VegFest

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Terry and I went to Lock Haven Park to explore VegFest on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We took a look at all the vendors tents and then I picked a shady spot under a tree as my sketching vantage point. I had hoped to sketch Doug Rhodehamel’s paper bag mushrooms. Last year there was a large colorful installation of them. Unfortunately they were nowhere to be found. There were two stages where local musicians performed. It was a family friendly event with a kids zone. People constantly strolled the lawn pausing just long enough to read brochures and shop. Frankie Messina stopped by to say hello.

As I sketched, Terry shopped. I texted her when I was finished and then we looked for some vegan food. I got a heaping plate of rice and vegan egg rolls from Loving Hut. Delicious. We were constantly being given fliers for this cause and that. Terry got annoyed, saying they should save some trees since many of the fliers went straight into the garbage. I kept them all thinking they might offer sketch opportunities.

Poetry in Motion

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Emotions Dance Company held two performances of Poetry in Motion at the Winter Park Playhouse (711-C Orange Avenue, Winter Park). Local poets recited their work as the dancers bought the words to life with expressive dance. I asked Larissa Humiston the dance company’s choriographer and founder if I could sketch in the sound and lighting booth. She agreed and escorted me back through the dressing rooms and up a crude ladder made from nailed together two by fours. I knew it would be dark up there so I got out my book light. The entire show was dimly illuminated with simple spot lights on the poets and the main stage.

Tod Caviness recited a fabulous poem about a Punch and Judy puppet show in a park. “Everyone went home happy. Even the kids with swollen knuckles like wedding rings.” When ever Dion Smith performed, I had to stop sketching and just watch. She has the delicate features of a ballerina but fully embraced the modern dance she performed. Curtis X Meyer’s poem about a disfigured photographer was amazing when accompanied by dance. I had watched this piece in rehearsals and knew that Larissa had to step in to dance the part of the photographer since the male dancer kept missing rehearsals. She had an amazing ability to get completely lost in the music and she immediately made the role hers.

The whole cast did an amazing job. I am so happy I live in a town where such cutting edge, collaborative, expressive work is being created and performed.

Mona Washington – Playwright

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Mona Washington is the present resident writer at the Kerouac House. We met at a reading she did at Infusion Tea. She saw the sketch I did and invited me over to the Kerouac House to do a sketch of her as she worked. I have always approached each resident author with the idea of sketching them and this was the first time the stars lined up. As I was sketching Mona at the kitchen table, she was doing online research for the play she was working on. The play is about freed slaves after the Civil War who are not entirely free. She was researching how female slaves were often used sexually by their owners. After years of this kind of treatment, a slaves body is not entirely her own. A male slave who was trained as a blacksmith had a relationship with this female slave and he was shocked by her promiscuity. She just wanted to feel good.

Mona had on her lucky Police tee shirt. This was the shirt she was wearing last time I sketched her. The Gato Negro red wine we were drinking was sweet and delicious. Mona read aloud from some of the sites she found using the Google search engine. She read to me from a KKK website and I told her about a KKK demonstration that I had witnessed in Maitland. Jack Kerouac glanced over at us from his framed in place of honor in the kitchen. Mona started offering suggestions for residencies that I should apply for. As we talked she was firing off e-mails to my home computer. She is an incredibly giving person and that evening she opened my eyes to creative opportunities that I didn’t know existed.

On November 12th at 8pm Mona is going to read from her work in progress at the Kerouac House (on the corner of Shady Lane and Clouser in College Park.) Mona’s work is insightful and deeply moving, you don’t want to miss it.

Masquerade at the Bohemian

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Terry got a private invitation in the mail for a Masquerade party the day before Halloween on the sixth floor of the Grand Bohemian downtown. The invitation said the party started at 6pm and since I had just finished another sketch assignment, I was in the area. I arrived at the same time as the Peroni girls. They wore tight red tops and skin sight white bell bottoms with high heels. Only bartenders, chefs and event planners were scurrying around getting ready. Most of the space was taken up by a white billowing tent right out of Arabian Nights. A cool gust of wind sent black napkins flying. The other half of the space was a swimming pool with a DJ set up and two go go dancers on either side of him. I settled on a white leather couch and started blocking in the space.

