Mad Tea Party

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On February 8th, Kathryn Sullivan celebrated a very happy not-so-un-birthday at her Winter Park home with family and friends.  I was one of the first to arrive at the Alice in Wonderland  themed party. Kathryn and her boyfriend Mike Underwood know how to throw a party.  Kathryn was in a fabulous Victorian red dress with black lace and Mike was dressed as the mad hatter.A long table was set up for guests.

At the head of the table was a large flat screen TV with a digital camera above it. Mike explained that this was a  PhotoMingle that he had invented from scratch in his garage. The TV interface was just like the touch commands on an iPhone. Images on the screen could me moved, rotated and sized with the swipe of a finger. It was also possible to draw on the photos with your fingers. Mike is marketing this device for weddings, parties and all social gatherings. The uniqueness of the interface makes it an instant hit with guests. This device is pure genius and Mike is bound to make a fortune if he can increase his market before others create cheap knock offs based on his idea. As guests arrived they would pose before the TV for a fun photo session. This thing should make photo booths obsolete.

William Mabery trumped every one’s costumes when he arrived as Alice. Derick Taylor took a seat next to Alice with his Top hat and a bright red ascot. LeAnn Siefferman Busdeker wore a pillow case adorned with black spades. It was an ingenious and quick way to become a playing card. Her husband John’s costume had me stumped for a while. He hopped into the room in a sleeping bag. I later learned he was a caterpillar.

Playing cards were placed on the table to play, Kings, a drinking game. I had never played a drinking game before in my life, but since I was sipping coke, I didn’t mind playing as I sketched. One card involved everyone at the table raising three fingers. The person who drew the card had to mention something that they never did before. If you did that thing then you could fold a finger down. Once someone folded all three fingers down then the next person picked a card. I never fully understood the rules but it was a fun way to get to know people.

Speakeasy: The Crush Edition

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Tod Caviness hosts the Speakeasy every second Tuesday of the month at Will’s Pub (1042 N. Mills Avenue, Orlando, Florida). The theme for February was: The Secret Crush.Tod is engaged to be married to Yow dancer, Christin Marie. When I arrived, Tod and Christin were at the bar. Christin told me a bit about Yow Dances upcoming Fringe show. Apparently this year there will be magic as well as dance. I’m curious to see what that involves.

I decided to sketch Michael Pierre as he read on the stage. He look good in a black jacket and black shirt, which separated him from the rest of the authors in jeans and T shirts. His girlfriend, Amanda Millar got on stage right after him. She reminded me before the show that I had sketched her as she was being converted into a sexy zombie nurse. She read about a crush she had on a collage professor. She outlined the intricate planning that went into her always being at the same place at the same time as the professor. All her plans paid off when the professor gave her his card.

The funniest reading came from “Reverend” Trevor Frasier warned Todd and Christin about the perils of getting married. “Let me outline the good points should you decide to have children…” He stood silent for the longest time until everyone in the room was laughing. He obviously couldn’t think of any good points. He warned that they never again could look at someone of the opposite sex and think, “Damn they look hot!” He also warned that marriage would be the end to any hot sex they might be having now. He had a slide show to go along with his presentation but unfortunately I couldn’t see the screen.

Curtis Meyer read a lust filled poem about a sexy pop star. He just wanted her to write songs about him. It seemed only fair since he had written a sweltering poem about her. I slipped out after my sketch was done. This evening was certainly a fine warm up for Valentines day. I had to take a shower when I got home to get the smell of second hand cigarette smoke off of my skin. The sketch itself is like a scratch and sniff reminder of the evening.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

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On January 19th, I went to the second installment of Trash Cinema 101 at The Venue (511 Virginia Drive, Orlando, Florida). Trash Cinema 101 is a live, interactive experience, with bad films, good friends and ZERO class! Each month, Logan Donahoo guides you through his own cinematic wasteland, and brings you out the other side with drinking games and trivia – all wrapped in a campy, lewd, irreverent shell! The January film was “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!” In the lobby of the Venue, one woman came in with a basting pan around her neck.

