. So I at school the next day I enlisted the help of some of my students (and of course my pal Jerry Dudley) in building this massive thing. I was thinking of the old and new aspects of introducing a new brand, and in typical form, my own attraction to the age of the Academy buildings and the fact that some of the signage is signage people have seen day to day for 110 plus years was poking it's nosy head into the proceedings. I had students in the closed off 6th Street this summer drawing the old doors and windows and anyone who knows my work knows I like bricks for some reason, so bricks were creeping in also. But it had to be lightweight so it could hang on a wall and suddenly I was thinking "make it sort of like the 3D Rubber Soul piece ..." So I took the logo design, brought it into Adobe Illustrator and laid it into a 36" square. I created a brick pattern as a background and while looking at my photos of the Academy I remembered a band of text at the top of the building overlooking 6th Street. I decided that would look cool on these bricks and that led me to ask myself, what else might be added that says Academy? Gradually a concept was presenting itself to me and just as gradually I was understanding it as it spoke to me. I remembered theatre and dance posters wearing away on walls in NYC when I was in art school, so it seemed I should probably have an old poster in there somehow and I had a photo of some cupids in plaster from inside and thought, "Why not have something from inside the old theatre?"

Lower right letter a with brick pattern
in place and walls built.

 At this point I could visualize it and was pretty certain I could build it. I just didn't realize it would be such a beast.

Here's the brick surface
after Jamie and Hunter did the

texturizing and after adding
the poster at lower right.

  So after the design, I had to build the backing for the bricks. Foam core didn't come in sheets as large as I needed (at least not without shipping), nor was gator board large enough. I failed to mention I had planned to put a solid piece of gator board down as my base. But the piece I looked at was too small (would have taken three at $36 apiece) so I stuck with basic foam core. I had to seam one large and two smaller scrap pieces together and add a backing to them of cardboard. That gave me a pretty stiff and lightweight foundation upon which I could build a brick wall. So I drew the logo out centered on the wall and then guesstimated the size of bricks on such a wall. Every brick was cut out of scraps of foam core but was added in such a way that I had to keep the brick pattern but cut out the sections that overlapped the logo itself. This allowed the logo to fit down in the space between the bricks, adding a little extra stability to the logo construction. The logo is four round letters (probably Avant Garde or Futura) overlapping each other in a two over two layout. I decided to make the two A's 4" tall, the C  2" tall and the O (as the least important element) only 1" tall. I guess the "T" is silent. (Of The Arts)The overlap sections would be  3". The letters were drawn out on foam core scraps and then the walls had to be built. Foam core doesn't bend but can be made to bend by slicing lines close together (.125" to .25" spaces) vertically on the wall. When you glue the wall to the "roof" for lack of a better word, you simply bend the now pliable foam core to the shape of the letter. Once it is all done you can use modeling paste to fill in the gaps that open up in the wall and thus restore stability to the foam core. Simple. Or so it seemed.

Poster detail

  This project actually went fairly quickly. The e-mail came during fall break from school leaving me with about three weeks to produce the final piece. Without Hunter G's yeoman efforts throughout and his influencing Jamie S., Aliyah D., Blair B., Lindsey D. and Grace K.  to help we couldn't possibly have gotten there.
   So above is a photo of the white bricks with parts of letters in place. We actually didn't glue anything down (the logo that is) until everything had a first coat of paint. So Hunter and Jamie painted all the bricks after I mixed paints and described what I saw as a way to paint an authentic looking brick. I drew on the Academy letters in the black panel at top and painted them in while Hunter began with a dark maroon "brick" color. the detailing on the bricks came by mixing a couple of reds just off from the base color, a darker one and a lighter one. Then we put the color down in a way they hadn't considered, we used old sponge material out of several year old Apple Mac packaging and tore off parts to make irregular surfaces. They were told to dip the sponge in the paint and before daubing it on, wipe the sponge almost dry on a paper towel, then daub. It seemed to me like they had a blast doing it and in no time the bricks were looking like bricks. Jamie mixed a putty color for the mortar between the bricks and then a second color to texturize the first. Again, in no time flat they were done. I also wanted to add a poster from a long ago show at the Academy. Because of timing issues I chose to print it on thin paper after doing some aging in Photoshop. Once it was printed, I coated the bricks where it was going to be adhered with Polymer Medium and laid it down. The paper was allowed to soak up the glue and I used fingers to really push it down into the mortar spaces between bricks. I added another coating of Polymer Medium on top to really get the paper soaking wet (and very fragile). Then I began using an x-acto knife blade to pry between the fibers of paper and rip and mar the wet poster, peeling back sections of the poster, aging it on the wall, trying to make it appear to be peeling and deteriorating.

Early state of the cupids.

Final state of cupids.

