KNPR Radio Interview in Las Vegas

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Pam Schwartz and I took a trip to Las Vegas where she was attending a National Council on Public History conference. This scheduling coincidence brought memorial experts to Las Vegas as their museums are continuing to collect and catalogued the items of remembrance that people left after the October 1, 2017 shooting that took 58 lives and had over 500 injured treated at area hospitals. With breakout segments like  “Documenting Resilience: Condolence
Collection Projects in the Wake of Violence,” the national gathering of
academics plans to discuss how communities such as Orlando, Newtown, Connecticut, and Isla Vista, California responded to mass casualty trauma.

KNPR Radio interviewed a panel of individuals who have had to collect in the wake of tragedy. Melissa Barthelemy is a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara who worked on efforts there. Pam Schwartz is chief curator of the Orange County Regional
History Center in Orlando, Florida and created and led the effort to manage the collection of items left at the scene of
the Pulse Nightclub Massacre. Cynthia Sanford is the registrar at the Clark County Museum. She is
heading up the effort to collect and catalog many of the items left at some of the
memorials in Las Vegas.

I sketched as the three fielded questions. Producer Doug Puppel set the tone of the interview. Barthelemy said the collection, archiving and exhibition of items from pop-up memorials are a new area of history research. These
kinds of memorials really only started to appear in the last few
decades. She said people point to the many impromptu memorials left
in the wake of Princess Diana’s death as a contributor to the rise of
spontaneous memorials. The fact that these mass memorials are visible on TV and social media contribute to the rise in items left in the wake of tragedy.

Schwartz said not every community is impacted the same way by a mass
casualty event and therefore not every community reacts in the same way. Those differences change what is collected and how it is exhibited. “The
biggest thing for people to understand, especially people who have not
been through a similar sort of situation, is that one size doesn’t fit
all,” she said. The focus of any exhibition should be on what will help the community with its healing process.

Sanford explained that her museum already has between 15,000 and 20,000 artifacts from the memorials. “Our
role as a museum is to preserve the history of Southern Nevada,” she
said, “Unfortunately, this event is now part of our history.” She
said the museum is planning an exhibit for the one year anniversary of
the shooting, but there is not a plan for a permanent home for the
items. 5,000 items have been catalogued so far. 50 years from now, 100 years from now those items will be in storage. Every item you work on is someone’s story. Sometimes when you get home, that is when it hits you. The three interviewees all explained that they are honored to be able to collect these events for their communities. You have to find a way to get through it.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for May 12th and 13th

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Austin’s CoffeeSaturday May 12, 2018

8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free. Parramore Farmers Market. The east side of the Orlando City Stadium, across from City View. Purchase quality, fresh and healthy food grown in your own
neighborhood by local farmers, including Fleet Farming, Growing Orlando,
and other community growers.

4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Free. Young Voices. JB Callaman Center 102 North Parramore Ave Orlando FL. Teen Open Mic Every second Saturday of the Month.

8 p.m. to 10 p.m. $5. Second Saturdays in Sanford.  202 S Sanford Ave, Sanford, FL. Live music event featuring 2 stages, drink specials and more.

Sunday May 13, 2018

10 a.m. to Noon Free. Heartfulness Relaxation and Meditation Class. University, 5200 Vineland Rd, Orlando, FL 32811. The Method of Heartfulness A simple and practical way to experience the heart’s unlimited resources. 

1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Free. Family Day. The Mennello Museum of American Art, 900 East Princeton Street, 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.

10 p.m. to Midnight Free, but get a coffee. Comedy Open Mic. Austin’s Coffee, 929 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL. Free comedy show! Come out & laugh, or give it a try yourself.

Artegon is Long Gone

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I did a series of sketches when plans were made to open Artegon Market Place on International Drive. I was fascinated by the idea of a thriving market similar to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul Turkey. What appeared in the first weeks were a series of cages filling the empty space of a former mall. Those cages were eventually replaced with mini themed store fronts but the place felt fractured and cut up. I had been toying with the idea of renting a space in the market to sell my art because they promised low cost rents for artists to start. RV, a local artist rented a large gallery but soon left because of broken promises by the management.