The film was laugh out loud funny. That wasn’t the directors intent but with Logan pointing out all the intricate flaws, the evening became hilarious. A Doctor and his wife go for a car ride. There is a crash and the one thing the doctor recovers from the wreck is his wife’s head.  In his basement lab, he keeps his wife’s head alive in a basting pan with tubes of goo snaking all over the place. He spends the rest of his time searching for the perfect new body for his wife. Where does he go? To a burlesque show of course. There is a classic cat fight between two dancers where the camera literally zooms in on a picture of a cat and a cats meows on the sound track. The fact that there were Skill focus Burlesque dancers in the audience made the scene even more hilarious. At one point when a doctor gave up on a patient on the operating table, Ruby Darling shouted out, “That’s not how it works on House!”

The wife’s head in the basting pan kept muttering “Let me die.” Everyone had to sip their drink every time she muttered that phrase. Trust me, everyone had a good buzz thanks to that undead brain. Besides keeping his wife’s head alive, the good doctor also had a deformed Frankenstein monster in the closet. The monster was never seen, but the wife’s head insisted that together they had to stop the doctor from killing in the name of science and sex. You will have to see for yourself how it ends, but even without a body, the wife was a cunning schemer. Most women would die to get a better physique.

February’s screening was “Plan 9 From Outer Space“, the next screening is March 16th at the Venue. Tickets are $10 and there is plenty of free parking and an open bar.

Dragon Parade: Lunar New Year Festival

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On February 10th, I went to the Mills 50 District to sketch the Dragon Parade Lunar New Year Festival. The Lunar New Year is the most important festival celebrated in Asia.  In countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, although Chinese New Year is not an official holiday, many Asian organizations hold large celebrations and parades to share the culture. I parked on a suburban street behind Sam Flax and walked towards the sound of firecrackers exploding. A woman gardening in her front yard looked down the street to see what the ruckus was about.

In a parking lot behind a Chinese restaurant a crowd was gathered to participate in the parade. There were martial arts groups, Taiko Dojo Dancers, girls Demonstrating Chinese YoYos and a long dragon boat.  The second I sat down to start sketching, the parade started moving onto the street. I panicked sketching as fast as I could. I was still sketching long after the last parade participants had left. The dragon itself was animated by a crew of puppeteers who each held a stick that was attached to a section of the dragon. As they waved the sticks left and right, the dragon slithered in a sinuous dance down the street.

2013 is the Year of the Snake. The Snake, also called the Junior Dragon,  is the sixth sign of the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 Animal Signs.  The Snake is the enigmatic,  intuitive,

introspective, and refined.  Ancient Chinese wisdom says a Snake in the house is a good omen because it means that your family will not starve.  People born in the Year of the Snake are keen and cunning, quite intelligent and wise.  They are great mediators and good at doing business.  Therefore, you should have good luck if you were born in the Year of the Snake. When I finished my sketch I went to Sam Flax to get some new brushes. I met former Disney background painter Xinlin Fan. He still lives in Orlando and he teaches painting at Guangzhou University in China part of the year. His English is rusty and broken but it was wonderful to see him.

Artists Process

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Each month Urban Rethink (625 E Central Blvd • Orlando, FL), invites artists to show their work, and discuss their process. A computer was set up s that the first artist, Bob Snead, could share his work with us from New Orleans via a Google + video chat. The computer screen was projected on a screen so everyone in the room could see. The problem was that no one knew how to get the Google chat to work. Pat Greene started asking everyone who entered the event if they knew how to work the program. Finally someone did mess with the settings and Bob’s face filled the screen. Bob does representational that is autobiographical and often funny. For instance one self portrait had, “My father gave my mother syphilis.” written on it. Bob couldn’t see all of us as he showed his work and if we weren’t laughing, he couldn’t be sure we were still there.