   At the same time I was working on a semi-bas-relief of some cupids from the interior plaster work. One huge problem. I had no clay. I had some sculpy but no way to heat it up as my stove at school wasn't hooked up when they moved me into the old printing room (no way to vent it). So improvisation was the word of the day. I started by drawing the cupids out on a scrap of foam core (really using up the scraps) and then I cut out of scrap mat board 3 or 4 versions of the cupids with each one being cut slightly smaller then the one before. This isn't like resizing and cutting a smaller version, this is laying down the original design and cutting the first one actual size, then pulling back from the edge and cutting another one, repeating that process several times. It gives you a semi mound in the shape of the figures. I then cut some foam core versions of parts of the figures and basically added small scraps of styrofoam onto those. Then it was modeling paste to smooth out the surfaces and enhance the relief aspects and finally it was all painted to reflect the photographic   sample I had. Not great, not bad. It gives the feeling of the old plaster in a state of disrepair.
Here you can see both an early state and the finished state. Wish I could have gone further but various technical issues got in the way as well as time. Anyway, the cupids were centered in the interior space created by the "O". I glued them in place and then added two small brass screws just to keep them there. The brass screws also add an antique feel to the cupid grouping.

   On to the finish. All the letters were painted black by the student helpers and we added a solid white surface on top to give the colors a base. The acrylics I used tend to be somewhat transparent, so they needed either a white base, or about ten coats of color. I opted for the white base with one or two coats of color. Hunter and I checked cmyk color mixes in Photoshop using the logo sample provided by the Academy and used the ideas presented in those numbers to mix colors for the logo parts. We did pretty well in that I don't think we had to remix any of them. 8 for 8 right off the bat. Each piece probably has 5-6 coats, not because they have to have them, but because they just looked better with each coat we added. Eventually it all dried and I started to glue them in place. This was all built from a design laid down very precisely and they had fit together fairly well right up until this point. Now with glue on the board, I found myself wedging and bending and trimming each piece as I glued them  down. When I finally got to the last piece, one of the three inch high connectors between letters, you guessed it, no way it was going to fit. This is where the Rubber Soul experience came in handy because I immediately just cut the thing down to fit. Projects like this really teach you to think on your feet. On this connector I cut almost a quarter inch sliver out of one side and corner and then it slid right into place. The black walls were built, (they were too short so they had to be seamed together) painted and glued down. After painting the walls and while they dried, I stained and polyurethaned the beautiful wooden frame Mr. Dudley built for the project After that dried, we slid it down over the art and it almost fitted perfectly. Had to trim each corner just a tiny bit and it slid right down into place. Once we had it in place we discovered it was so tight that fitting it in had caused the back edge of one corner to pop loose but Mr. Dudley was able to clamp, glue and nail it back in place and finally all we had to do was add a protective coat to the entire thing. Finished.
   So a long description to a fairly quick project. The students, especially Hunter G. were a huge help in getting it done and I have to believe learned a few lessons in the doing. I sort of lived in fear throughout that something might happen in the classroom and this would get derailed by damage. You just never know and if my classes weren't so large that fear would probably not arise. So as soon as I could, it was delivered to the Academy and since they have now announced they have it, I feel like I can write about it.  I am realizing now that I never stated what my concept with this piece actually is. I was thinking of a phoenix, rising. But that isn't exactly it, because my feeling is with a phoenix rising, it rises out of ruin. It actually was sort of a garden with something new arising in it's season. So the old is still there, the bricks, signage, plasterwork, old theatre, history (if you know where to look) but growing, arising out of the old is this new expression, this new home for all the arts, the Academy Center of the Arts in the visual form of this logo. Still a mouthful, but who am I kidding, no one reads this stuff anyway.