An event planner asked if I was there for the Masquerade. He pulled out a list and asked me for my name. I thought to myself, “Great the second I start sketching, I will be politely asked to leave.” I had to repeat my name several times and even spell it out, all the while continuing to draw. He finally left me in peace, I’m not sure if he ever saw my name. People slowly began to arrive ordering their martini’s and Peroni beers. By the time I finished this sketch, the place was packed with people in masks. I of course wanted to sketch each and every gown and mask but there just wasn’t time. Terry arrived dressed as Zorro and she bought some viking horns for me.

For the second sketch I got up and stood at the empty table seen in the middle of the first sketch. People quickly crowded in around me to eat their lobster tails and bisque. I started by drawing the man standing at the table opposite me. He was at the same table with his girlfriend and I had drawn her but left him out since I had already drawn a Peroni girl and wine barrel where he stood. He joked with me when he saw the sketch, saying, “Look he drew the beautiful woman but not me!”

Just as I was putting finishing touches on the second sketch, an event planner came up to me and asked if I would like to be in introduced to Richard Kessler, the owner of the hotel. Richard and his wife Martha were in an exclusive velvet roped off area next to the pool. Richard looked like a cattle rancher and his wife looked exotic in an all black gown and mask. When I showed him the sketchbook I was working on, I could tell he honestly appreciated the work. He asked if I worked larger and I mentioned the eighteen foot mural at the Sonesta Hotel.

From here, Terry and I decided to go to the Enzian to see what costumes were there. The Eden Bar was packed but honestly there were more costumes at the Grand Bohemian. We called it a night and headed home.

Scrubbed

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Thanks to Dina Mack and Chip Weston, tw0 artists at McRae studios, I managed to get approved for a press pass to sketch the second to last shuttle launch from the press site which is supposed to be very close to the launch pad. The launch was postponed again and again for a solid week until Friday when it looked like a crisp cool beautiful day for a launch. That morning I checked twitter and NASA announced that the fuel tanks were being filled. Everything was go for launch and a tweetup participant announced that the countdown clock was running. I was up at 7am and drove over to Chips house were we would car pool in his SUV. When I was just about to his house, I heard on the radio that the fuel tanks were leaking and the launch would be once again postponed. I called Dina and she suggested I stop over Chips house anyway. She heard the planned launch on Sunday was likely to also get scrubbed. When I met Chip I told him I wanted to head out to the Kennedy Space Center anyway to hopefully get a sketch of the shuttle as it waited.

When I crossed over the Indian River and onto the space center property, my first order of business was to pick up my STS-133 Mission Badge. When I finally found the media Accreditation building, it looked deserted. There were no cars in the parking lot. I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode. Weeds sprouted up from cracks in the pavement. The doors were locked. A sign on one of the doors announced that there was a general warning of possible hostile activity. Had the space center been evacuated? I decided to drive up to gate two and find out why the office was deserted. The buff soldier in camouflage uniform gave me the number of the woman in charge of NASA Media and P.R. I called and left a message.

Now I was stuck, waiting for her to return my call. Things didn’t look promising. I decided to drive up to the visitor’s center and do a sketch there while I waited. I approached the entrance which looked like an entrance to Disney World. Patriotic music was piped in over the loudspeakers. I looked at the admission prices, $45 for adults and $35 for children. That was too expensive for one sketch, so I found a nice palm tree to lean against and I started drawing the entrance and rocket garden in the background. I was wearing a sweater but still started shivering. I had to walk back to my truck and get a windbreaker.

After I finished the first sketch I called the woman in charge of media again. She informed me that a press conference was happening at that moment and that it would be announced that the launch would be scrubbed until November 30th. I was right to come out but there would be no getting close to the launch pad.