Some of Bob’s art is performance oriented. He once staged a “Pro Wall mart” demonstration. With Clark Allen, he set up a toilet paper roll assembly line in which everything was made from cardboard. A cardboard pickup truck was displayed in a gallery. He later had to abandon the truck leaving in in a public space. A week later it was mangled beyond recognition.

 The second artist was Kevin Paul Giordano,  who is a writer, journalist, musician, photographer, and filmmaker. He began his career as a writer in New York City, publishing in the New York Times, New York Post, New York Sun, Salon.com, among others. He also worked as an editor at such magazines as Vanity Fair, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe, Spin, among others. His musical-play “It Must Be Love” appeared on Off-Off Broadway in 2002. He has received grants from Glenville State College, West Virginia for research on a book on the American Rust Belt. The grant offered him a car and a camera, so he set out to document an abandoned part of US history.

He screened a half hour documentary that explained the history of Rust Belt cities like Paterson, New Jersey. My father worked in Paterson, New Jersey his whole career, so I was fascinated to learn the city’s unique history. The city was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and his Society of Useful Manufacturers, to be a manufacturing mecca. Steam locomotives were built here as the nation pushed west. Then the city turned to silk weaving using the power generated by water from the Paterson falls. An intricate system of canals moved water to all of the manufacturing plants. In the 1960’s Rayon eliminated the need for silk. Much of this countries deindustrialization happened in the 1970s. Today all those plants sit empty and abandoned. More than 25% of the people in such abandoned cities are below the poverty line. The story is much the same for each Rust Belt city Kevin photographed.

There is a beauty in the way the rusting decay is being taken over by nature. Railroad lines lead nowhere with weeds and grass disguising the rails. Pealing paint creates intricate patterns and some tools remain where they were last used decades ago. Today we live in a computer society that fosters the free exchange of ideas. This free exchange doesn’t always make people money. By looking back, Kevin helps us look forward so we all can change and adapt.

Patriot Garden

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I went to the home of Jennifer and Jason Helvenston in College Park on a small dead end road that stops at I-4. Walking through the suburban neighborhood, I saw many blue yard signs that promote “Patriot Gardens“. I was at City Hall the day before at a demonstration where people demanded the right to keep their vegetable gardens. The Helvenston’s grow dozens of vegetables organically in their front yard in Orlando. But in November, the city—which aspires to be the “Greenest City in America”, notified them that their harmless garden violates city code, and they have to tear it up and replace it with grass or face fines of $500 a day.

I looked up their home with a Google map street view and the photos showed a barren yard before the lush garden was planted. The garden is now bursting with an abundance of vegetables and herbs. Jennifer backed her car out of the driveway as I was sketching. She recognized me from the protest at City Hall and she explained that many of the citizens that went to the City Counsel Meeting got up and spoke eloquently for the right to grow food. She felt the meeting went well but the battle wasn’t yet won. City government is a slow moving beast upholding decades old landscaping codes drafted before homeowners recognized the advantages of using native plants, creating natural habitats for butterflies and birds and sustainable organic gardens that put food on the table.

Sketching, I was surprised by the deep trenches between rows of vegetables. I assumed this was extreme raised bed gardening. Jason came out and explained that the soil had developed plant parasitic nematodes, or round worms. They had dug the ditches extra deep to try and eliminate this garden pest. Next week the garden will be completely overturned and replanted, He plans to plant the rows in rainbow arcs radiating away from the home so that the rows will no longer be noticed from the street.

All the Helvenston’s want to do is use their property peacefully to grow their own food. Their front yard garden has become a battleground in a national debate.  Planting the garden changed the couples life because they now interact regularly with their neighbors. They spend most of their time in the garden stopping to talk to
all the people coming by, which they love.  Who stops to talk to someone
mowing a lawn? Having sketched the lush garden, I can say it is far more interesting than a lawn of grass. Americans spend an estimated $30 billion annually on lawn care with huge amounts of water and fertilizer wasted. If you have a sunny spot on your front lawn, consider planting your own Patriot Garden. Plant a seed, change the law.