The pieces of letters glued together

The entire thing comes together

New and Old

So this year has been a sort of watershed year for me in terms of my exploration of new media. I have long wanted to explore a new style of painting (for me) which is actually a very old style of painting. For a number of years (a number I cannot name - but that’s me with numbers) I've wanted to try my hand at egg tempera, a style of painting that has a relatively small number of practitioners in our time. Most anyone with any knowledge of art will recognize the name Andrew Wyeth, the late American master of surprise, surprise, egg tempera. There are a number of other American greats using this medium and a sort of recent resurgence in it, but for most artists it seems a tedious and illusive art form. For me it was something I felt I could do, but in the rush to live life, get child through college, stay employed, etc, etc, it was always sort of just out of my reach. But I was getting older every day, and this seemed such a simple transition in style for me. Egg tempera uses lots of tiny little lines to create the subtle changes in color and to add depth to the images. Tiny brushes, tiny lines, sounded right up my alley. I actually began my artistic journey as a user of crow quill #102 pen points and india ink, and my first job out of college was as a photo retoucher using Kolinsky Rotmarder watercolor brushes in an industry more akin to the old European guild style of craftwork and since it was a blended German-American company that makes a lot of sense. A minimum of 8 hours a day (but generally far more hours a day and week) I had a #9 Kolinsky Rotmarder watercolor brush drawing god only knows what as I was trained in a 4-year apprenticeship to understand the intricacies of photography, printing and color. The constant use of the brush increased the skill level of the artist/retoucher, the rest was a constant repetition of practice that taught color knowledge to a level most people never approach. For years after I left there I painted watercolor paintings using red, yellow, blue and black with no other colors simply because I could. I had lots of other colors, but why bother? I understood colors and knew what I could create with just those four. It was fun, but no one cared. Most people would miss the dubious value of having that ability and rightly so. I also used to go to life drawing classes and draw using red yellow and blue watercolor pencils and try to get that same effect of full color using less, rather than more. But I knew about egg tempera and it was always there, just out of my reach.
In 2008 a giant of Lynchburg art, Frank Wright, passed away and in a bit of ironic whimsy, his son called me and asked if I'd like some of his leftover supplies. As I was now a public high school art teacher, I assumed some of these supplies would be valuable in the classroom,  a setting almost always underfunded in public schools. I said certainly and drove over to the master's home in my Jeep Liberty which I proceeded to load and load until I wondered if I'd be able to drive away. I drove directly to my school-it was a Sunday afternoon and unloaded everything I thought I could use in the classroom. The rest I took home and into my basement where it waited. Over the years since, I have used many very expensive sheets of watercolor paper, a couple of large canvases and various other pieces of the remainders of his studio. The art students at my school have used loads of stuff he donated and many opportunities for creating art by very worthy students were experienced directly because of this gift. 
But in my basement was one box that I'd forgotten about, just waiting for me to take a peek. In this time span, I've had a heart attack in class, coached girl’s soccer, my students have illustrated and published three children books and I've rediscovered acrylics and sculptural forms and still that box rested with other art supplies, waiting for my discovery. I was still thinking about egg tempera. My life wasn't getting longer and if I wanted to do it, I just had to, well, do it. I e-mailed various egg tempera artists inquiring about workshops, asking questions and the answer almost invariably was "...what are you waiting for, just do it..." or something along those lines. I could always find a reason not to do it; ‘ “daughter in college, can't afford the pigments” or “...no raises for teachers again and now our insurance rates have soared and daughter is in college, so can't afford the pigments right now...” ’ or something along those lines. I talked to my students about it, they were sort of lukewarm, but willing. I suppose they wanted to know the teacher understood the medium before they invested time in it (an acceptable feeling I'd admit) and their teacher had never tried it! One of my teachers had told me the “...best way to learn something is to teach it...” a statement I found ridiculous at the time. Turns out it’s actually not far off.
So back to the box in the basement. I had decided to write a grant when the new 2014-15 school year  opened and try to teach egg tempera and I proceeded to do exactly that. I asked our local Education Foundation for $800 in order to purchase supplies and a small refrigerator (to keep the egg medium fresh). To my shock, they agreed and we were off and running. So one day I was in the basement and moving some boxes around I came across this box I brought home from Mr. Wright’s studio maybe five years before. On a whim I popped the lid and there before my eyes were several dozen bottles of “Perma-Color” dry pigments from a pigment manufacturer in Charlotte, NC and I later discovered had also supplied Andrew Wyeth with some of his pigments. Wow!
I cannot describe how much this surprised and stunned me. Some of these pigments might have gone for a couple of dollars a bottle, others maybe a good bit more. Now that I have bought some pigments, I can say, a whole lot more. Nowadays one of these bottles starts at around $20 and quickly climbs to a place I can't even dream of. So I had no excuse now. Time to paint.
The summer before I had entered a watercolor painting into a regional show at The Hill Center on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. My sister in law Iris Goodman of DC had told me about the Hill Center and asked me to enter. To my surprise it was accepted. The show was juried by the Art Critic for the Washington Post so I was surprised to be accepted at all. This was a different level of art show for me. My wife and I went to DC for the show and after getting off the train went down to the National Gallery to kill a little time before the opening. While there we went to see a newly acquired Van Gogh and I wanted to look at some Toulouse-Lautrecs for something my students had been asked to do the next fall for Lynchburg's Opera on the James. I happened to turn and saw my wife in front of the new Van Gogh, her figure showing a question as she looked at the newly acquired painting. I shot off several photos, wondering if a guard would ask for my camera but no one seemed to notice and we proceeded to wander until her brother picked us up outside the museum. All evening at the opening I was struck by the image I had photographed. It's like a subtle buzz in the head you keep hearing, pulling you back to that moment and over the rest of the summer I thought about it and wondered whether to paint it.
Fall arrived and in class we began working on Opera panels (4' x 6' panels illustrating in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec all 20 operas done in the history of Opera on the James). Winter break arrived and I had begun talking to various students about whether they'd like to try egg tempera. In the end about 24 participated with 20-21 finishing at least one painting. But it was now winter break and I hadn't begun one yet. I went back to the photos of the National Gallery visit and the buzz was still in my head. I decided to begin a 16" x 20" painting of a museum patron looking at this newly acquired Van Gogh. First step, a drawing on claboard a sort of pre-gessoed masonite. Then I pen and inked the drawing. I couldn't open the door to silverpoint (money) and had been told pen and ink would substitute nicely and it did. The students watched and began inking their own 9" x 12" boards. So we proceeded together, seeing what happened and learning as we went. The next Hill Center deadline for entry was coming up and I had decided to enter an egg tempera. At the same time an Academy fund-raiser was fast approaching and I had told Ted Batt I'd donate a painting. So in mid January I stopped the larger first egg tempera and began a 9" x 12" painting of a lily against a red barn. I knocked this one out and posted it and a friend piped up with "I want it." So now I had a quandary, a sale, or a donation. I started another painting to donate to the Academy. By the end of January I was approaching the mid-point of the large painting, had finished one other and was about to finish a third with a fourth and fifth on my find. (One of my students was finishing her first and talking about her second. She is on number four at this point in October.) I was liking this medium.
The entry was due in April with an answer to acceptance in May and delivery to the Hill Center in June. I finished the large painting I was now calling “The New Van Gogh” in early March, photographed it along with a couple of fairly recent watercolors (a year old at least) and paid my entry fee and entered through something called "entrythingy". In early May I receive an e-mail from the gallery saying I'd had one of three accepted:

