Urban Sketching at Panera

Posted on by Thor

At Elite Animation Academy (8933 Conroy Windermere Rd, Orlando, FL) I have a really talented student who is catching on to my sketch a day mantra quickly. Before class she shows me sketches she had done during the week and at the end of class she asks for home work. That is the kind of dedication that is truly needed to gradually grow as an artist. For the last class I took he out of the classroom and introduced her to the challenges of sketching in an American style cafe like Panera Bread.

My first works of advice wasn’t about techniques, or what tools to use while sketching, but to watch to see how much food and or drink remained on peoples tables. She laughed, but realized why I had mentioned it when the woman she had been sketching got up and left the restaurant. She lucked out however because the woman in red that I had been sketching moved to the empty table once again supplying my student with a model.

I ordered a fountain drink and focused most of my attention on the college students plugged in at the corner table. They surfed the web and maybe did some homework. It is hard to explain the joy and challenges of sketching on location to someone who is just stating out but my student this semester is very much up for the challenge. I also let he know that she should pay attention to the art on the walls and let the work inspire her as she develops her sketch. Proportions, composition and setting the stage were all covered as she progresses quickly in this class outside the classroom. When I get a student like this who is exited to explore the work while sketching I realize that I can really make a difference in another artists life.

Irrizary Pagan: Latin American Artist

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For Irrizary Pagan, art is a catharsis. Everything he went through from childhood until now he describes in his paintings. Anything he might feel about any situation be it personal, religious or political, is put on canvas so it no longer lives inside him. If someone walks up to the painting  and sees what inspired its creation then that is a good thing. They may not like it, they may not love it, they may not want it but is has a message and meaning for those who look.

When he starts a painting, he comes up with a them or message that he wants to convey. Then he looks for certain symbols that he wants to add to make the painting graphic, but not too graphic, to make it funny or sarcastic, to disguise it in a sense because if it is too blatant, people would get offended. If it is too silly then the message is lost. He tries to find the right balance where symbolism and the image strike the viewer. If someone walks up and says, I see this or I feel that, then he has hit his mark. The process of looking for symbolism is intense for him. He had a vast library of books on the history of symbols and what they have meant through the ages. Shapes forms and colors all come into play as he works.

When he started his journey as an artist he asked another artist for advice and was told, “All you have to do is practice. Could you ride a bike the first time you saw one? No. How do you get good at it? You keep riding. If you have a passion for it you excel at it. If you don’t then you excel at something else.” It is that simple. So, how do you learn techniques? Simply through trail and error. Like any great artist he is still learning. The canvas is like a window to the soul, it is an opening or entrance and he is always looking for things to put it it. For instance the symbol of a frog is good luck.  If you don’t have frogs then nature is in danger.  When you loose the frogs, in the forest, then the forest is dead. Once the frogs are dead, the Amazon is dead. If a plantation is sick it will loose its frogs.

When studying art in college all of his teachers were artists struggling to make money. They took the teaching job at college to make ends meet. The way he was taught was to “Just do it.” If you can’t draw then practice. It wasn’t about techniques. If you wanted to paint then you just had to paint. An instructor put student canvases on the floor and then dipped his shoes in paint and walked all over the students work. Irrizary laughed until his sides hurt while other students cried. The instructor told him, “You pass.” Some people take art so seriously that they forget why they are doing it. When you create something it is not just for you. It is for everybody. You move on. If you are afraid of loosing it or of it being destroyed then you will not create any more. No work is ever finished or complete. IF you get that philosophy in your head then you become good.

As a work study in college he worked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC polishing armor and in his off hours he would explore the catacombs of books by famous artists. It was the best place to learn. His other academic learning came form comic books. In New York City there were many underground magazines and comics in Soho. These were radical new venues to see new art.Even traditional comic artists did underground work and he studied them all.