As of September 2013, the couple has won the lawsuit and can keep their front yard garden.

Let Them Grow

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Jennifer and Jason Helvenston planted a lush vegetable garden organically in their front yard in Orlando.  
But in November, the city, which aspires to be the “Greenest City in
America”, notified them that their harmless garden violates city code, and they
have to tear it up and replace it with grass, or face fines of $500 a
day.

On January 8th of 2013 a new City Vegetable Garden Proposal was written. Most of the garden would have to be eliminated and now the city started regulating the back and side yards as well.

 This is a summary of the restrictions of the City’s Proposal.

1.  The government shouldn’t be telling gardeners what they can or can’t do with
the land they own as long as there are no quantifiable impacts.

2.  The Proposal is a conviction
against edible annuals while all other annuals are unrestricted.

3.  The Proposal is a clear strategy against edible gardens by pushing
them under the roof line of the building or in its shadow while at the same
time requiring year round success.

4.  The Proposal is an assault against the financially less fortunate that
cannot afford expensive fences and raised bed structures by pushing their
edible gardens even further into the shadows of the building.

5.  The Proposal is discriminating against ALL edible plants by requiring
higher standards and special definitions than any other plant in the City’s
Landscape Code.  By discriminating against the plants that we eat, they are
discriminating against gardeners.

6.  The Proposal is a discredit against sustainability.  The City’s
code will allow max. 60% environment crushing grass but only max. 25% edible
annuals with no impacts. 

The best and fare solution for the City is the
simplest.  Edible plants meet the same standards and requirements as all
other plants.  An edible ground cover gets treated the same as any other
ground cover, an edible annual gets treated the same as any other annual. 
Each yard in the City of Orlando must be “kept and maintained” to the
same levels as any other yard.  There should be no higher standards for food. 

 On February 28th there was a crucial City Counsel meeting on the proposal. I went to City Hall where there was a peaceful demonstration for the right to have a garden. Many protesters wore green as a sign of solidarity. Ryan Price was there holding a yellow pepper from his garden. He has a small garden in his front yard and luckily he has not yet been bothered. College students Jonathan, Adam and Troy were with Ryan. The college students are studying the medical benefits of plants. Jennifer Helvenston showed up with a basket full of vegetables from her garden. Protesters talked about their gardens with pride. Julie Norris was their with her daughter Maya holding a sign that said, Mommy, why can’t we grow vegetables? She has a gorgeous garden on her Thornton Park property.

A spokesman said that the City Proposal had once again been rewritten so the meeting would just consist of a reading of the new proposal with no vote. All the protesters went inside city hall to watch their city government at work. The Helveston’s small home garden has suddenly become the flash point for a national debate. Orlando leaders moved closer at the February 26th meeting to allow residents to plant
vegetables in their front yards, but gardeners remain worried that City
Hall’s benevolence will come with too many rules.

Audabon Market

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Every Monday from 6-10PM the Audubon Market sets up in the parking lot of Stardust Video and Coffee (l842 East Winter Park Road Orlando FL). Some vendors offer locally grown fruits and vegetables while others have local crafts. Flowers and plants sit beside homemade pillows. The variety changes from week to week. On top of all that there is often free music. There is a warm communal feel as friends meet hug and talk. A mom carried her child on her hip as she spoke to a vendor. A poet with a grey beard and staff wandered offering poems for a price.

When I finished my sketch I went to a food tent and ordered the least holistic item at the market, a hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard.  When I turned to go back to my table, I bumped into Mark Baratelli and his friend Tom. I was a bit embarrassed that the hot dog I just ordered looked puny compared to the size of the bun. When I was finished eating, a woman offered me some free Wild Flower Saint John’s River Honey because she liked the sketch. If you go to the market, be sure to get some local honey from the Bee Lady. On the drive home, I popped open the yellow lid and sucked on the nipple to taste the sweet nectar.