Dear Jon,
Congratulations!  We are very pleased to announce that your work has been selected for the Hill Center Galleries 2015 Regional Juried Exhibition that will run from June 25 through September 29.  (Note change from the announced end date of September 27.) 
Our juror, Mark Leithauser, Senior Curator and Chief of Design for the National Gallery of Art, selected a distinctive group of pieces from a very large field of entries -- 500 pieces from over 100 artists.  His evaluation was made on individual images, not the complete body of work entered. If you submitted more than one piece for consideration, please note this message advises you only of the individual image(s) SELECTED, by title and entry number, as follows: 2110.172273.730148 The New Van Gogh .  If you submitted additional work for consideration, you will receive a second message listing the piece(s) NOT selected.
You will receive instructions from us soon about the exhibition schedule, requirements for preparing your work to be hung in our galleries, etc.
Be sure to mark your calendar for Thursday, June 25, 6-8pm, for the Opening Reception.  Prize winners (1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize and five Honorable Mention) will be announced during the reception.

Wow, cool. I got in. We had a college graduation to attend in early May as our daughter completed her four years at Radford University and the costs of moving her back home and had about decided we weren't going to attend the opening this year. School ended with all the stress that entails and we slowly moved into our summer routine. My wife went off to a conference for several days and I debated whether or not to go to the show since she’d be coming home and heading right out if she was going to go also. I think I had even said to her I wasn't going to go when on Tuesday, the week of the Thursday opening, this e-mail arrived:

On behalf of Nicky Cymrot, Director of Hill Center Galleries, and Mark Leithauser, Juror for the 2015 Regional Exhibition, I am pleased to announce the following selections made today.

First Prize: Jon Roark, The New Van Gogh
Second Prize: M. Alexander Gray, Old Logging Railroad
Third Prize: Corinne Whitlach, Tunisia's Memoir
Honorable Mention:
- Joseph Bellofatto, Lady of the Lake
- Nancy Freeman, The Third Middle Journey
- Thom Goertel, Chevy, Yellville, Arkansas
- Hester Ohbi, Fleeting
- Judy Searles, Recoleta Detail

Cash awards and certificates will be presented during Mr. Leithauser's remarks at the Opening Reception, Thursday, June 25.  Please join us in the Lincoln Room on the 2nd floor of Hill Center by 7:10 pm.  (Please let me know if you unable to attend.)

Congratulations once again.

Barbara Bonessa for Hill Center Galleries

Well, the situation had changed, hadn't it? First Prize? I called my wife and said, “I think you want to go with me to this show.” We had the normal discussion of being too tired, the dog needing his schedule back to normal, etc, and then I read her the e-mail. It was a pretty astonishing thing for me. I’ve been in a lot of shows and won awards, but never on this level. Then I noticed the juror's name. Washington Post critic the year before, this year it was the Senior Curator of the National Gallery. This was not air I had breathed before.

So now we are almost a year later, my painting is gone, not only did it win but it sold and i am busy teaching again and trying to find time to paint. I just this week began my 8th egg tempera and while I am still finding my way, I am finding the path to be smooth and friendly and very, very fulfilling. Not that anyone is reading this...

 

Jimmy Buffett at Jiffy Lube Live

"Narcissism on the Beach"

Saturday, September 1, Lori and I drove to Northern Virginia. We had been gifted with a pair of tickets to see Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band at Jiffy Lube Live (formerly the Nissan Pavilion). My colleague and friend Alex Drumheller e-mailed the faculty at Heritage on Thursday asking if anyone wanted to take over his hotel room at the Dulles Hilton for Saturday night and go see Jimmy Buffett. Duh. But, seriously, thanks, Alex!  Lori and I have both seen Buffett numerous times, in both inside and outside venues but have lamented in recent years not having seen him for at least twenty years. Hmm, about the amount of time Hannah has been with us. Don't worry Hannah, we'd pick you over a Buffett concert anytime. With Hannah at college, however, the way seemed open to take Alex up on his offer and we were lucky enough to get to do so.

A little about the trip and then some comments about the concert.