Being across from many of International Drives Premium Outlet malls where tourists spend plenty of money before heading back home, I thought there might be a ready market. For whatever reason, the market place never thrived. The center first opened in 2003 as Festival Bay Mall, but that only lasted until 2011. Artegon opened in 2014. The place seemed cursed. In the open inner court area a large Aerial Adventure Course was built with rope bridges, zip lines, suspended disks. The first week the course was opened, Robert Belvoir, 52, fell 30 feet to his death.

Lightstone Group ended its two-year experiment to take the
“property in a new direction.” Bass Pro Shop and Cinemark Theaters remain open since their buildings aren’t owned by Lightstone. Artegon’s owner recouped its $25 million investment, selling
the properties for Bass Pro Shops and Cinemark Theaters for a combined
$30 million. In the Noor Salman trial, footage was shown of Pulse Nightclub shooter Omar Mateen buying ammunition for the rifle used in the Pulse Nightclub attack along with some candy from Bass Pro Shops in the weeks before the massacre.

Blue Bamboo Fundraiser

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I went to Cavanaugh’s Wines for a Blue Bamboo Music Center for the Arts fundraiser back in 2016. Since that time, the venue has changed to Digress Wine (1215 Edgewater Drive, Orlando, Florida 32804.) The evening was a happy hour that featured Robotman plus Chris Cortez and Danny Jordan. Chris and Danny are featured in this sketch.

Blue Bamboo is
part venue, part recording studio, and part art gallery, located at 1905
Kentucky Ave in Winter Park, Fl, just off Fairbanks between Formosa and
Clay. This unique new space offers live performances most evenings,
a state of the art recording studio, and gallery space.  More concert
hall than night club, they are open to all ages and they present all kinds
of music, theater, dance, and spoken word events.  The venue is also available
for private parties.  You can browse the schedule for tickets or call
 407-636-9951 for more information.
 

Seating is limited so they encourage guests to purchase tickets in advance or make reservations. Tickets are also available at the door, based on availability.  Most
shows begin at 8PM and the doors open at 7.  They offer beer and wine,
soft drinks, and light snacks.  Check the schedule at their calendar link.

The Early Girl

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Downstairs Lady Theatre presents The Early Girl written by Caroline Kava. Directed by Vicki Wicks, the play focuses on Lily, (Kelly Solberg), who plans to work at the brothel just a month
in order to secure a solid financial foundation for her daughter,
Dolly. She enters the brothel insecure and shy but with ambitions to make plenty of money. Jewel Box House Madam Lana (Dianna Bennett) believes in Lilly and encourages her, believing she will break records her first year in the house. Lana was once a working girl herself but now she runs her own establishment and she has only a few rules, no cell phones, only leave the house once a month for a “Doctor Day” and no violence.

This play doesn’t sensationalize the sex industry, instead it delved
into these women’s hopes dreams and lost aspirations. The setting is the
waiting area between Johns. The women pass the time reading and
chatting. The brothel setting is surprisingly domestic, a quiet suburban living room. The rehearsal I attended was in a Winter Garden home adding to the surreal domesticity.

Pam Schwartz came along with me to chaperone. I felt like Toulouse Lautrec sketching brothel life. While I struggled with the sketch, I heard her laughing at the off hand exchanges between the women on stage. The play is both comic and tragic. Lilly is mentored and advised by the more established girls. Jean (Carol Jacqueline Palumbo) who is a smart woman who once thought she was only going to earn some extra money and get out, but now she feels close to hitting rock bottom and Pat (Kat Kemmet) who uses her earnings to buy frivolous personal items, Laurel (April Tubbs) is hardened and keeps to herself reading but she sends the money back to her child in Spokane. George (Dina Najjar) has a regular customer named Eric who she feels may one day ask her to marry him. Each woman has their personal reasons for what they do and each has a heart of gold.

The Early Girls ambitions get out of hand when she takes Eric, George’s regular to bed and kisses him which is in itself an infraction. George goes ballistic and a no hold barred cat fight ensues. Of course violence is against the house rules, and the girls have to stick together to keep from being broken apart. Though there are differences, they care about each other. As an outsider looking in, we get to care about each woman in turn as well. Though in an industry that might seem dis-empowering, these women are empowered.

The show is now at Tampa Fringe. 