I noticed a bunch of STS-133 Mission Badges on vehicle dash boards they were doing the same as me, killing time at the tourist spots. At least the tweetup attendees had a chance to see the robonaut that will be sent up when the shuttle finally does launch. I drove back west to a building that had a retired shuttle in front of it acting as a billboard for the Astronaut Hall of Fame. To discourage tourists from standing around and taking pictures of it, an orange plastic fence was erected. This just meant tourists stood in the street taking pictures. A Fox news crew was parked in front of me. They probably used the shuttle as a backdrop in their talking head news footage. I heard them complaining that they couldn’t even get in the gift shop at the visitors center without paying $45.

Public Hearing High Speed Rail

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I decided to go to a public hearing to learn a little bit about the proposed high speed rail system. Florida has been a candidate for the system since the 1980s. The fast population growth, flat terrain, large number of tourists and distance between cities make Florida an ideal candidate for high speed rail. On January 10, President Obama announced a $1.25 billion award to Florida as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. These funds will start construction of the Tampa-Orlando high speed rail corridor. In May of 2010 Florida received $66.7 million in ARRA funds to take the project 30% of the way in terms of design, ridership projections and to prepare bid documents in early 2011.

The 84 mile line will run from the Orlando International Airport to down town Tampa with a stop at Disney of course. The room was lined with maps on easels that showed the proposed route. The project will be built in the median of I-4. Bridges and overpasses were built higher for years to accommodate the train. The train will reach speeds of 168 m.p.h. The system will have 5 stops, Orlando Airport, The Orange County Convention Center, Disney World, Lake or Polk County and Downtown Tampa. Each station will have connections to bus routes. The system should be operational in 2015 , so expect four years of construction on I-4. I am sure this will not cause any traffic problems or rubbernecking. Tourists should be thrilled, but the average Orlando resident will have little reason to use the system.

After the presentation, the floor was opened for questions or concerns. One woman just expressed her concern that the system have good connections to bus routes. A man stood and started talking about his dreams of a system that transported cars as well as passengers. He was told that to get the line operational, they had to use proven existing technology. The public hearing was over so fast that I didn’t finish my sketch. I walked to Panera Bread to finish it up while having dinner.

Waiting for Bill Clinton

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The day before election day, Bill Clinton came to Lake Eola to endorse the Democratic Candidates. I had just been to a public hearing to sketch the ten or so citizens who wanted to find out how billions of our tax dollars will be spent to get tourists from the airport to Disney and if they want, Tampa. The small turn out was a bit depressing. I arrived at Lake Eola early, got a sandwich at Pannera and started to sketch. North Eola Drive which runs along the West Edge of the park, was completely shut down. Police blocked the northern access with their bikes. An officer walked up to me when I just had five lines on the page. He asked, “You sketching?” I replied, “Not much to see yet, I just started.” “Weren’t you at that Smile event?” Suddenly I remembered him. He took an interest in my work that day as well. He said, “You do good work, I’ll let you get to it.” Though he was pretty far away, I swear he might have been voguing a bit, looking regal for the sketch.

News vans were lined all along the street with satellite dishes to broadcast the event live. A homeless man stood close to me several times complaining about the number and placement of the police. I ignored him. One word from me and he would have someone to complain to for the rest of the night. Political signs from all the Democratic candidates were everywhere. An area was fenced in to contain the crowd. This area was only about twenty yards square with a stage set up with a podium and large American flag. The media had a staging area near the back of the enclosure. As they were setting up the TV cameras, a security detail told them to leave the area. They had to leave any equipment since the wouldn’t be able to get it back in if they took it with them. An officer with a K-9 bomb sniffing dog explored the media staging area. The dog was a bit off task since he kept looking up at the growing crowd waiting to get in. The officer kept pointing at one bag and the dog just wouldn’t sniff.