The hotel was very nice and couldn't have been easier to find. We got there around three, went into their in-hotel lounge and ordered lunch, then went up to our room, showered and got ready to leave. The venue is only about 12-13 miles away, but we had no idea how to get in or what traffic would be like so we left around 6:30 and by 6:45 were off I-66 and in line to the facility. When we pulled off, we drove several hundred yards up a road to a line of cars in the left lane. Very quickly it filled up behind us until I'm sure the line stretched out onto the highway which was about a mile away. We were in this line, bumper to bumper for the next 45-50 minutes. Moving ahead a yard or two at a time we crawled the Police directed route into the parking lot. From there it was a very short walk to the gates and suddenly we were in the midst of a very familiar Caribbean-themed party. Now this we understood. The staff were friendly, but in charge, no closed bottles of any type, no chairs more than 9" tall (more about this later). So people were being handed large plastic cups (maybe 32 oz?) to pour their water into and the small collection area was filling up with chairs. Above us was a tall hill (maybe 75 feet tall) with stairs going up on each side. We showed our tickets and began the climb, marveling at the creative costumes people wore and the higher we went, more and more surprised by the size of the hill. I had read you could rent chairs for $5 so had elected to trust my reading and leave ours at home. Ours would not have made it in as they were taller than the allowed height. We got to the top and there was a tent where volunteers working for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) were renting the chairs. $5 was the price and feeling we were contributing to something good in the midst of this bacchanal we moved over to the lawn to try to find a place to sit. The lawn was filling up very fast and spaces were limited but we found a spot to the right of the stage and set our chairs up. Now, here is the first lesson about the lawn for us aging baby boomers. At this facility, the stage was about 100 yards away. Buffett, when he came out looked to be about an inch tall. The other thing about the lawn is it was basically the seats of the great unwashed masses. It was an unbelievable mass of people, constantly moving, yelling, laughing, but more than anything, drinking. Heavily. No, very heavily. How they could afford it is beyond me because a beer was $12. They were huge beers and if you were in a bar, one would have filled an evening. I watched several people drink four or five. Multiply by 12, children and you've spent for beer more than the tickets cost. More about this later also. When the concert ended we waited in our seats for a half-hour or more to let the place empty out. At that point the Police were checking to see why people were still there (more to come) and we just picked up our trash and headed out. Leaving the facility was not the issue entering was. When we got into line, we were out and onto I-66 within fifteen minutes and back to the hotel in thirty. Very smooth and easy.

Now to Buffett. A few observations about the evolution of a Buffett concert and the passing of seats from boomers to the present post-college generation.

The show started a little late, probably because the traffic coming in was still dragging its way onto the site. But eventually "Hot, Hot, Hot" kicked off over the sound system and while the crew continued to fine-tune the stage setup the party kicked in out in the seats. The sky was turning dark but the lawn was absolutely covered with people and more were pressing in. Finally the drummer, Roger Guth took his seat and the rest of the band strolled onstage then our one-inch tall object of joy walked onstage and the band kicked into a very energetic and quite beautiful "One Particular Harbor," a great choice for a lead-in song and this was a charging, electric version. I remember giving my friend Betsy Mulderig a cassette tape copy of this album at FIT and her dancing around the studio on breaks listening to this. A great start to the show.

Now, Buffett has been doing this for 38 years (and he told us so several times) and has at least 28 studio albums. I began my interest with Buffett in the early 1970s with High Cumberland Jubilee, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, and Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. I was fascinated with his willingness to find new ways to use words and the combination with interesting country rock rhythms (I was well into my love of country rock). With 28 albums there have to be a few songs in a concert he simply has to sing. Think Fins, Margaritaville, Cheeseburger in Paradise, Volcano, Come Monday, Son of a Son of A Sailor. That's already a big list. So for longtime fans like Lori and I it was a question of which songs we loved (that weren't Buffett required performances) we'd get to hear. Now, I love A1A. I consider it Buffett's one whole album masterpiece. It's been a long time since that was released in 1974. Interestingly, probably my two favorite albums, albums I'd take to that desert island were both released in 1974. The other one is Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky. Decried at the time as "...public therapy" for Jackson Browne and "...too sad and depressing to listen to" it has become one of my favorites for its imagery and wonderful music. Now isn't it interesting that my top two picks showed up in 1974 and are both by guys with the initials JB? Okay, you don't care, I'll get back to the concert.

When Buffett came out, everyone stood up and remained standing for the entire concert. Thank god for the huge video screens to either side of the stage. Otherwise, we'd have seen nothing. We had found a nice place to sit, but as the lawn filled to bursting (I personally think the venue just kept printing and selling tickets as long as people kept ordering them). So many, many younger, early to mid 20's kept shoving in and of course a 6'2" guy wearing a silly looking porkpie hat (really?) shoved in front of us with several girls and kept pulling more and more people in as the night went on. They all had their phones out and were conducting loud conversations with friends in other parts of the place, "...yeah, we've got a nice spot, come on over..." and he moved back and forth between this girl and that, swaying to the music but paying no attention to the band. One minute he was blocking my view, the next, Lori's. But after about 8 or 9 songs, he and his entourage were gone and a new party of three moved in. Again, a guy about 6'3" tall, another guy about 6' tall and a girl. She was flirting with the taller guy, the shorter guy was busy the entire time taking photos with his phone of the two of them together. All three were involved in conversations at the top of their lungs with each other, laughing hysterically at various inanities involved in this flirtation process, and when unoccupied by their interaction, they texted and photographed each other with their phones. I only noticed one time they appeared to even know there was a band and it was during "Margaritaville" when Buffett's audience shouts "Salt, Salt, Salt" in this sort of hedonistic pseudo-gospel call and response section of the song. Other than that, they paid $50 a ticket to get absolutely fall-down drunk on $12 beers while doing what they could have done at a neighborhood bar. They were so unaware of everyone around them that the larger guy was almost stepping on us. Anyway, this lack of interest in anyone but themselves and willingness to pay a high price for a ticket to a show they clearly had no interest in was repeated ad nauseum all over the venue all evening which spurred some thoughts. This lack of awareness of others is the origin of the title "Narcissism at the Beach."