HCC Studio Theatre

1411 E 11th Ave, Tampa, FL 33605

The remaining show dates are,

Thurs May 10 at 9pm,

Sat May 12 at 3pm

Tickets are $14.50

If you don’t want to make the drive to Tampa, the show is coming to Breakthrough Theater 419 W Fairbanks Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789. This would be a great way to extend your Orlando International Fringe experience.
June 1-2 at 8pm
June 3 at 3pm and 8pm
Tickets are $12 General Admission
$10 for Breakthrough Alumni

Time Trials at Daytona International Speedway

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Wendy Wallenberg gave me a tip about sketching time trials at Daytona International Speedway. it is a long scenic drive to the speedway down the Beach Line Expressway. Wendy met me at the entrance and guided me to the bleachers being used to watch the race. This wasn’t a crowded day at the track. The few people in the bleachers were mostly friends and family of the drivers. Car 0158A crashed before I got to the track. The driver was female and she was unhurt but clearly the car is going to need lots of love and care. Since the crews catch phrase is “No Mo Money”  it might be some time before that front end gets repaired. No Mo Money Race Engineering is a full service race shop. Now offering Race car rentals, Track day rentals, Enduro Racing, Chump car Racing, Track side service, and Coaching. Specializing in Mazda Miata’s.

Track side, I sat in the top row of the bleachers to  get a view over the fencing. cars would scream by so fast that they were just blurs. Being an  off day at the track, it was possible to park anywhere to see the race from any angle. I contented myself with these bleachers.

I never know who is in the lead of who is trailing. I suppose with time you can learn to follow the leaders. From my perspective it was a constant loud assault on the senses. The same effect might be achieved with a large crowd of competitors running with leaf blowers.

After the race, there was a small gathering with food and drink near the starting line. It offered a chance to mix and mingle with the racers.

Mother’s Day at the Mennello Museum of American Art

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I  went to the the Mennello Museum of American Art, (900 East Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803) to sketch the Free Family Day on the Second Sunday of the month. This just happened to line up with  Mother’s Day. At the front desk, there was a free rose for every mother who came to the museum on that day. On display in the entry gallery were fairly large twisted metal sculptures along with the preparatory drawings on the walls. I decided to sit on a bench and sketch the sextant who greeted guests and handed out roses to the moms. Quite a few museum guests brought their mom along for  a day at the museum.

On exhibit in the museum now is, “When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan“, who uses the power of paint’s materiality and immediacy in the Mennello Museum’s exhibition.
She brings form to the reality of our environmental and sociopolitical
problems. This exhibition debuts nine new works by the artist.

Heffernan’s work explores the imagery of the mind’s eye to create
complex environments. Her recent paintings create alternative habitats
in response to the environmental disaster and planetary excess. With
rising waters, she imagines worlds in trees or on rafts in which
undulating mattresses, tree boughs, and road signs guide the journey.
Construction cones interrupt the landscape signaling places to stop,
enter tiny interior worlds, and reflect on the human condition—its
hopeless activity, violence, failure, and redemption. Heffernan tends
these alternative environments to safeguard bounties we cannot live
without. In other moments, she names and points fingers to those people
and activities implicated in recent calamities of both the physical and
socio-political environment. Intricately wrought, Heffernan’s paintings
evoke the fantastical allegory of Hieronymus Bosch and the sublime of
Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt.

Also on exhibit in the Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden outside are two large sculptures, “Waltzing Matilda” and “Twin Vortexes” by American sculptor Alice Aycock. The Mennello Museum inaugurated the Grounds for Exhibitions with these beautiful works which
were originally part of series of seven sculptures
in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan
entitled Park Avenue Paper Chase. Grounds for Exhibition features
year-long large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned
American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando
audiences. The sculptures will be on display through September 2018.

Blue Box 12

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I established the Blue Box Initiative, so I could sketch talented performers in each of the 27 blue boxes which are painted on the sidewalks downtown Orlando. These boxes are for panhandlers and buskers. Busking was possible only during day light hours, but a recent amendment allows the boxes to be used at night. Although set up for panhandlers, police often insist street performers must use the blue boxes. Performing outside the boxes can result in 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.

