Cameo Theater

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I went to an event called Mills 50. When I got to the location, called Cameo, there was a crowd outside. I made my way inside got a wrist band and was surprised when I was greeted by and old friend from my Disney Days named John Hurst. Not only had I known John from Disney but his dad taught me history in High school in New Jersey! It turns out John and his wife had bought the building on a leap of faith and turned the ground floor into an entertainment complex. John told me that the building opened on Christmas day in 1940 as a movie house. Today the ceiling has been lowered to add another floor. John has his freelance animation studio on the second floor and rents out other offices to entertainment companies.

The interior of Cameo is a hip industrial complex of exposed brick and ceiling beams. An arched line on the wall hints at where the movie theater seating used to be.

The evenings entertainment consisted of folk singer Kaleigh Baker who’s warm inviting voice greeted me when I first entered. The Black V Tribal Dancers were sitting to my left while I was sketching. There exotic belly dancers outfits caught my eye but I was committed to this sketch and it looked like they might be the next act on stage. Sure enough they went up and danced and gyrated to the whoops and screams of a very pleased crowd. The last act I saw was Beef Wellington and Divinci they played the keyboards to the right in the drawing. Divinci, who I didn’t draw, played the keyboard for a solid 10 minutes with his face which was to say the least very amusing and entertaining.

I fell in love with this place. It has the best of art and entertainment. It is raw, exposed and very real. I suspect I will be back many times.

Kimberly Elkins Interview

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Ever since Kimberly stepped foot in the Kerouac house as the new resident author, I seem to have been buzzing around her like an annoying mosquito trying to convince her to let me do a sketch of her at work. The very first night she stepped foot in the house was the evening when “txt” was being performed. If you recall that performance had some of the most sexually explicit offensive and downright insane dialogue being written by the audience in real time on iPhones and blackberries. Genius that I am, I chose a moment right after the performance to excitedly talk to her about my idea of sketching resident authors. To me she seemed shocked. I realized she was just getting to know her surroundings. She looked out the kitchen window for the first time. I don’t know if she felt at home yet. I had spoken to soon. At several other gatherings I threw my proposals at her with no effect. I know that in a crowded social setting I am always a bit adrift. Timing and simple social graces seem to slip when I need them the most.

I was excited to discover that two Full Sail documentary film makers, Lyle Kastrati and Robert Navarro, had succeeded where I had failed. They landed an interview with Kimberly. Since I had already sketched a David Amram Interview in the Kerouac house I realized I just had to sit back relax and learn about Kimberly and her writing process through the video interview with her. The interview went great. She is writing a historical novel about a woman named Laura Bridgeman who is deaf, dumb, blind, and mute, she can only experience the world thru the sense of touch. Laura helped teach Annie Sullivan who later became Hellen Keller’s teacher. Laura was a huge celebrity in her day. I found it interesting that Kimberly said that no matter how well researched the book might be, some part of herself would be reflected in Laura.

Kimberly and I talked in her kitchen this day, I felt for the first time as one artist to another. She told me something that I find reassuring and useful. She said that not having a great memory is actually a good thing for a fiction writer. It allows the writer to feel and interpret rather than just report the facts. I find myself walking that fine line every day writing this blog, am I just reporting, or am I expressing how I actually felt as I did a sketch? Do my other senses fall to the wayside as I sketch? Is my perception of myself and my identity dependent on the feedback I get from my subject?

David Amram and Me

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David Amram is a force of nature, he is a musician, composer, shaman and inspiration. He often stresses the importance of looking for the beauty in the worthless things in life, for those are often the most priceless. David was a good friend of Kerouac and he said Kerouac at any party would always gravitate towards the person in the room who looked the most insecure. It is this giving, encouraging spirit that separated Kerouac from the average artist. David kept stressing the importance of realizing there is beauty all around us, and that a thing of beauty is a joy forever. He pointed out that you don’t have to travel to Europe or Asia to find this beauty. It is right in your back yard, just look around. He stressed the importance of what he called, the University of Hangoutology. If you hang out at a spot long enough you truly begin to discover its secrets. He also likes to point out the importance of spontaneity as a part of the whole experience.
As part of the presentation David showed a video of a performance he gave years ago at the History Center in Orlando. I was shocked when in the foreground of the first shot I saw a younger version of myself in a stiff button down long sleeve shirt and a full head of hair. I was sketching away as usual unnoticed by anyone. It was that evening that lead me to years later decide to go to the Kerouac house and sketch it. It seems like life keeps coming at me in oblique angles. Lines are no longer straight, but instead curve in and around toward the source. I seemed so young and exuberant in the footage and yet I seemed stiff and insecure, like I was dresses up for the corporate role I had to play. I am left wondering in what ways I have changed since that time. The journey continues and David is still there to remind me to keep my eyes open for the wild, wonderful, frenetic, crazy, spontaneous, outlandish, world that has yet to be sketched.

