Frankie mixed the vinyl at the wedding reception.

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The wedding of local singer, songwriter Robert Johnson to Maria happened during a beautiful golden sunset at Playa Linda Beach. It is a place where they find peace and center themselves; to look to a new future, one far beyond earthly desires and wants. This stretch of pristine, protected beach is also where man has reached for the stars since NASA started. It is one of the longest stretches of undeveloped beach on the East Coast of Florida (24miles) and is breathtakingly beautiful. Robert has made a tradition of watching the sun rise on the new year for over a decade and shared this experience with Maria in 2014. Maria came to love this place when Robert was still only “this cool musician guy” singing Rainy Day over the stereo at her host family’s house.

The wedding reception was a home grown community effort. It took place at Kimberly Buchheit‘s Farm in Sorrento, Florida. This celebration of the couple’s love on the first day of their marriage was meant to kick off the rest of their life in a manner that hopefully will set the tone for all their future endeavors. They want to invest in experiences rather than objects and most importantly, experiences they can share with the people they love. The DIY party relied on the talents of everyone. Frankie Messina mixed the old school vinyl all night long a people danced on the grass. Early in the evening , h huddled under the tent with the support legs half retracted. It made an intimate compact music fortress. He taught others how to mix from one record to the other seamlessly.

Robert’s mom prepared an amazing spread of delicious Filipino food. A large tent was set up Amish style where everyone could eat drink and chat. The drinks flowed and the party got lively. After the sun set, the forest around Kim’s farm loomed black, and then a large bonfire was ignited, offering a tribal community circle with faces glowing orange in the night. After all the festivities, Frankie went to sleep under the table in his musical fortress. He had other worldly dreams that on the surface might seem scary, but he just went along with the flow.

Urban Sketching at Elite Animation.

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For the Urban Sketching Course I teach at Elite Animation Academy, I take the kids down to a local pond. We sketch the ducks who have just had chicks. If you stay very still, the mom a duck brings her chicks right up to you, assuming I suppose that we will feed them. It is a great opportunity to get quick sketches of them.  They never stay still of course, so getting a sketch is a challenge.

the students are also instructed to sketch the architecture of the shopping mall that i n eat to the lake. Finding the vanishing point is a challenge to many beginning Sketchers, but I point out the visual cues to each student one on one. Some kids just put the sketchbook aside and enjoy the sun. [ can lead them to water but I can’t make teem drink. A little day dreaming is also part of the artistic process. When we get back to the classroom, we tape our favorite sketch on the board and have a mini art show.

Live painting demo in the Rose Garden.

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The Winter Park Paint Out has brought about 25 plein air painters from all over the country to central Florida where they are capturing the area’s charm mostly with oils on canvas. From 6pm to 8pm on April 26th, John Guernsey from Marietta Georgia gave an Oil Painting Demonstration on Dynamic Shadows in the Rose Garden in Central Park. Bring a blanket or lawn chair and join us in Central Park by the Rose Garden. Spectators brought lawn chairs to sit and watch as the painting took shape. It was the golden hour, so warm light ignited the scene as the sun set.

John had completed the drawing aspect of the small composition by the time I arrived. He then blocked in dark shadows using a large two inch flat paint brush. He used this brush for the entire painting using mostly vertical and horizontal strokes. The resulting grid was a bit like a pixelated version of the scene. He used the paint thickly and boldly. He worked incredibly fast. When the sun set behind the trees in the west, he stepped away and said he was done. In a conversation with someone, he said that architects and graphic designers are great wit the drawn aspect of a painting, but the messy and abstract blocking in of colors and valves often gives them trouble. Even after the demo was over, John kept adding dark strokes to the canvas to push the value range.

The Paint Out will come to a close with a Garden Party from 6pm to 9pm tonight, April 30th at the Polasek Museum (633 Osceola Ave, Winter Park, FL). Tickets are $100. Each ticket enti­tles the buyer to $50.00 off the pur­chase of a paint­ing dur­ing the Gar­den Party! (Limit one ticket per paint­ing val­ued at $300 or more)

Weekend Top 6 Picks for April 30th and May 1st.

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Saturday April 30, 2016

10am to 4pm Free. Seventh Annual Hannibal Square Heritage Center Folk and Urban Art Festival. Hannibal Square Heritage Center 642 W New England Ave, Winter Park, Florida. The annual festival celebrates culture and diversity through art and music. More than 25 Florida artists offer their works for sale, including members of the original Florida Highwaymen and the B-Side Artists collective. There’s music by the Porchdogs Cajun and Zydeco Band and Orisirisi African Folklore. A “Kid-folk” workshop culminates in a public parade. Food trucks.