I walked around some more considering drawing the growing crowd in the darkness. But the crowd was depressingly small in size. Even if Bill played saxophone, it would be to little to late. Even though I had a ticket, I felt tired and despondent. I decided to drive home before the area became locked down with black limos and secret service. I would watch Bill on the eleven o’clock news with the rest of the Orlando couch potatoes.

Haunted House

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After the Halloween wedding, Terry and I went home and got ready for Trick or Treaters. Terry got into her Zorro costume again. We had two large bags of candy to give away. If no children stopped by we would be stuck eating Gobstoppers, Taffy and boxes of Nerds for weeks. Halloween is our pet cockatoo’s favorite holiday. Terry brings him to the door where he greets the children with a warm, “Hello!” He often flaps his wings frantically causing the kids to shriek with delight. The cutest trick or treaters were two little girls, maybe five year old twins, dressed as Indian princesses. Terry let them pet Zorro and then she got two of his white feathers which she also gave to the girls for their head dress. Later, a little boy dressed in a diving suit also wanted to pet the bird. When Terry got down on one knee to get to his level, he also got on one knee.

When the horde slowed, and all the candy was gone, Terry and I drove out to Winter Garden to see an amazing haunted house. This is a private home which is only open to the public on Halloween. Cars were parked all along the side of the road. I found the first open spot and we walked towards the house. We used my book light as a flashlight. The center median and many lawn had yellow caution tape out to stop cars from parking. The City of Winter Garden had told the home owner that $350 dollar tickets would be issued this year if cars parked on the median. Guess the City of Winter Garden is looking for some profit from this free event.

There was a huge line of people lined up to go in the front door of the haunted house. The line was moving though so Terry and I lined up. A wolfman kept sneaking up on people in line. He tried to scare Terry, but she just put her arm around him and said, “So what are you doing later?” A faceless hooded ghoul stood silently and his eyed began to glow red. Children were screaming in terror and pleasure. The wolfman walked up to a mother with her toddler in her arms. The little girl held her hand to her face saying, “No, no NO!” Then burst into tears. A teenage boy walked up to Terry and said, “It looks like you dropped something.” He knelt down to pick the imaginary object up. “Oh look, it’s your self-esteem.” She countered with, “You keep that, you need it more than me.”

The inside of the home was lavishly decorated. Animatronics and live actors combined to frighten guests. A wedding couple on the porch reminded me of Nick and Brooke. Right at the front door a scream faced ghost stood motionless. As a family walked by it suddenly moved and shouted scaring a family half to death. Not knowing what was real was unnerving. At the entry there was a treasure chest full of full sized candy bars. A glow bracelet was offered to all who entered and when people left through the back door there were free beers for the adults and sodas for the children. I have never seen so much Halloween generosity before. We used to give baby pumpkins to children who were frightened visiting our Tenafly N.J. home on Halloween, but this Central Florida treasure takes the cake.

Halloween Wedding

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I had only met Brooke Haber twice. She was an author I met at a Boudoir Bombshell Calender photo shoot. Brooke is writing a novel where the main character is a photographer. Like me, she was absorbing real life experience through observation. The second time was at an authors talk back, where Jamie Freveletti spoke about her experiences becoming a woman thriller novelist.

Terry and I were invited to Brooke’s Halloween Wedding. Costumes were not required and any sexy costumes were discouraged since children would be present . It was a gorgeous day. The wedding was in Clermont and Terry wondered aloud about all the open farmland we drove through. We knew we were in the right place when we saw the cornstalks and bales of hay. It was hot in the direct sunlight and there were people huddled in the shade of a gazebo for some shade. Folding chairs were arranged in two sets of neat rows. I picked up a couple of chairs and sat in the shade of a small tree. We were told the wedding wouldn’t be for another half hour which gave me a jump start on the sketch. I sketched in all the background elements waiting for the ceremony to begin.