Artists constantly create and destroy. As a child we learn, then we grow up and go back to being a child if we re lucky. Love and hate are all a part of creation. When you create you are destroying the pure blank canvas. You scumble into it, scratch it, and if you put down a wrong color you scrape it off. So an artist is creating and destroying constantly until they reach a point and say, “That is it.” They walk away. None of Irrizary’s paintings are finished. He has worked on one canvas for five to six years. He rolled it up and put it in a tube. He started that painting in 1992 and is still considering completing it today.

There aren’t any galleries in Central Florida. A gallery might be a thrift store with a bare wall or a coffee shop or maybe a City Hall or a small commune but they want artists to pay to display work. Why would an artist pay rent to show their work? The painting would also be lost among hundreds of other artists works. That is not how art is meant to be seen. South Florida has started doing this as well. It is a business that bleeds artists. One gallerist wanted to charge him $10 a foot to show his work. People come to Florida for the beaches or to spend hundreds of dollars to ride a theme park ride for a matter of seconds. They don’t come here to buy art, they want a memento, a postcard.

When he first moved to Saint Cloud, there wasn’t anywhere to show art. Marilyn Cortes-Lovato moved here from Chicago to run the Osceola Center for the Arts and now things are happening. New Concept Barber and Art Gallery also opened and they are promoting artists in new and inspired ways. The landscape keeps changing. Art isn’t easy but it is what he loves. We create and destroy.

Todd Bright

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Pam Schwartz and I went to AIGA Orlando‘s October Community Meeting at Credo Conduit (1001 N Orange Ave Orlando, FL.) The invitation was open to everyone, AIGA members, non-members, designers, non-designers, and beyond. Merritt Andrews, a former co-worker at Disney Feature Animation, put the invitation up on Facebook and the evening featured another former Disney Animator Todd Bright.

Todd’s career in animation began at the Disney Animation Studios working on such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Tarzan, Lilo and Stitch, Brother Bear, and Curious George.

His experience and approach to storytelling, character development, and personality animation has brought to life projects for clients such as Walt Disney Imagineering, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney Junior, ESPN, Purina, EA Sports, Royal Caribbean Cruises, and Big Idea.

It was fascinating hearing Todd’s story of how hard he needed to work to get into the Disney Feature Animation Studio. After several years of Art School, his parents hit hard times and he was on his own. That didn’t stop his dream. He took drawing classes obsessively and got better at his craft. Applying to be an intern at Disney was its own story of setbacks and perseverance. He drew in public catching the little stories that happen every day around us if we only pay attention. When he referred to himself as the creepy guy in the corner sketching I had to chuckle. Besides commercial jobs he has taken to painting on location as well, fueling the inner artist. A playful animation he did of his pet pug wallowing in his food dish ended up getting him freelance work from Tom Bancroft another Former Disney Animator.

When Todd talked about the closing of the Florida Disney Feature Animation studio, he said it was like watching a family get torn apart. He thinks there is easily a feature film in that studios story. He talked about the chance he took when he entered the office of top animator Andreas Deja. He asked him for a shot at doing his rough in-betweens and after a test he was working with this top flight talent. As the studio was closing Todd was invited to the animators California home and at that party several of the 9 old men, legends of the early Disney animated feature years, were there. Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas were there and another animator was playing piano. My heart hurt as I listened to the end of an era and the legends of the industry who are only known by those who know the hardship and struggle of mastering animation.

This was the most highly attended of AIGA’s meetings this year. Local students from UCF and other community colleges filled the quaint community space filled with quirky bungalows. There is clearly a hunger from this new generation of future animators for insights about the traditional days of hand drawn animation. Digital might be bright and shiny but traditional has depth and heart. On scene, “Bedtime Story” was cut from the final Lilo and Stitch Film. It demonstrated the heart that can be found in hand drawn animation. It hurt to discover it ended up on the editing room floor.