I thought  about the times I have already seen a Buffett concert and what this event has now become. Way back when, I was fascinated by his songwriting and that is what I went to see and hear. It has now become a huge, multi-hour singalong with the master of escapism and poet to hedonism himself, and a multi-hour standing ovation to boot. Did I sing along? Yes, I know all the words, so why not? I sounded good, too, not that anyone could confirm that. But I digress. Buffett's humor shines through every part of his music and the show is no different. There's a huge screen behind the band (the A-V Club is successfully employed) where the show started with a film of mermaids (in Sarasota Fla. swimming) and as the song moved on it slowly became apparent that Buffett was in there swimming with them with his hands above his head making the "Fins" sign. Subtle, but funny. I wonder if many people noticed? Mostly they are involved with their costumes, and fin-heads and getting drunk. Not that I look down on drunks listening to Buffett. The writer of "God's Own Drunk" deserves a little leeway if his fans like a beer I guess. Lori saw a guy standing there swaying in his own drunken haze with "God's Own Drunk" scribbled in large letters on his t-shirt. Like he wanted a Buffett shirt but would rather buy beers than merchandise. Funny. It was a place full of little interesting images like that. Loads of men wearing coconut shell bras and grass skirts, women in bikinis as if they were actually at the beach. It was hot enough for that, but...

Anyway, Buffett writes in his songs about a time that those of us in our mid 50's and up can identify with. Our dad's and granddad's were World War One and Two vets and we can visualize the things he writes. He writes about "...sending the old man home..." (from WW 2 in the Pacific) "they'll mothball the whole damn fleet..." or gives us images of a steamship leaving port and faces fading until they are two small to identify. We are old enough to remember a steamship, and World War 2 and mothballed fleets so the writing rings true for us. The tunes match up and have the feel of something a sailor might call familiar in that time. To me, that is part of what I want to see and hear. To his newer, younger fans, the music and imagery of those songs is not the attraction. They come for the party. To be there and be able to say they were there. That's okay if that's what you want; he makes his money regardless. Okay, I have wandered again. A Buffett show now is a huge party, a debauchery in the seats, but still a job onstage. But there is still that connection to the past that the older members of the audience can remember so he's sort of straddling two worlds, worlds he invented to be sure, but at least one of those worlds can't put their phones down long enough to listen and that was a shock.

The setlist was great, and included an acoustic section with a video tribute to Andy Griffith that included "Piece of Work", "Pencil Thin Moustache" (another homage to the '40's and '50's) and finishing with a stunningly beautiful cover of Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Southern Cross". What a treat. He did all the expected songs and a few unexpected ones, "Who's the Blonde Stranger," "Banana Republics," and "A Pirate Looks at Forty" from my favorite, A1A. He also did several encores with a rousing "Brown-eyed Girl", a great version of "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" with lead guitarist Peter Mayer doing a credible job as Alan Jackson and of course, "Fins" and a second, final encore by himself with an acoustic version of "Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season / Last Mango In Paris".

So to end this meandering piece looking for a reason to exist, it was great to see Buffett again. but the lawn is not the place for aging baby-boomers. The stage is too far, the sound was poor at best and the almost amazing number of fall-down drunks was just astonishing. Watching them trying to leave was just sad. There were people there who literally could not stand up. Not one or two. Dozens or more. So, yeah, it was a great show. Buffett is in great shape and looks like he loves what he does. But I cannot help but be wistful for the Buffett I grew up listening to.

Chesterfield Inn, Myrtle Beach.

Once again I waited several months since writing here. This time I am going to write about our vacation last week. Lori and I needed to get away. Returning to school in mid-August just wasn't an attractive idea without finding a place to clear our heads and put our feet up. Years ago our friend Tom Cassidy (from Lynchburg College Alumni Programs) had told me of a place he and Laurie visited. His description had always intrigued me but for some place it maybe didn't seem like a place our daughter was going to want to go. I couldn't remember why I thought that but since she wasn't going this time I e-mailed Tom, got the information and in sort of a cryptic statement Tom said to give it a try and see if they could fit us in. I had no idea how wonderfully descriptive that comment was until I started to look at the website and see when there was an availability. I started wondering what was wrong. No rooms available? Yogi Berra's statement describing a crowded restaurant as "...nobody goes there anymore-you can never get a seat..." ran through my head.  As did Tom's encouragement to keep at it and find a time. We got lucky. Two weeks before school started back there was one room available and Lori called and found the information accurate and we were in. Last week of July we would find ourselves at Pawley's Island in an Inn we knew only by Tom's description. But we trusted Tom and Laurie, with a friendship stretching back to 1972 (I actually met Tom in 1971 playing soccer for EC Glass against the LC jv's) so I knew he would send us to the right place and we went on living our lives waiting for a visit to a place we'd never been with the hope for a restful, healing week to get us ready for the demands of teaching for another year.