Movie music from Pirates of the Caribbean and ET began to play. When Brooke arrived, the music switched to Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy singing “You make me Happy.” Children rushed up the isle in front of her throwing fabric Autumn colored leaves. The ceremony was short and sweet stressing that this was the first step in a life of fidelity and trust. Brooke expressed with tears, the fact that Nick has made her the happiest she has ever been , and that he has stood by her even when things got bad.

At the reception a block away there were sandwiches and endless homemade dishes. Two skulls greeted people as they entered. The first dance was tender and sweet as Nick cupped Brook’s face in his hands and kissed her. It was more of a slow affectionate embrace than a dance. Christen Wheeler, a friend and photographer shouted out, “Dip her!” Nick gladly complied and she fired off a shot. Brooke then dipped Nick for comic effect. The wedding cake was Goth and magnificently decorated, blood red and velvety when stabbed. Terry and Denna Beena swapped shoes and I must say, Terry’s yellow pumps went really well with Denna’s purple tutu and bright multicolored hair. They were instant Facebook friends. Terry fired off a friend request on her iPhone and Denna confirmed on the spot.

Foul!

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It was the opening night season premiere game for the Orlando Magic in the brand spanking new Amway Arena. As I walked toward the venue, two hours early, I saw small crowds of fans dressed in blue and white all along Orange Avenue. Several news helicopters hovered over the city most likely shooting footage of the gathering crowds around the Amway Center. I wasn’t going to sketch the game, I was going to catch Brian Feldman as he read the NBA Rulebook to the crowd. At just about any sports or theatrical event in this town there is always a person on a soapbox shouting hell and damnation to the crowd. Brian’s performance didn’t offer salvation, but enlightenment regarding the rules of the game.

When I arrived, I unfolded my compact artist stool and leaned against a metal pylon getting to work. Brian’s father was using his iPhone to shoot continuous video footage of the reading. The sun set behind a bank of deep blue clouds. Brian shouted the rules into the megaphone. The rules are amazingly repetitive. I thought at first that Brian might be reading the same rule over and over, but listening closely I found the variations in the pattern. Erin Volz in a blue jersey rode up on her bicycle. After listening for a while, she relieved Brian’s dad by taking over the iPhone and shooting video. She remained there listening intently, a true Magic fan.

A policeman approached Brian and the two of them spoke for a while. I couldn’t hear what was said. As Brian got back on his crate, he looked at me and shouted, “Incident!” I started sketching faster adding color to Brian and his dad in case they were told to move along. So far I had escaped detection. A female security officer rode up on a high tech electric tricycle. She spoke to Brian and when he showed her the rulebook, she smiled, laughed then drove off. A third officer, a huge muscular fellow with a motorcycle helmet also approached. He insisted Brian move his crate a foot further west. He said to Brian, “You are blocking pedestrian access to the curb.” He also insisted Brian not use the megaphone. He complied and continued reading and shouted into his cupped hand. I couldn’t hear a thing he read from that point on and I was only ten feet from him. The Center was blasting the insipid commentary from two announcers who were predicting a stellar season for the Magic. The crowd rushed past me growing thicker and louder. I wanted more rules.

I think it was Erin who thought of rolling up a Magic poster, creating a crude paper megaphone. Brian shouted into it, “Thor! Can you hear me?!” The second time he shouted my name, I looked up and gave him a thumbs up. The paper megaphone was only a minor improvement. A couple of times fans paused and listened, never for more than a minute. Perhaps two people ever noticed what I was doing. One woman walked up and said, “Look at you, Mr. etch-a-sketch!” I cringed but gave her the blog address. I finished my sketch long before Brian finished reading the rulebook. I patted Brian’s dad on his shoulder and waved to Brian who continued to read valiantly. I made my way East on Church Street a lone fish swimming against the school of blue and white all heading to the game. My job was done, a slam dunk. Brian said this might be his final Orlando performance in 2010, so something big must be on his horizon. I think route 66 is calling his name.