Todd did a great job inspiring these young new artists. He stressed the importance of feeding the artist soul while persevering in an industry that is small and demanding. Animation is challenging and can break your heart, but when a scene is working there is magic in the moment.

onePULSE Memorial and Museum Models

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The six architectural firms that were selected to submit Pulse Memorial and Museum designs to the onePULSE Foundation, now have their models on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 E Central Blvd, Orlando, FL) through October 10, 2019. The six firms submitting were…

  • Coldefy and Associés with RDAI, Xavier Veilhan, dUCKS scéno, Agence TER, Prof. Laila Farah
  • Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rene Gonzalez Architects with Raymond Jungles, Inc.
  • heneghan peng architects, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Sven Anderson & Pentagram
  • MASS Design Group, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Sasaki, Sanford Biggers, Richard Blanco, Porsha Olayiwola
  • MVRDV, Grant Associates, GSM Project and Studio Drift
  • Studio Libeskind with Claude Cormier + Associés, Thinc, and Jenny Holzer

I will refer to the submissions just by the names in bold above for convenience.

The model in the foreground of my sketch by Studio Libeskind was one of my favorites in terms of of the design for the memorial. They propose a heart-shaped design of 366 rainbow gates, each for a day of the 2016 calendar year that creates a walking path around the club. Victims names appear on the gate that corresponds to the date of their birth. That path then cuts through the Pulse nightclub in a Z/broken heart pattern. They propose projections inside the club that are words of love and loss spoken by those impacted. This feels like a weaker aspect to the design concept.  The areas inside the heart pattern become a community space. There is a break in the heart pattern that is the entry into the club and symbolizes June 12, the day of the shooting. The theme of the design is Perpetual Light. The design then spills out onto Orange Avenue up towards Orlando Regional Medical Center with landscaping. Orlando is the most dangerous city in America for pedestrians and the present sprawl of Orange Avenue doesn’t seem a welcoming site for a peaceful “Survivors Walk.”

The museum design proposed by Studio Libeskind is a tall, boxy sculptural form that is meant to resemble a standing figure. Though the idea that it represents white light being broken up into a great diversity of colors, it just feels monstrous, like the iron giant. The museum seemed less thought out than the boxy form. It is the less inspiring half of the studio’s proposal. Each model also had a second small scale model that showed how the museum and memorial would fit into the Orlando Urban landscape. These were helpful to consider the future of the how SODO district might look.

The museum designed by Coldefy, was, on the other hand, well thought out and truly inspiring. The museum spirals upward with a central core that is dedicated to the museum. Each level had outer areas that incorporate landscaping and bright light. Vertical gardens and public plazas create new community places, and a
rooftop promenade offers views to the memorial and over the entire
district. It feels like a space station, modern and sleek with spiraling forms. Modular storage is explored in the schematics, making it clear they considered the storage of archival items. The museum also has a large community space for presentations and possible performances. This amazing museum design seems big and ambitious for small town Orlando, but it is my top pick.

In the Coldefy design the club is kept as an empty shell surrounded by a circular encompassing overhang that acts as a sun shade and protection from rain for visitors. The original Pulse fountain is maintained which feeds a large circular reflecting pool and the water cascades over the base which has the names of the 49 who lost their lives that night. The pool is lined with 49 colors that radiate towards the public spaces. A slice of the club is removed in a V shapes pattern and that section is preserved for the Pulse Museum, while the rest of the building is kept intact as an empty form, a memory of times past with a canyon walkway through it. A garden around the club is filled with 49 trees. I found it ironic that they were all orange on the model since we never experience fall here in Orlando. I noticed a wall that would break the street noise which was an intelligent design choice. Together they transform the SODO district. Once again, a top choice for me.

MVRDV had a memorial design which would allow visitors to walk under the club which has the bullet holes and damage covered in gold. Though a bold choice, it seems impractical. Water would likely pool in the new sinkhole created, and quite honestly it might best function as cover for a homeless tent city. The landscape consists of 49 trees chosen by victims’ families with atmospheric lighting.