So Saturday, July 28 we got up, threw our stuff into the car and off we went. Gas prices around here were about $3.28 a gallon, the Honda Insight was fueled up and with expectations of 5-6 hours in the car, we plugged in the iPod and began our trip. One of the things we both enjoy is traveling through little NC and SC towns.
But there was something more we needed. We hoped that this trip could somehow approximate the visits we both had made to Chesterfield Inn at Myrtle Beach. Chesterfield Inn was a destination for our family for almost 50 years. My parents went there on their honeymoon, Lori and I went there on our honeymoon and Hannah grew up in the same environment at the beach that I knew, only she was with her three cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents and for me it was Mom, Dad and the four children. Chesterfield was an old style inn, creaking floors, cabana louvered doors, meals provided for breakfast and the evening meal with food that had to be tried to be believed. You dressed for meals - I remember wearing shorts and a jacket with a little red bowtie (clip-on of course) as a little guy with only Mom, Dad, my sister and me. When Chesterfield transferred to other owners from the Britton's, it lost it's luster and over a very short period of time it became a mere shadow of itself until it finally closed. Since then we've stayed in North Myrtle, the Outer Banks and simply skipped the beach and gone to NYC or gone nowhere. Nothing anywhere seemed to come close to the Chesterfield. The image to the right is my watercolor painting (prints available-contact me) of the back porch of the Chesterfield with all it's classic black rockers, where we waited for meals, relaxed after a day on the beach, made plans to take the kids somewhere, or when we were kids waited for Mom and Dad to decide if we had behaved well enough to take someplace. A most restful place for an adult, a way station on the way to someplace else for a child.

So we had begun to believe we were chasing a pipe dream, a place to replace 50 years of memories and meals. Could it conceivably be found anywhere? 



 

So to answer my own question, and who am I kidding, no one is reading this anyway, the answer is an emphatic yes. Lori and I spent 7 lovely days at Sea View Inn on Pawley's Island, a throwback to a better time if ever there was one.
Maybe the way to approach this is to talk about the similarities we found and go from there into what made this Inn unique and special.

So earlier I mentioned food and what I am referring to is the Chesterfield provided breakfast and the evening meal and they were included in your room cost. At Sea View the inn provided all three meals. The similarities were great. Both Inns provided excellent low-country cooking and one of the very interesting similarities is almost every evening meal featured some sort of pass around platter and a server who went table to table. Sea View provided three meals daily (one more than Chesterfield) and the rhythm of the week revolved around the bells being rung at 8:30 am, 1:15 pm and 6:15 pm. You could dine barefoot but no bathing suits were worn in the dining room unless you had on some sort of coverup so that was very similar to Chesterfield. The food in both establishments was exceptional.

On the back of both inns was a porch. Both porches had a grouping of rocking chairs. The Sea View also included a "joggling board" which is a Pawley's Island innovation, apparently designed to give a courting man and woman a way to naturally be slid together. A seat that takes away society's rules for keeping two young lovers from ever touching. If that's not a throwback I don't know what is. Here is a photo of one - although not the one at Sea View. Sea View's is about twelve feet wide to give you some idea of the scale and is painted Charleston Green which is a green tinted almost black. It is sort of a replacement for a swing. There was also a beautiful hammock at one end of the porch. Here's a shot of the hammock overlooking the beach.
On the beach the Sea view provided chairs, umbrellas, a couple of sea-going kayaks as well as private outdoor showers. At Chesterfield we had to rent umbrellas. We could use our own chairs but renting an umbrella each day could get pricey. So there's an immediate advantage to Sea View. We didn't have to haul anywhere near the usual amount of beach "stuff" so we were able to travel in a smaller car that got phenomenal gas mileage. We took our beach towels, a camera, our books and sunglasses and Lori's spf 50 lotion and we were ready to go. The beach behind the Inn almost has a secluded feel. The stone jetties every 200 yds or so seem to enforce almost a backyard feel. That can be good or bad. In this case it was mostly good. We did have several houses as neighbors and one about two to three doors down had a very out of control testosterone feel to it. From the first day two young teenage boys had jet-skis out in the surf going back
and forth with the attendant constant drone of the machines. One of them constantly broke down so there was a maintenance effort going on the entire time they were there. These riders would zoom around out on the ocean making their racket, but they also zoomed into the shallows trying to jump over the higher waves hitting the shore. They did everything at a high rate of speed and were oblivious to children being in the waves close to shore. Someone finally called the Police, who spoke to the boys and from then on the jet-skis were launched up island. The testosterone showed up now, though with the two zooming back and forth right behind the Sea View instead of down the back several houses. I guess they showed us. One day it rained heavily so lots of people were on the porch reading. That's when our jet-skiers hauled a huge tent out and started maintenance on the jet-skis. They didn't seem to understand that there were other people there also. So now we know that narcissists go to Pawley's Island also.
The Inn itself is an old building (1937?) with paneled everything, louvered cabana doors, ceiling fans, window fans, a toilet and sink in every room but the shower is at the end of the hall. Did I mention a TV? There is none. Did I mention AC? There is only AC in the cottage but we didn't miss it. We stayed out of the room during the day and by the time we went to bed the ocean winds had lowered the room temps to a very manageable level. Did it get hot at night? Sure, but it was definitely manageable. What's that about the shower at the end of the hall? That's right, no shower/bath in the rooms. The prevailing joke for Lori and I all week was which one of us had the room key since we never saw one. The inn's walls were covered with great artwork. There were at least two shelves of books with the instruction that if you don't finish it, mail it back sometime. Games, cards, loads of entertainment ideas were available also. When you enter the inn at the back, there is a cabinet. In one of the drawers are sticker labels and sharpies to allow you 
to label whatever beverages you brought with you. There is also a huge icemaker and huge refrigerator to keep your beer or wine, sodas, whatever, cool. Every evening, limes and lemons appear so you can mix your favorite libation. The inn also provided cups and coozies (wraps for beer bottles) for your use. In the "courtyard" formed by the "u" shape of the inn and the cottage, there were amazing flowers growing and at least three or four cats which the children there never ceased trying to pet. The cats, being typical card-carrying members of the the cat world, spent their week avoiding all entreaties.

