Christmas Day in Iowa

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There is no internet reception in this small Iowa town except with a daily brief phone hot spot, so I didn’t write up the Christmas posts until I got back to Orlando. Christmas day the kids presents were boxed up under the tree. There was some attempt at setting order in opening the presents, but the kids had ideas of their own and it became a free-for-all of ripping paper as presents were opened. Allie got a pretty sweet mermaid’s tail from Pam, Jenni, and I. It is made of really warm fleece and is great for cuddling up on a cold night. It is also rather large because Pam demonstrated how it worked for her parents several days before Christmas. I am pretty certain it is far more hip that the bunny suit pajamas modeled in A Christmas Story. Pam and I ended up with some pretty great warm winter socks. They were needed to keep our feet warm at night since no amount of covers are quite warm enough.

This was the first Christmas where the family didn’t go to Grandmother’s house for a big family meal. Grandma Martha Schwartz passed away this year leaving a void in that holiday tradition.  Instead, a large roast was cooking in the oven all day. An extra table was brought out so everyone could find a seat. Luke ate two heaping plates of meat. I have never seen a man eat so much meat in one sitting. For me that was the Christmas miracle of the day. I helped in clearing the tables and then the games resumed for the rest of Christmas day.

Christmas Eve Cookies

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On Christmas Eve in Iowa, Kimberly brought out the blank Christmas cookies for decorating. Icing came in three colors of squeeze tubes and there were sprinkles of every variety. Allie Rose turned a snowman cookie into the bloodiest Santa Claus with a green beard. She glopped the icing on with zealous glee. She was encouraged to be more conservative with her icing but her style was thick and gloppy.

Kimberly clearly has an artistic streak because her cookies turned out being maser pieces. The biggest tree cookie was meant to be a cookie decorated by everyone at the table, but Kim decorated is so beautifully that no one else dared touch it. I decided to add one ornament as my contribution. Pam decorated a tree cookie with a Zorro slash of red ribbons and some very fancy snow flake sprinkles for ornaments.

Destiny also had a real knack for decorating cookies. Hers were well though out and cleanly executed. The candy cane had just the right mix of red and green stripes, and a snowman’s smile had 5 individual green sprinkles to represent his teeth.

I decided to decorate a cookie myself after the sketch was done. The cookie looked like a thought bubble. I had no idea exactly what it was meant to be, so I ended up creating a rather abstract cookie with a green Grinch face at the center. I later found out that the cookie was supposed to be shaped like Santa’s head which makes sense in hind sight. I didn’t actually eat any of these cookies, but I bet Allie’s Bloody Santa cookie was the sweetest of all. This was a fun and creative family activity that I enjoyed documenting and participating in.

Game Night in Iowa

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The night before, we had watched a West World marathon for who knows how many hours. This evening was set aside for games, be they board games, card games, what have you. Preston was over for part of the night. He sat on the recliner chair scrolling through his iPhone. Pam sat at the kitchen table, which is mission central for games. Since Preston was up for a game that meant I wouldn’t be needed to fill out a a four player set.  That left me time to complete this sketch.

For the first time, I re-cropped the sketch several time as I was working on it. This is a feature I have been waiting for. In this case I had to make the sketch a bit bigger since Preston sat in the foreground. I didn’t want to crop him off at the knees. The Christmas tree was to my left and can be seen reflected in the sliding glass door in the back of the scene.

I used the perspective tool to chisel in the composition quickly. When I started painting, the lights were off in the kitchen and when they were turned on, I kept painting to lighten up the scene. This was a good way to work guaranteeing that I progressed from dark to light. There is an inviting warmth to the scene as the family gathered around the table to play.

Games Galore

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Over the Christmas Holidays there wasn’t much need to go outside in the cold in Iowa. Instead we played endless card and board games. This sketch is of a late night game of Quelf which is an unpredictable party game that gives random a new name! You might be asked to answer hilarious trivia, perform ridiculous stunts, or obey silly rules. The game inspires creativity, wit and sense of humor in ways you’ve never imagined. Pam had to answer questions using nothing but song lyrics. Destiny at one point was crawling on the floor. Some questions had to be answered within 30 seconds which was timed with an hourglass.

Card games were also predominate. Euchre and Canasta seem to be the games of choice. I started to catch on to the rules of Canasta, but euchre is very fast paced and I never caught on to all the rules or strategies. Another board game we played quite a bit was Parcheesi. In this game you move your players, (bulls, bears, camels or elephants), around the board and try to be the first to get all your players home. There is some strategy with blocking and knocking other players back. It was fun to play. I won my first game but lost the other two.

Making Ribbons at the Center

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On May 22, 2017 there was a suicide bombing at the The Manchester Arena in the United Kingdom. An Islamic terrorist
detonated a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb as people were leaving the
Manchester Arena following a concert by the American singer Ariana
Grande. The incident was treated as an act of terrorism. 22 innocent concert goers died. 59 were injured.