The MVRDV museum is designed to look like LOVE written in cursive and slanted up from the ground. The sloping roof top is covered in green-space but seems impractical, since people who go up there would be surrounded by walls making the experience feel confining. Having a museum occupying the inner strokes of a cursive shape might also feel confining.

MASS Design Group surrounded the Pulse Nightclub with giant wedge shaped shards that act as a large waterfall feature. The club is contained withing the water feature, only faintly visible through the cascading water. The names of the 49 victims are at the base of the fountain feeling much like the 9/11 memorial. Though the nightclub remains, it is encapsulated and contained. The museum design is consistent with large wedge shapes thrusting towards the ground. It reminded me of the Star Wars Sandcrawler where droids go to die. It also reminded me of cheese graters and Hollywood sets with false facades. Needless to say, this was not my favorite design.

heneghan peng was the starkest of the designs for the memorial. My favorite aspect of the design is a stark wall that simply has 6.12.2012 emblazoned on it with 6 foot high carved numerals like on a gravestone. The curved linear exterior design of the museum is nice. Its curves embrace public spaces along West Kaley, tilting upwards to
provide shade. At its heart is a matrix of flexible chambers. The interior however feels dark and cavernous like a mall. This felt cold to me and not fully thought out.

Diller was my lest favorite of the designs. The memorial model appeared like a birthday cake with candles on top. The plan is to have pillars through the club which illuminate in rainbow colors. The impression is of stripper poles or ballistic tracks of bullets through a crime scene. Not only that, but the club is surrounded by similar poles. It all felt wrong and disconcerting to me.  The club is surrounded by what appears to be a beaded curtain. The museum design seemed to surf through a variety of scenarios as though they had no idea where to begin the final design. In general, they incorporated green space concepts with a series of blocks for the museum itself. Nothing seemed right.

Regardless of how I feel, you should look through the videos and design drawings and decide for yourself what you feel would work best for the memorial and museum south of downtown. If you are local, go in this week and leave your comments. If you aren’t local, visit the onePULSE Foundation website to review and leave your comments there. 

Lip Sync Battle

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Opera del Sol and Central Florida Vocal Arts hosted a fun evening, of fun-raising, silent auction items, live musical
performances by Opera del Sol Singers and of course Celebrity Lip
Syncing at The Abbey, (100 S Eola Dr #100, Orlando, FL). The catch phrase for the evening was, that it was “for those of us who CAN’T sing- raising money for those who can.” The goal was to have local celebrities compete for the loudest cheers and most outrageous performances.

A single Mic stood on stage along with a drum set. Theresa Smith-Levin stepped up to the mic and introduced the all female Opera leadership team which brought a roar from the audience. Theresa explained that many young performers feel they must leave Orlando to go to larger cities like LA or NYC to pursue their career in the arts. Her hope is that the Opera programs they are promoting might someday find venues and creative opportunities for talent to stay in Orlando.

My expectations were for a pretty tame evening of watching people lip sync. It should be a fun and straight forward sketch opportunity. Those expectations were quickly blown out of the water.  The first act featured news caster, Bob Frier and his support band wearing very fake wigs and lip Syncing to Nirvana. One song involved the submerged baby with a dollar bill dangling in front of it. Giovanna Ciccone danced out and thrashed the plastic baby about with it’s creepy red eyes bulging as it reached for the bill. It was a hilarious moment. A smoke machine billowed a wispy cloud across the stage.

Next Ted Bogert of the Ted Show, took to the stage this time dressed in an opulent rainbow gown and an orange wig that was out of control. Things were happening so fast that I struggled to keep up with the action in my sketch. The crowd went wild when he ripped off the rainbow gown to showcase a tight fitting black dress with fringe that showed plenty of leg. Two sexy backup dancers, Giovanna Ciccone, and Olivia Figh raced on stage to dance behind him.