The people. Hmmm. Sea View has so many rooms booked by people who visit every year at the same time that for Lori and I it very much felt like we were intruding on someone else's vacation. I thought they were family until Wednesday night when one of the very friendly guests explained that they were all different families who came the same week every year. My response was that the shared experience over a number of years had made them  as close (if not closer) than many families. This is a huge reason the Sea View still operates I think. It is an anachronism in our time of large seaside hotel and condo developments but one which is so valuable. This is ocean housing of the '40's and '50's, probably not the thing for today's  20-somethings but valuable at the very least for the slice of americana it preserves. Lori and I weren't there an hour before several guests introduced themselves and brought us into interesting conversations on the back porch. I cannot begin to remember all the names, and one of our newly made friends tells me that comes after the second or even third year there, but a nicer group of people from a wider range of pursuits I don't think I'd ever be able to find. The connection across the board was the Sea View. I commented to a couple of them that I had never met nicer kids (from teenage to toddler) and how impressed I was with their "family." They said, "Thanks, but we aren't family." Maybe not by blood but the shared experience made them a family. Didn't make it easier to be there, feeling at times like we were intruding on their shared vacation, but as the week went on it definitely got better.

We started our  week at the beach with a folder full of mapquest directions which took us on the most boring travel part of the trip to Myrtle Beach we've ever experienced. So on the way home we went the old way. Much nicer. We got to within an hour of Myrtle Beach and spent about the next three hours bumper to bumper in a torrential downpour. Traffic was miserable, crawling at 20 mph with brake lights flashing all around us, wipers on full speed, hot and humid in a small hybrid. In the Honda Insight, when you touch the brake and the gasoline engine dies, the cooling part of the ac goes away and it blows outside air. Outside hot, humid, air mixed with auto exhaust. Not a pretty part of the visit. Every small town on our trip, all the places we have enjoyed meandering through for years had been bypassed by new highway construction. Anyway, we had to be there by 6:15 for the dinner bell and we rolled in about an hour early. The clouds were broken up and blue was showing through everywhere. The first problem we encountered was parking. There was no place to put the car except a small lot that said: "Absolutely NO parking for Sea View guests!" So we parked there, went in and got a short tour. The manager, Kip asked where we parked and said, "Don't worry about that, we have that worked out with them. You can park there." The car faced the salt march on the landward side of Pawley's and we made our way up to the first of many great meals. Sitting outside after dinner, one after another, multiple guests introduced themselves and asked how  and who we were so by early evening we alreay knew several folks. We walked out to the Salt Marsh and watched the sun go down. A more beautiful sight would be hard to find. The tide was in and that meant the marsh was full of water. There were crab baskets hanging from ropes and a kayak was tied up to the old, worn deck. The temperature was wonderful and we sat and watched the sun drop over the horizon. We had already unloaded the car and after a day of crawling in traffic we both were ready to end this day. Our room was an "oceanside" which meant it was in the main inn and had views of both the marsh and the ocean (with a little work). We got lovely breezes coming in both windows and with the full door open (a cabana door was there and latched) and the ceiling fan and two window fans keeping a constant breeze through the room and out the windows across the hall we were able to survive above average nighttime temperatures. Breakfast was served at 8:30. Too much to eat. We went out to the beach (there is no pool) and plunged into a day of reading and taking dips in the bath-like ocean. We lived by the bells calling us to meals and at 1:15 we had changed and showered and were sitting down to too much food to eat. The same goes for every meal and the spaces between the meals
every day. It did rain one day and we took the opportunity to visit a few shops and a Piggly-Wiggly Grocery Store. Then it was back to wait for the bells. Good thing I know about Pavlov's dog. So there was more food per meal, 1/3 more meals per day means we were eating way too much. But we were eating way too much very, very good food. Collard greens to die for, probably the best fried chicken I have ever had, but Wednesday night they just upped the ante. A low-country shrimp boil. A large outdoor boiler filled with large shrimp, kielbasa, corn, potatoes, onions, garlic and other stuff along with two packages of crab boil. Incredible. This was all poured out on newspaper outside and the bell was rung. Excellent!
The people. From the staff to the other guests, we met some of the nicest people and I told several parents how impressed I was by their children. Remember, no pool, no tv, no cell phones, no computers. But these young people were so impressive. Wow. On Friday night as we were winding down and beginning to lament the end of our vacation, the kids scheduled a talent show and asked everyone to sign up. It was an amazingly talented group of people. They put on such a fun show. I cannot even begin to express how much I enjoyed it. There was one song about poisoning the pigeons in a park sung by a gentleman who added such energy and drama that a song full of multi-syllabic words but a pretty sick theme became hilarious. He sold it. There were poems and dramatic readings and I felt like I had turned back the clock.
Saturday we left early and came back to the world. But what great memories! Thanks, Sea View, we'll be back.