I want to explain myself, but I also think most of you know me well enough that the explanation is not strictly necessary. Commencements are not my natural environment. Too many people. Too small a space. The particular flavor of boredom that sets in when you have been sitting for two hours and the ceremony has not yet started. We were told to arrive early. Two hours early. I obeyed. I brought the laptop because I know myself, and because I am, above all else, a pragmatist.
But this was Elise. My youngest. I was not going to miss it.
Graduate portrait. Made from custom MidJourney GPT based on my paintings.
We packed in shoulder to shoulder, no one entering or leaving, touching on all sides the way you do in a place that has reached its absolute, final, complete capacity….plus a bunch standing. The seats we had arrived early to claim offered a clear view of the stage, which was the small victory I intended to protect. I opened the laptop. I made peace with the situation.
And then, against every expectation I had assembled, it was good.
Five hundred or so graduates. An hour and fifteen minutes from opening to field. Then we were outside in decent May weather, taking pictures, saying goodbyes, talking to people I had not seen in a while. A friend who coaches track and cross country at that college was there. Three of my former runners, still competing at the college level, were there. A photographer friend I had not talked to in months told me he is taking over the photography department at a college a hundred miles away. Good news. Handshakes. The kind of catching up that you do not expect to do at a commencement but somehow always manage when you actually show up. I did not open the laptop once.
But I want to tell you about the keynote. This is a faith-based school, and the speaker was a pastor, which meant the speech was going to be either very good or very long and you genuinely did not know which until it began. He was gifted, as it turned out. Economy of words. Good timing. His topic was change and what stays the same. He started by giving a shout out to his parents in the room and mentioned, with what seemed like real pleasure in it, that he had not told them he was doing the keynote. Surprise. Then, to illustrate his point about endurance and change, he invited what he called a random art student to the podium to deliver what a commencement address might look like in 2051.
The student was his son. Who was graduating that day. From that school.
Keynote Speakers son. Made from custom MidJourney GPT based on my paintings and photos.
The son walked up and delivered a mirror of his father's speech: peace be with you, Jesus paid the price for us, some things do not change. And then: sorry, Dad, I also forgot to mention I was speaking today. He thanked his professors, his friends, God. He thanked his father. The PhDs on stage looked genuinely surprised. No one had asked permission. There was no valedictorian, no student government president, no standard format that had been extended. There was just a father who opened a door that did not previously exist, and a son who walked through it.
A story inside a story. The son the only student who got to speak to his class from a student perspective. The faith the same at both ends. Everything else in motion.
I keep turning it over. Not because it was sentimental, though it was, but because it was genuinely well-made. The structure was elegant. The surprise was earned. The whole thing worked because someone trusted his instinct rather than the protocol, and the PhDs on stage just had to sit there and receive it. The week in the studio was its own story.
The silk scarves are done. I had finalized the painting of them earlier in the week and added five more pieces for the senior art girls and cross-country girls graduating this spring. Saturday evening, after getting home from the graduation, I steamed the lot of them. Washed and pressed them Sunday. The full sequence: painting, steaming, fixing, washing, pressing, done. They are made for the women in Elise's wedding party, all in the soft colors she chose. There is a different satisfaction in finishing work made for someone specific.
Less like a statement. More like a letter.
The table is not finished.
It is also a wedding gift for Elise, a dining room table made from a thick cookie of wood, about two inches deep, with the natural voids you get in a piece like that. I had spent hours getting it flat, sanded, and sealed. Then I moved to filling the voids, which requires a deep pour epoxy. Standard resin in anything much over a quarter inch gets hot enough to crack the wood or start a fire. Deep pour changes the chemistry, slows the cure, manages the heat. I have used the same brand for over a decade. I know it completely.
Except there was a new formulation. And I had not used the deep pour in over a year.
Resin disaster on wedding table
I knew something was wrong as soon as the resin touched the wood. The viscosity was completely different from what I remembered. Every dam I had built, every piece of tuck tape laid on the underside, failed. A gallon of resin on the table. Some on the floor. The tape now permanently encased in hardened resin on the underside of a piece I had spent a week preparing.
The table will not be at the wedding.
It is fixable. The router sled comes out today. The piece comes down a little in thickness. We start the void-filling again, this time knowing exactly what I am pouring. It will be spectacular when it is done. But there is a particular feeling that comes with watching a week of careful work become a problem to solve, and I gave it its due before I let it be the next thing to fix.
On the way to my track meet Friday I stopped at a yard sale, the way you only do when you are driving your own car and not a bus full of athletes. A whim. They had chairs there that match the table perfectly. The table has companions waiting for it now, and there is a second table in the deal I will get to do something with. A loss that came with a find. The week had a lot of that.
Close up resin disaster on wedding table
On the drive home from the graduation, somewhere in the flat drone of the highway, I got on a Zoom call with a pro art group I belong to, other artists and creatives talking about current and coming projects. A fitting end to a long few days. I drove and listened and occasionally talked and watched the fields pass.
Sunday was Mother's Day. I made a card. Then I turned to the table and started sorting out the mess.
The silk is done. The table has more work ahead of it. The chairs are already waiting.
Keep making, keep growing, be you.
Tio
College graduate commencement service.
Don’t Die Without a Dock