Noon to 8pm Free. Earth Fest. Secret Lake Park 200 N Triplet Lake Dr, Casselberry, Florida. The City of Casselberry and Casselberry’s Friends of the Park will be hosting the 7th annual “Earth Fest 2016” , Seminole County’s largest Earth Day event!! The celebration will be held on April 30th, 2016 from 12 Noon till 6 PM, followed by EarthFest Jam concert from 6—8 PM, at its new location in Secret Lake Park-Casselberry. Our goal is to provide a positive venue and unique opportunity for participants to learn about their environment, while sponsors, vendors and artisan’s showcase their Earth-friendly products and services. Earth Fest 2016 is a FREE community sponsored event.

7pm to 9pm $30 per person. Price includes all paint supplies, canvas and a free glass of wine. Wine and Paint Social. Vinyl Arts Bar 75 E Colonial Dr, Orlando, Florida. Join us for some wine and painting. This is a fun and interactive experience where you get to be the artist. Guided by a professional artist, you’ll get to paint your own piece of artwork and bring your canvas home with you. This event is great for couples, girl’s night out, or just a group of friends wanting to socialize and meet new people. Please arrive 15 minutes early. The painting begins at 7pm sharp.

Bethany Myers is an Orlando artist best known for her brightly colored blind contour paintings and also works in photo realism, mixed media and line drawing. She has taught art to elementary school kids, senior citizens and all ages in-between. Project driven, Bethany has painted street art boxes for the Mills50 organization in downtown Orlando and completed a project in which she produced one painting a week for a year. She is currently working on a mural for a local women’s/children’s shelter.

Sunday May 1, 2016

1pm to 4pm Free. Music at the Casa. Casa Feliz 656 N Park Ave, Winter Park, FL.

2pm to 4pm $40 The Taste at I-Drive 360! I-Drive 360, Home of the Orlando Eye 8445 International Dr, Orlando, Florida. The Taste at I-Drive 360, will benefit Esophageal Cancer at Florida Hospital. Come and enjoy samplings of food from 9 restaurants featuring a variety of flavorful bites while enjoying all of the attractions the I-Drive 360, Home of the Orlando Eye has to offer!

Ticket includes tastings from the following restaurants:

Outback Steakhouse – Orlando – I-Drive 360

Paramount Fine Foods USA

Buffalo Wild Wings

Tin Roof Orlando

Cowgirls Rockbar Orlando

Sugar Factory Orlando

Shake-shack

Naru Sushi Bar Orlando

Tapa Toro

2pm to 4pm Free Yoga. Lake Eola Park, 195 N Rosalind Ave, Orlando, FL near the red pagoda. Every week.

Waimea Canyon on Kauai.

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Kauai is the oldest of the large Hawaiian islands. It is the top of an enormous volcano rising from the ocean floor. With lava flows dated to about 5 million years ago. Roughly 4 million years ago, while Kauai
was still erupting almost continuously, a portion of the island
collapsed. This collapse formed a depression which then filled with lava
flows. In the millions of years since, rainwater from the slopes of Mount Waiʻaleʻale
have eroded Waimea Canyon along one edge of the collapse. On the east
side of the canyon, the cliff walls are built from thick lava flows that
pooled in the depression. Over time, the exposed basalt has weathered
from its original black to bright red.

The spectacular site is also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. The canyon is ten miles  long and up to 3,000 feet deep. Waimea is Hawaiian for “reddish water”, a reference to the erosion of the canyon’s red soil. The canyon was formed by a deep incision of the Waimea River arising from the extreme rainfall on the island’s central peak, Mount Waiʻaleʻale, among the wettest places on earth.

No single sketch can capture the scale and grandeur of the place. On this vacation, I shot video as well as sketching. The tightly edited video offers a quick glimpse into the island’s beauty. Digital storage devices have changed since I edited the video so I need to do a digital transfer if I want to preserve the moving images. That is one good thing about sketches. They can always be seen as long as they aren’t destroyed by fire, earthquake, or a meteor strike

The Timucua White House is granted a Conditional Use Permit.