Next, a county themed Savannah Boan a Gator Land Ambassador, came out with a singing horse. You heard me right, a singing horse. I struggled to get the horse in my sketch, but it was cut in half before I finished getting its misshapen head on the page. Clothes flew off and costumes changed in a blink. The horse team turned out to be two Gator Land Bose including Brandon Fisher first in overalls and then in torn tops and flowing skirts. The audience was up and dancing and clapping to the wild action on stage as I scribbled.

Some sanity returned when Dan Altman and Olivia Figh from Opera del Sol, performed a moment from Phantom of the Opera. She has an amazing range and she brought home Opera del Sol’s mantra to make Opera sexy again. Sabrina Ambra co-host at the News Junkfollowed this up with two amazing back up dancers that were puppets connected to her with a complicated series of poles. I wish she had kept those back up dancers for the duration but like every other act she made a quick costume change which was hilariously difficult to pull off since she got tangles in the web of poles and pant legs. She followed up with some over the top hip rap with two live back up dancers.

Next came a cross dressing bomb shell by Rauce Padgett who is from the Jim Colbert radio show. The crowd absolutely loved him. I sketched madly to try and capture the wild pig tails and skimpy skirt and top. He had a bold, nervous, stiff staccato way of dancing that caught everyone’s attention. Jim Colbert followed up with a fiddle battle with the devil performed by Opera del Sol’s Nichole Dupre. She seemed right at home in her bright red skin and horns whaling away on her fiddle.  Ultimately at the end of the night Rauce won for his stellar performance and he stripped of his top to raise the trophy to the sky. He shouted that he had stripped the prize from Jim Colbert.

This was a fun evening of fun-raising with a flair. As Theresa Smith-Levin said, “We got some strange friends.” That is just what Orlando needs, a taste of strange to keep the arts thriving.

Weekend Top 6 Picks for October 5 and 6, 2019

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Saturday October 5, 2019

8am to 1pm Free. Parramore Farmers Market. John H Jackson Community Center, 3107, 1002 W Carter St, Orlando, FL. Purchase
quality, fresh and healthy food grown in your own neighborhood by local
farmers, including Fleet Farming, Growing Orlando, and other community
growers.

10am to 4pm Free. Orlando Elks Vintage Faire. Elk Lodge 1079 12 N Primrose Drive Orlando FL.  

5pm to 10 pm Free. The Night Market + Zombietoberfest. Audubon Park Garden District, 3201 Corrine Dr #216, Orlando, FL. The
Audubon Park Garden District’s Night Market at Audubon features locally
and regionally made crafts, food trucks, vintage, art, photography, DJ,
live music, cash bar and fortune tellers. Part of Zombietoberfest, it
is Orlando’s most original Halloween festival.

Plus, enjoy a free
outdoor movie, music, two craft beer gardens, food and drink specials,
free costume contest, and more. Come party under the stars in award
winning Audubon Park Garden District, near Redlight Redlight and Park
Ave CDs. Family friendly! Leashed, vaccinated, well behaved pets
welcome.

Sunday October 6, 2019

9:30am to 12:30pm $275 for 6 weeks of instruction with Thor. Crealde Urban Sketching Class. Crealde School of Art, 600 St Andrews Blvd, Winter Park, FL. Learn
to sketch from subject to the environment. Classroom sessions will
focus on sketching clothed models and progress towards sketching the
model and classroom environment. Learn how to incorporate storytelling
into your sketches in our location sessions. These trips to local venues
will challenge you to use your sketchbook the way a photojournalist
uses a camera. The six-week goal is to produce finished sketches using
pencil, pen, and watercolor within two hours. Skill level: Intermediate.

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

Noon to 3pm Donation based. Music at the Casa. Omar Miguel. Casa Feliz Historic Home Museum, 656 N Park Ave, Winter Park, FL. Members
of the public are invited to visit our historic home museum on a Sunday
afternoon to listen to live music and take a tour of our historic home
museum and the James Gamble Rogers II Studio by trained docents. 