A year before in Orlando we had suffered an act of terrorism that took 49 lives at the Pulse Nightclub. As an act of solidarity with the City of Manchester, people gathered at The Center (946 N Mills Ave, Orlando, FL 32803). A video crew was on hand to record a video of support and love for the city of Manchester. Members of the Orange County Regional History Center had gone to the event to show their support. They all sat around the conference table waiting for the event to begin.

Someone mentioned that there was a bag of pins and unfolded ribbons that were waiting to be made. Pam Schwartz, the chief curator at the History Center suggested they get the bag out since there were many idle hands. Soon everyone was folding the ribbons and securing them with pins. I tried a few myself and it is a tricky process at first, which quickly becomes routine. Ribbons began to pile up on the table. I am sure the safety pins pricked more that a few fingers.

Soon members of the community were being recorded with their words of support and this impromptu ribbon making session became the backdrop for this video of solidarity. What the world needs now is love sweet love, now more that ever.

A Doll’s House Part 2 at Shakes

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Doll House Part 2 by Lucas Hnath is being performed at the Orlando Shakes (812 E Rollins St, Orlando, FL 32803) through February 23, 2019. In
the final scene of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 groundbreaking masterwork, Nora Helmer
makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children, and begin
a life on her own. This climactic event—when Nora slams the door on
everything in her life—instantly propelled world drama into the modern
age. In A Doll’s House, Part 2, many years have passed since
Nora’s exit. Now, there’s a knock on that same door. Nora has returned.
But why? And what will it mean for those she left behind?

The simple set designed by Stephen Jones consisted of a curved wall with one huge Victorian door.  The paint was chipped with time. The play did indeed begin with a knock at the door. When Anne Marie (Anne Hering) answered the door all the lights on stage illuminated to their top setting creating a blinding sunburst effect as Nora (Suzanne O’Donnell) entered. For some perspective, Pam and I watched the original Ibsen play as a live 1959 telebroadcast. Nora in that production was a flippant housewife demurring to her husband’s wishes. She forged a signature on a loan in order to whisk her husband to Italy for the sake of his health. That act indentured her to try and pay the loan off by begging her husband for small sums of money. Instead of a Christmas present she begged him for a small sum of cash.

When Nora returned, she was a self-made woman of means. She had become an author and was very successful at it. She was a feminist firmly believing that women do not need men for their happiness. The Part 2 production is set 15 years after Nora left her family which would be around 1894. Women would not gain the right to vote for another 26 years, but Nora was well ahead of her time believing she could make a difference through her writing which had to be authored with a pseudonym. She wrote about her marriage to Torvald (Steven Lane) and the book encouraged women to take charge of their own lives. A judge was upset by her message, so he found out who she really was and discovered that she was still married. Torvald had never filed for divorce. It was more convenient for him to think she had died than to face the shame of filing for divorce. She needed that divorce to truly be free. This play focused on that quest. Despite her success, she was still beholden to unfair laws that made her the property of a man she had not seen for 15 years. She needed to sit down with her husband to again demand her freedom. I identified with her desire for artistic freedom.

The language is decidedly modern with some cursing that seemed out of place compared to the original Ibsen play. These outbursts do offer some comedic relief. People in the audience who had suffered through divorce were nodding their heads in solidarity as Nora pontificated about the need for freedom. Love and affection were cherished, but after marriage she felt people changed. They no longer wooed their partners and took them for granted. This is what caused affection to turn to resentment. This was a decidedly modern message.

Tickets are $32 to $44.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for January 12 and 13, 2019

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Saturday January 12, 2019

5pm to 8pm Free. Night of Fire Crealde. Crealdé School of Art (600 St Andrews Blvd, Winter Park, Florida 32792). Bring your camera, because the stunning campus comes ALIVE after dark for the 8th annual Night of Fire! Enjoy free live music, refreshments, adult beverages, and storytelling around the fire (my cozy favorite), and tour the opening exhibition HAND IN HAND: THE CREATIVE WORKS OF JANVIER MILLER AND GUSTAF MILLER.

It’s fun and free to participate in all of the art workshops and demonstrations; including a torch cut metal demonstration, a gas kiln firing, raku firing and a light painting photography display over Lake Sterling. There will be painting demonstrations in the studios, too. Hands-on youth workshops from 5–6:30 p.m. Live music and workshops for adults until 8 p.m.

The evening also serves as the opening reception for the “Director’s Choice V” exhibition of works by Crealde’s youth faculty.

The Front Office will be open to register for classes. All activities are free.

8pm to Midnight. $5 Second Saturdays in Sanford. West End Trading Company. 202 S. Sanford Ave. Sanford FL 407-322-7475. Two stages of live entertainment.