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Benoit Glazer and The Timucua Arts Foundation has been providing world class art and music to the Orlando community free of charge for a long while. In 2007 Benoit built a custom home that was built around an acoustically perfect music hall with two levels of balconies overlooking the stage. The living room concert venue is completely soundproof so that neighbors never hear the music. Dozens of performances happen each year, most of them free of charge. Guests bring wine and food to the venue for each concert which cultivates a true sense of a community potluck. The Timucua Arts Foundation, is a benefactor to cutting edge music organizations like the Accidental Music Festival and the Civic Minded 5. The White House has established itself as a culture beacon for the Central Florida Music scene.

The home is in an area zoned for residential use, so the Orlando Municipal Planning Board demanded that Benoit apply for a conditional use permit. That type of permit is typically issued when the city wants to allow an
activity beneficial to the community despite zoning restrictions. Without the permit, one of the
most enlightened cultural lights in Orlando
would be be extinguished. An online petition was established to try and save the White House. Over one hundred people signed it in the first hour. In all 832 people signed the petition.

At 8:30am on April 19th, Benoit and his wife Elaine Corrivev, sat in the City Counsel Chambers to hear the Planning Board’s verdict. The Chambers were packed full of supporters for this home spun cultural institution. Jeremy Seghers sat in the row in front of me and Diana Rodriguez Portillo sat next to me to chat. There were so many friends of the arts in the room. The chair, Jason Searl, said he had to abstain from the vote since his little daughter takes piano lessons at the Benoit’s house. He clearly couldn’t be impartial. With in a matter of minutes, the Conditional Use Permit was granted. There was an audible sigh of relief and then most of the people in the room got up to leave. Exited conversations began and the celebration continued just outside the chamber doors. The concerts will continue with some conditions: Glazer will have to
formalize a parking agreement with the city for use of nearby spaces at
Wadeview Park, limit attendance to 99 guests and guarantee events end by
10:30 p.m. In some small measure, the bureaucrats won, but music and art will continue to shine at the White House. 

This, we believe:

Art and music belong to everyone.

Art and music are the highest manifestation of our humanity.

Art and music should be enjoyed in the most intimate venue: the living room.

Every community is better when art and music are performed and nurtured within it.

The Winter Park Paint Out takes over Park Avenue.

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The Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens will host its eighth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out dur­ing the last full week of April 2016. Twenty-five pro­fes­sion­ally acclaimed Plein Air artists will roam across the city cap­tur­ing many of your favorite land­scapes and land­marks with oils, water­col­ors and pas­tels. Plein Air, a French term mean­ing “in the open air”, describes art works painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view rather than in a stu­dio. Plein air artists cap­ture the spirit and essence of a landscape or sub­ject by incor­po­rat­ing nat­ural light, color and move­ment into their works.

 If you’re an art lover, a patron, or just curi­ous to see what the buzz
is about, stop by the Polasek Museum to see the lat­est from the 25
artists in action! The museum, sculp­ture gar­dens and gallery will be
open free to the pub­lic through this excit­ing week-long event.
Com­pleted paint­ings will be hung in the gallery’s ‘Wet Room’
imme­di­ately. As the week pro­gressesthe gallery will fill with Plein Air art­work. Be sure to visit often to watch the artists work
and to pur­chase these one-of-a kind paint­ings the moment they are hung
on the wall.

On Monday, the first day of the Paint Out, I met Robert Ross who was set up near Writer’s Block Bookstore just East of Park Avenue on Welborne Avenue. Since Winter Park has just recently passed an ordinance making it illegal to create art or Perform on Park Avenue, I wanted to observe artists who where were immune from the $500 fine and or 60 days in jail for creating art in the forbidden zone. Each painter I saw on that day to had a Winter Park Paint Out sign which was a visual hint to police that they were sanctioned by the Museum. Several Russian women stopped to watch Rob a work, and shoot some photos. I passed four Plein Air painters hard at work as I walked back to my car. Odd that a city that just recently outlawed art should suddenly be over run by 25 artists from around the country for a week. why not allow free expression all year?

Mark Your Calendar for the free Paint Out demonstrations and workshops. Tonight April 26th, there is the “Dynamic Shadows Oil Painting Demonstration” by John Guernsey.  Bring a blanket or lawn chair and join us in Central Park by the Rose Garden. On Wednesday April 2tth, there is a Sunset “Paint-In” at the Winter Park Racquet Club, (2111 Via Tuscany, Winter Park). Paint Out Artists gather on the shore of Lake Mait­land at the Win­ter Park Rac­quet Club to cap­ture a beau­ti­ful Florida sun­set, then take a break from the week’s activ­i­ties. Come share the vista with us and watch as these out­stand­ing artists cre­ate a sun­set mem­ory on can­vas.  A cash-only bar and buf­fet will be avail­able to non-members, so please make an evening of it! April 30th from 6pm to 9pm is the Paint Out Garden Party.  Tickets to this event are, $100 in advance, and $125 at the door

Waikiki Beach is beautiful.