The Heavy

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Now that I am instructing an Urban Sketching Class at Crealde School of Art, (600 St Andrews Blvd, Winter Park, FL 32792) I am always looking for inspiring places to sketch around Winter Park. My students advised me that The Heavy (1152 Harmon Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789) might be a fun  place to sketch. They were correct. The Heavy located in the old Lombardi’s warehouse is a fantastic coffee shop that also sells gorgeous plants and furnishings. The loading docks have been converted into luminous plant filled oasis’s.


My students scattered about and sketched the unique setting. Several children were playing on a couch which was caught by one of my students. One member of the staff was clearly an artist herself and loved that we were capturing the ambiance with our sketchbooks. If you check their calendar online you will see weekend Home Barista workshops and an open flower bar. It seems you can learn how to make you own home just as much of an oasis.


The Heavy seems such a strange name for a place that exudes a light and calming vibe. For much of the time while I worked on this sketch a man was getting an education in how to care for the house plant he was buying. Of course most of  my time is spent giving students ideas on composition and structure. I want to be sure that everyone gets some rough sketches from me. At the beginning of the next class I also give them all the sketches I did for each student since a note give to one student might be helpful for another. I love introducing artists to the life affirming habit of sketching daily.

Accidental Historian install.

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At the Orange County Regional History Center, (65 E. Central Blvd. Orlando, Florida 32801) I watched as a large cartography sketch by J.O. Fries was projected on a wall  for the Accidental Historian. This Central Florida sketch shows Lake Holden and Lake Jessup. Fries filled book after book with these detailed drawings were done as he paced off the woods and back roads by foot. The land was graphed off into a grid and then details were incorporated with old school pen and ink on paper. Trees look like arrows and wetlands are fields of dashes. His job was to document every mile and yard of the barren Central
Florida landscape. His hand drawn maps documented lakes swamps and dirt
roads that then dominated the landscape. Today Google satellite views
show the same landscape littered with strip malls and suburban sub
divisions.

I helped hand draw one section of this huge wall display. It involved working on each panel while on hands and knees. After a while the repetitive nature of the marks made became second nature. Quite a few different History Center  staff took turns adding to the large hand drawn map, yet it all pulls together in the exhibit.

Because I am interested in family history I was fascinated by the diaries on display and he funeral books citing caused of death for Orlando citizens over the years. Fries daughter wrote intimate diaries in her native tongue which I believe was Swedish. Transcriptions detailed how her family adjusted to the Florida climate.

This is a fun show with many Instagramable selfie moments. The opening of the show had a large image of the Lake Eola fountain half of the image is drawn by me with the rainbow colored amphitheater in the background and the other half is a photo form the 1920s by T.P Robinson.

The exhibit is up through January 20, 2020.

Other events surrounding the exhibition:

First Friday Lunch and Learns

History Center staff offer a behind-the-scenes look at the museum and share their research.

Also a public exhibition of the shortlisted design team submissions will take
place from October 3 to October 9, 2019 at the Orange County Regional History
Center in Orlando, Florida. This will be accompanied by a digital
exhibition of the shortlisted teams’ proposals on the onePULSE design
competition website. The public will have an opportunity to share their
comments.

The six shortlisted teams (in alphabetical order) are:

  • Coldefy and Associés with RDAI, Xavier Veilhan, dUCKS scéno, Agence TER, Prof. Laila Farah
  • Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rene Gonzalez Architects with Raymond Jungles, Inc.
  • heneghan peng architects, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Sven Anderson & Pentagram
  • MASS Design Group, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Sasaki, Sanford Biggers, Richard Blanco, Porsha Olayiwola
  • MVRDV, Grant Associates, GSM Project and Studio Drift
  • Studio Libeskind with Claude Cormier + Associés, Thinc, and Jenny Holzer

“Dive-In” Movie Series “Jaws”

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The
City of Winter Park has brought back their successful pool-based
“Dive-In” movie series in the summer, kicking it off with a screening of
cult-favorite, Jaws. The screening was part
of the Parks and Recreation Department’s Family Fun program and was be
hosted at the Cady Way Pool (2529 Cady Way, Winter Park). It was free and family-friendly if your kids
can handle animatronic sharks eating people.