9pm to Midnight Free but get a beer or two. Eugene Snowden. The Imperial at Washburn Imports

1800 N. Orange Ave. Orlando FL. 407-228-4992.

Sunday January 13, 2019

1pm to  3pm $9. Film Slam. Enzian Theater. 1300 S. Orlando Ave. Winter Park FL. 407-629-0054Bimonthly showcase of independent shorts made by Florida filmmakers. 


1pm to 5:30pm Free. Free Family Day on the Second Sunday. The Mennello Museum of American Art, 900 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32803.  The make-and-take craft table is open from noon-2:30 p.m., and docents
are available to give mini-tours of the museum. Then it’s open house in
the galleries until 4:30 p.m.

Noon to 5pm $8 Florida Wedding Expo. Orange County Convention Center. 9800 International Drive 407-685-9800. Fiances, moms, maids and more are all welcome at this wedding expo, with vendors, free services, and honeymoon giveaways. info@floridaweddingexpo.com.

Baking Cookies

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The kitchen is the hub of so many family activities leading up to Christmas in the Schwartz family home in Iowa. Every morning the home would fill with the smell of bacon along with pancakes, waffles, or eggs. Large roasts would bake for hours in the oven for dinner. I have no doubt that I gained a few pounds this holiday season. I imagine that any extra weight helps to keep warm as temperatures plummet. It did snow while we were there, but it was only a dusting of less than an inch.

The cookie batter was mixed in the electric mixer in the foreground and at this stage there were many cooks in the kitchen. I couldn’t catch them all as they crowded around the mixer and then dispersed. Ron was the most focused remaining consistently in the corner of the kitchen mixing pizza crust by hand in a small yellow bowl. I also caught Destiny. I believe she was placing the balls of batter on cooking sheets as I sketched her.

Pam and her mom were also in the mix, but they moved off before I could catch them in the sketch. Plans were made for the Christmas day dinner well ahead of time. The cookies were a fluffy crunchy peanut concoction with marshmallows inside. They tasted amazing. The Tupperware they were stored in didn’t snap together very well, so we had to eat them before they went stale.  We ate them for days.

Venison Grind

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Over the Christmas holidays, Pam Schwartz and I went to her parents’ house in Iowa. Deer hunting season started September 15, 2018 and ends January 27, 2019. A local TV news story was about the problem of deer causing damage to cars and people on the roadways. Iowa in one of the top 5 states where you are most likely to hit a deer. It is estimated deer, elk, moose, and caribou collisions dropped
slightly to 1.33 million in the U.S. between July 1, 2017 and June 30,
2018 — down from 1.34 million in 2017, despite the fact
that there are nearly four million more licensed drivers.

The family has a large shed with an automotive lift and a huge refrigeration unit for storing the season’s meat. We went shopping before Christmas at a local sporting shop. Ron had blown off the sight on one of his trusted hunting rifles and needed to get it fixed. We also shopped for casings and the associated spices needed for preparation of the meat.

Before Christmas, fellow hunters and neighbors came over to the house to grind deer meat in the shed. I decided it might be a sketch opportunity. On the floor was this collection of deer heads on a plastic sheet. I got right to work on the sketch. The actual grinding was happening behind me. I could hear folks chatting as work commenced. This felt like a friendly community activity.

Ron Schwartz explained that one of the skulls had been dug up on a trail, only a small bit of antler had been visible. Ron threw the one tiny antler on the floor as I was sketching saying, “That’s all that’s left of that one.” I was left with the impression that the skull had been blown apart.

One hunter, looking over my shoulder spoke with some reverence about the deer head on the upper right. He pointed out that the antlers on one side were much more developed than the antlers on the other side. He also said, “He was one hell of a fighter.” The eyes were open and wet.

There is a nice collection of deer themed prints in the Schwartz home. One that I particularly like is of a deer wandering out onto a field of cut corn with her fawn after dark as it snows. A single light shining from a far farm window was the only sign that humans might inhabit this gorgeous landscape.

Meat was ground into sausage and smoked. That night, we all tried some and it was delicious.

The Thaxton

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My final stop on my Saint Louis sketch crawl was The Thaxton (1009 Olive St, St. Louis, MO 63101). Today, it is a historic art deco themed venue with a vintage vibe that offers unique events. The space can be rented for weddings and private events. When not privately booked, it is open to the public as the Thaxton Speakeasy, a downtown underground lounge. I didn’t know this as I was sketching. I assumed it was an old historic theater.

Architects, Klipstein and Rothman designed The Thaxton building as well as the Civil Courts Building in downtown St. Louis. The building was constructed in 1928 for Eastman Kodak. The original use of the building was as a retail camera store. Eastman
Kodak had plans to erect a total of 100 identical buildings throughout
the United States. Today, it is the only known building left of five,
that were built before the Great Depression.

At a restaurant next door, someone was delivering topiarys for the front entrance. They were stacked in the back of a pick up and then moved to each side of the front door.