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Waikiki is a beachfront neighborhood of Honolulu, on the south shore of the island of Oahu, in Hawaii, United States. Waikiki is best known for Waikiki Beach, the white sand beach shoreline fronting the neighborhood. The name Waikiki means spouting fresh water in the Hawaiian language, for springs and streams that fed wetlands that once separated it from the interior.

Colors were vibrant and pure, especially during the golden hour as the sun set. Resorts dot every inch of the shoreline to cater to the endless stream of tourists. The water was warm and the white sand beach inviting. Sadly this marked the end of the vacation. We yearned to stay, but work beckoned back in Orlando.

The Saint Regis Princeville Resort on Kauai has all the amenities,

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In contrast to the humble beach front Plantation cottages, Saint Regis Princeville Resort is plush and opulent. Located in the 9,000 acre resort community of Princeville at Hanalei,
this luxury resort on Kauai resides on the northern shore of the “Garden
Island” and provides visitors all the amenities expected from an island
destination considered to be one of the most spectacular in Hawaii.
Guests of our Kauai resort reside in a bastion of tropical
sophistication featuring cuisine that celebrates local flavors along
with an array of diverse activities. The site of the hotel was known as Pu’u Poa or Pu’u Pa’oa– Pu’u meaning
mountain and Pa’oa meaning the staff of the Fire Goddess, Pele who when
searching for a new home would strike her staff into the earth to
create a new crater. Directly below the hotel are remnants of an
ancient Hawaiian fishpond built in prehistoric time. Known as
Kamo’omaika’i it was one of the few kuapa (ocean wall) type fishponds on
Kauai.

The hotel was used in the filming of Jurassic Park, and I believe the lobby was inspiration for the scene in Lilo and Stitch in which Nani applied for a job while Stitch a used havoc trying to romance an elder tourist.

Terry relaxed in a lounge chair reading while I struggled to capture the sunset. Black volcanic rock dotted the shoreline. The gorgeous mountains turn mountains turned magnificent shades of purple and blue, as the clouds glowed orange. Every moment on this beautiful island begs to be captured. An artist would never fall short of subjects on this corner of paradise.

Opera Orlando at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

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Spring time marked the boisterous rebirth of Opera in Orlando. Opera Orlando presented The Impresario, which is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s “comedy with music”, followed by Les Mamelles de Tiresias, Poulenc‘s “fertile farce.” A small orchestra was set up in the lower balcony. I went to the final dress rehearsal which had a small audience with friends and family.

Mozart’s comedy was quite fun and director Eric Pinder did a fabulous job of modernizing the story so that it referenced Orlando. Two producers contemplated a small low budget opera. They admired the theater and even shot a selfie in the opulent theater. I liked that the ghost lamp remained on stage. A ghost light is put on stage when the theater is unoccupied. Superstition states that it allows ghosts which occupy the theater the opportunity to perform on t empty stage. This appeases the ghosts so they do not sabotage a production. To keep costs down, t he producers decide to stage a production with no set pieces. A diva entered from house left and walked up to the stage. She was an older well established performer who faced rumors that she could no longer hit the high notes. She performed a solo that was comically flamboyant and over the top. She demanded $5000 a performance and stormed off stage.

A theater patron, Deep Pockets, entered and offered a sizable donation if the producers would hire a female singer he had discovered. She turned out to be a bawdy burlesque performer who also demanded $5000 a performance. What followed us a hilarious battle of wills as the two female divas tried to out sing each other. This was a hilarious production that was sung and perform in English, so there us no need for subtitles.

The only hint of the second production, Les Mamelle de Tresias in my sketch, is the large balloon creature in the upper balcony. It had many appendage like an octopus and a snout that looks like a large inflated rubber. This creature would hoover over the audience at the end of Poulenc’s farce about fertility. I plan to go back to do another sketch.

Mark your Calendar! There are two performances left. One is tonight, Saturday April 23rd at 7:30pm. The other is Sunday April 24 at 2 pm. Tickets cost between $10 to $66. You can call the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (445 South Magnolia Avenue Orlando FL) box office Monday through Friday 10am to 4pm. Saturday from noon to 4pm.