The inflatable movie screen was on the smallish side and we had to wait for it to get dark enough for the movie to start. There was plenty of people watching and I sketched in the pool and life guard before the opening scene. Kids crowded around the screen with pool noodles and one flamingo inner tube.

This is the perfect movie to watch while floating since many of director Stephen Spielberg‘s camera shots are from inches above the water right before the shark attacks. Perhaps some of the shark shock factor has worn off over the years since this is a film screened as often as the Wizard of Oz. But when the driving beat on on John Williams score begins I still get a chill up my spine. I appreciate chief Brody’s problem with residents sitting right in front of him when he is trying to check for sharks. You would be amazed how often people stand right in front of me while I am working, forcing me to look over around or through them to keep sketching.

I loved reading about how this film was made. The mechanical shark seldom worked which might account for how seldom it is seen. Just the logistics of filming on a tiny boat is enough to make anyone sea sick. Then, as well, the weather seldom assisted in the shooting schedule.

What made the pool side screening truly amazing is that there was free popcorn and drinks available. Who could ask for more.

Sette Italian

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By Pam Schwartz

Tom and I love to cook at home, but there are some nights I can’t
handle the thought of having to stop for groceries for something fun and
then cook and clean up. By 9:30 PM all we have accomplished is to have
dinner, albeit delicious.

This random weekday night I was feeling something hearty and just made
the executive decision we should go out. Its never too hard to convince
Tom, so we settled on Sette (1407 N Orange Ave, Orlando, FL 32804) having heard good things about it. We both
love Italian food but rarely eat it out because
we often feel we can do it better at home.

With Sette this was NOT the case. It was *I think* the first time
stateside I’ve ever felt I COULDN’T make something on the same par (at
least not on my first try!) The place has a nice vibe with an open
kitchen layout. I beat Tom there and so we had to do-si-do
seats once he arrived so he could have his preferred view on things for
this sketch.

Tom and I are rarely food compatible. For goodness sakes, the man’s
favorite food is hot dogs. I eat most of what he eats but he rarely
likes to get too adventurous, though he’s gotten much better. I relented
from my wish list appetizer and let Tom get us the
Italian sausage and grapes. I couldn’t quite get behind the idea of hot
grapes and was concerned about the general levels of fennel involved.
The excellent waiter assured me that if I got a bit of each ingredient
in every bite, I’d be pleased, and I was. Surprisingly
so.

For our entrees Tom ordered the Clam Linguini (forgetting he’s not a
huge fan of anything lemony) but he still really liked it, and I had the
Amatriciana Paccheri, the rigatoni gigante was so perfectly al dente,
exquisite, and the dish seasoned so I could only
shake my head to keep myself from crying into the beautiful bowl of
noodles.  Meanwhile, we had waiters, hostesses, and the owner of the
restaurant swing by our table multiple times to check on us and have
small chat. Something I always appreciate, I like
getting to know folks and enjoy the conversation while Tom sketches. 



Trina Gregory-Propst, one of the owners, and I chatted about making ice cream and
flavor profiles, given my recent obsession with it. Tom gets homemade
vanilla chocolate chip (it is all he ever wants), which she laughed
about, while I experiment with honey lavender,
coffee, or sweet corn profiles.

Perhaps not surprisingly, she managed to talk us into dessert. I,
the lemon cake of which I’d heard rumors as to its greatness and Tom the
special chocolate hazelnut creation. They were both really excellent
desserts and enormous in portion.

It is safe to say that Tom and I will definitely be repeat visitors to
Sette, there are more scrumptious sounding items for us to sample.
Definitely the type of place to take your friends and family to for a
nice night out when they are in town.