Caroline Kerouac Blake Tribute

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Jack Kerouac’s sister Caroline died in 1964. For years her grave was an unmarked spot below an old Maple tree in Greenwood Cemetery in Downtown Orlando. Members of the Kerouac Project arranged to have a stone marker placed on the spot on March 13th of 2009. Yesterday a small group of Kerouac supporters gathered to honor Caroline, who Jack had nicknamed Nin.
It was a beautiful morning. As I searched for the site I saw several squirrels scrambling between headstones and then up a tree. The birds were chirping joyously. Once I found the site. I leaned my artists chair up against a tree, leaned back and started to sketch. I knew the dedication would not take long so I had to lay in the background and stones fast. Bob Kealing who was going to pay tribute, had been called away on a news story, he had to cover the Casey Anthony case down at the Orange County Court House. Kim Buchheit took his place and did a wonderful and moving job. David Amram, a multi talented performer, played a hand carved courting flute whose warm tones drifted through the morning air.
This days events left me with an impression that art leaves behind a life affirming and ever propagating force that spurs the next generation to keep creating. Get out, find people with amazing stories and listen and learn. David Amram now 78 years old and Pete Seeger about to turn 90 years old are proof that some creative flames burn bright well into old age.
Caroline Kerouac Blake
October 25, 1918 – September 19, 1964
Mother, Daughter, Sister, Wife
World War II Veteran
JE ME SOUVIENSTI NIN ( I remember little Nin)

Premise Entertainment

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I returned in my first scene of animation drawings to Premise Entertainment. Rather than immediately leave I decided to stay and get sketch done of some of the talented artists now at work in this small production company. In this room are the Effects artists Tonyand Enoc are busy working on Cintiqus. Tony West was working on a scene that needed to be rushed since it was needed for marketing. Conversation in the room centered around the strengths of Macs versus PCs and different modeling programs that had been experimented with such as Maya and Zbrush. Tony actually felt that Sketchbook Pro which is the program I was using to do this sketch has its advantages over the program they were using to do inbetweening for the effects work on the film. I however was very impressed watching them work. They could zoom in as close in as they wanted to in order to place line between line. That might not mean much to the casual reader but I have lost some of my eye sight trying to focus on tiny thin graphite lines being inbetweened on sheets of back lit paper. To me these Cintiqus look like the dawning of a new day. They give me itchy fingers. If only they were Mobile.

Richard Goodman on Burroughs and Kerouac

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In 1944, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs all met in the span of two days at Columbia University in NYC. Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer Adams in an apartment they shared with Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker.
Burroughs and Kerouac got into trouble with the law when Lucien Carr, killed David Kammerer in a confrontation over Kammerer’s incessant and unwanted homosexual advances. Lucian had allowed Kammerer to hang out with him for years and Richard speculated that perhaps Lucian was a bit of a masochist. The killing happened in Riverside Park in Manhattan’s upper west side. After the killing Carr sought out Kerouac, who helped him dispose of the knife and some of Kammerer’s belongings. Kerouac may have had a somewhat loose moral code based on necessity yet he was very generous to fellow writers and friends. Kerouac was arrested as an accessory after the fact and served time in jail. He married Edie Parker so her parents would bail him out of jail. The marriage was annulled one year later.
This incident inspired Burroughs and Kerouac to collaborate on a novel entitled And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. This title came from a WWII news radio broadcast. It was the broadcasters last pitch before signing off. Completed in 1945, the two young authors were unable to get it published, but the manuscript was finally published in November 2008 by Grove Press and Penguin Books. Plans are in the works to make it into a movie.
Richard Goodman personally met Burroughs after he sent him a letter and Burroughs wrote him back. Richard had those letters and showed them to people after the talk.