Oscars at the Enzian

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The Enzian Theater held a “Red Carpet, Bright Lights Oscar Watch Party.” Terry got dressed up in high heals that structurally resemble the Eiffel Tower. I decided to dress up with a suit and black shirt. Although the Enzian parking lot was close to full, there were only a few people at the Eden Bar. Terry had read somewhere that the theater wouldn’t open till 7:30PM so we had a half hour to kill. The bartender didn’t notice us waiting to order a drink but he did notice a 20 something pair of college girls who sauntered up to the bar after us. I wanted a beer but all the beer taps were out. The bartender was very apologetic. I settled on a white wine. Dina Peterson greeted us at the bar. She was meeting friends who were saving her a seat inside.

It turned out that the Enzian was already packed. I wanted to sit on the sides of the theater so I could sketch the audience. All those seats were reserved for members.  There were only a few seats in the far back corner of the theater where I would have only been able to sketch the backs of peoples heads. I decided to stand at the front of the theater to sketch the patrons in the pit. When the Oscars officially began, the theater went black. I fished a book light out of my bag and continued working. About the time Brave won as the best animated feature film, my sketch was done.

I joined Terry at the back of the theater. We were sharing the table with another artist named Dan Tilstra. He does watercolor certificate borders for Florida Hospital. The intricate work is a market I had never considered. His son wants to someday become a Disney Animator so he asked me to show him my sketchbook. His son seemed to think that working for Disney was an impossible dream. I assured him that anything is possible if you work hard enough.

 Kristen Stewart arrived at the Oscars on crutches. Rumor is that she stepped on a glass that cut her heal. Presenting, on stage, she looked completely wasted on pain killers and smiled with disdain. Her hair stylist did a horrible job, making her look like a hot mess. My favorite moment was when

Jennifer Lawrence won the best actress award and then tripped trying to climb the stairs in her Dior Haute Couture dress that billowed out from her hips like a parachute. Hopefully the designer will take note and realize that women do have to be able to move when wearing a gown.

The ceremonies went on agonizingly long and by the end of the evening there were more car commercials than winners. When Ben Affleck accepted his award, he said in a flurry of emotion to Jennifer Garner, his wife in the audience, that, “I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases,” he
said. “It is work but it is the best kind of work, and there’s no one
I’d rather work with.” You just knew he would be sleeping on the couch that night. By the time Argo won as the best picture, I couldn’t wait to escape the theater. My ass was in agony from sitting so long. Dear Academy and advertisers, Argo f*#ck yourself.

Folk Festival

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On Saturday February 9th I went to the Mennello Museum Folk Festival to do a sketch before I went to work. When I arrived bright and early, vendors were still setting up. Two large dog sculptures by Dale Rogers were standing nose to nose in the center of the lawn. Twenty 8-foot-tall, 10-foot-long dog
sculptures made of rusty steel are found all around the museum. The red collars with nametags on the
sculptures indicate those dogs that have been “adopted” to benefit local
animal charities. The Sculpture Garden is always open and dogs on
leashes are welcome. The dogs remain on exhibit through March 3, 2013

Dan Savage at the Sabal Palm Press table was busy selling the Florida environmental books on display. He had a natural knack for small talk and he made a sale as I was sketching.  Highwaymen painters had several tents set up behind me. I noticed a woman starting to do intricate lace work and wished she had been working earlier. She would have made a good sketch. Gordon Spears was walking tent to tent trying to find out which vendors vehicle was blocking traffic in the museum parking lot.

The sound stage had it’s first performers doing children’s songs. As soon as I finished my sketch I had to head off to work. Children in Indian costumes started dancing to a drum beat. They were doing a butterfly dance. The Mennello Museum sent out a heart felt “Thank You” to all the talented people that made the festival possible.