Sasha Kendrick volunteered to perform in Blue Box 12 which is right across from the Lake Eola Band Shell. To me, performing on the Band Shell stage would make the most sense, but that is not allowed. Las Vegas has black circles painted on the pavement of Freemont Street which is also used to keep performers contained. The difference about Las Vegas is that every black circle has performers because there are so many tourists walking the streets that it is worth it for the performers to work just about every night. In Orlando the tourists keep to the theme parks never walking the streets of downtown and there is little effort to attract tourists downtown.

Blue Box 12 was in the blazing sun with no chance of shade. The light sidewalk cement acted like a mirrored reflector. Luckily I had thought to bring some sun screen. Sasha played her violin heroically for the hour or so that I sketched. I had established some of the background scene before she arrived. She pointed out that the extreme heat could cause the wood of her violin to warp. The bridge, which hold the strings away from the body of the violin in particular could warp and then literally spring free of the instrument.

I kept my sketch brief, and then we walked across the street where she continued to  play on a Lake Eola bench in the shade. She played in Lake Eola often and the police are happy to allow her to play. Someone bought us both a soda while she played and I did a second sketch. This was the first and only time that I have been given a tip for sketching on location. Were I to put out a tip jar anytime I  sketched, I would be considered a pan handler who was breaking the law and could face 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. The week of the Winter Park Paint out, a similar ordinance is in place, but the Paint out organizers got a permit which allowed for the creation of art on Park Avenue for the five days of the event.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for May 5 and 6, 2018

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Saturday May 5, 2016

7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Free but get a drink or two. Thomas Watkins in concert. Marlow’s Tavern 6889 Eagle Watch Drive, Orlando, FL 32822. Marlow’s Tavern is in a great location near the airport,
convenient to everything. Great food, tons of parking, and a friendly
atmosphere.

 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Free. Shuffleboard at Orlando’s Beardall Courts. Orlando’s Beardall Courts 800 Delaney Ave Orlando FL. Shuffleboard at Orlando’s Beardall Courts at 800 Delaney Ave on the 1st Saturday of each month. Free fun!

10:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. Free. Son Flamenco. Ceviche Tapas Orlando, 125 W Church St, Orlando, FL. Hot blooded flamenco dances to acoustic guitar.

Sunday May 6, 2018

10:00 a.m. to Noon Free. Heartfulness Relaxation and Meditation Class. University, 5200 Vineland Rd, Orlando, FL 32811. The Method of Heartfulness A simple and practical way to experience the heart’s unlimited resources.

Noon to 1 p.m. Donation. Yoga. Lake Eola near the red gazebo. Bring your own mat.

4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Free. Maitland Stage Band. Maitland Art Center 231 W Packwood Ave, Maitland, Florida 32751. Jim Foy directs the Maitland Stage Band featuring Harry James and
Benny Goodman selections with singer Tina Stefanos-Philips performing
Helen Forrest tunes. Bring a lawn chair and enjoy the beautiful Art
Center and the Rotary Plaza Stage, Sunday May 6, FREE concert.

Earth Fest Casselberry Florida

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The performers stood on a truck bed stage under two large red umbrellas. There was no shade on the lawn in front of them and a few people watched from the shade of trees on the outskirts of the lawn. IT was boiling hot.

9th Annual EarthFest, Central Florida’s second largest environmentally friendly festival will be held on Saturday, April 28, from 10 AM to 3 PM at Lake Concord Park in Casselberry

Sponsored by the City of Casselberry, Casselberry Friends of the Park and Keep Seminole Beautiful, EarthFest 2018 brings awareness about protecting our environment, creating clean energy and reducing our carbon footprint. The goal is to educate, encourage and empower citizens to create a sustainable environment by participating at the many fun activities located at the Green Vendor Area, Green Transportation and Energy Area, Entertainment Area, Kids Zone, and other fun zones throughout the entire park.

 EarthFest 2018 highlights include a special performance by Beth McKee and The Swamp Sistas, the Arbor Day Free Tree Giveaway, free plant giveaways, butterfly releases, eco-fun activities and live entertainment. Throughout the day, numerous workshops and educational presentations will be held both indoors and at the individual environmental vendor booths.   The Art House features the Recycled Art Show with art that is totally created from re-purposed material.  The Commission Chambers will host the Drop Savers Award Program.