Whole Foods Fresh Market

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Terry and I went down to see the Whole Foods Outdoor Fresh Market. There really wasn’t much of a selection when it came to produce. This sketch is of one of the few vendors that offered plants and produce. The rest of the vendors offered cheap trinkets and crafts, non of which interested me. One vendor did have nice ripe tomatoes for a great price, but honestly the trip was a bit of a hassle. The tents take up a large chunk of the parking lot leaving few spaces to park and some genius arranged it so all the traffic leads to a dead end at a traffic cone where everyone must do a 10 point turn to go back the other way. Some folks back up at top speed while others are making the turn. It is a disaster waiting to happen. In front of the store a huge tourist bus was parked in the no parking zone forcing cars to face off into one lane of traffic. A security officer was yelling at the bus driver to get out of there before there was a head on collision. Whatever urban planner designed the traffic flow of this spot should be fired. If Americans didn’t have cars this place could be a fun place to shop.

Winter Park Art Festival

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I went down to the Winter Park Art Festival to sketch. Tom Burton from the Orlando Sentinel wanted to meet me there to get some final video footage of me as I was out sketching. The festival itself was shutting down for the night and everyone was making a mad dash for either the free concert in the park or the local restaurants. I decided to sit down across the street from Bosphorus, a Turkish Restaurant. Tom simply hovered around shooting me and the scene I was sketching from every conceivable angle. It was a little distracting when he shoved the camera between my head and the sketchbook, I actually had to crane my head to the side to see what I was doing. It was convenient that the street was shut down since Tom would at times sit down in the street for low angle shots. It was fun having someone there to share the experience with. For instance he noticed that the lady holding the umbrella was there for a very long time. We both conjectured that she might have been trying to keep it from blowing away. It was interesting how often he focused on close ups of my nervous lines being thrown down on the page. The sketch was fun, I was afraid that I might tighten up with all the attention but the opposite was true. I loosened up and flowed with the experience. The jazz music in the park also gave me a beat to set the pace of the sketch to. When Tom was shooting on the opposite side of the street I started to notice myself bobbing my head to the beat and I thought, “maybe I should look a bit more serious, I am an artist after all….what the heck, go with it!”

Sleepwalk

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Brian Feldman has devised another amazing performance piece. He plans to sleep for 50 hours while allowing people to walk over him. He is sleeping in a wooden box built with two by fours outside on the sidewalk . On top is a black metal grid and then a sheet of Plexiglas so people who walk over can get a good view of Brian sleeping. When I got to the site I really didn’t know how I would get a drawing. You can not really see Brian from the street or sidewalk. Only when You walk over him do you get a full view. I finally decided the only option was to walk right on top of Brian, sit down on my stool and sketch him from that vantage point. It was rather like sketching a corpse at a wake while sitting on the coffin. Two young women stopped by and wanted to walk over Brian. I got out of the way, and they started across. They hesitated however and asked, “He won’t peek will he?” They were concerned because they had dressed on. Brain however was wearing a mask, perhaps for exactly that reason. When they left I climbed back up and resumed my sketch.
A student from Valencia College named Dariel wandered by and we both recognized each other. He is a young tan fellow who could well be a surfer. During my visit at Valencia he really seemed to get the point I was stressing, which was to get out in the community and take art and academics outside the classroom. He related a story about a character he met who he thought was homeless who was taking pictures of graffiti. This fellow was actually an artist from Jamaica who was traveling the world on the cheap. The fact that he related this story was a real highlight for me. That meant he understood the idea of art as an adventure.
Feldman’s performance makes me wonder, am I truly living everyday fully? Am I fully awake? Do I let people walk over me? Brian will continue to sleep till 6PM on March 22nd. So if you want to walk over him, go to Frames Forever & Art Gallery at 941 Orange Avenue, Winter Park, FL. It is a half mile from the Winter Park Art Festival.

Valencia Community College

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I went to Valencia Community College today to visit with students in a fundamentals drawing course. The instructor, Kelledy, asked me to tell the students about my background and about how I got involved in my latest endeavor which is, as you know, posting a drawing a day to this blog. I am seldom asked to share my thoughts about what I love most in life which is to draw and share my drawings with others, so for me it was a real treat. The students seemed really interested and with any luck my simple sketches might inspire one or two to look around and slow down to sketch and observe.
The students were working on still life’s from buffalo skulls. They were using mostly charcoal on large sheets of 18 by 24 inch paper with lots of tooth to hold the media. They constructed the compositions in a cubist manner then used cross contours to further refine the shapes. Finally everything was delicately shaded. I pulled out my Tablet and sketched for a short while. The room was a cavernous space with a huge skylight high in the center of the room. It really bought me back to my college days in NYC.