I went into the “Crimes of the Heart” auditions not even knowing the story of the play. I hoped to discover the story through the actors constant readings . I arrived at the Lowndes Shakespeare Theater at 11 Am and only the Stage Manager Chasmin Hallyburton and the Director Aradhana Tiwari were on hand. Aradhana was busy reading a stack of papers in front of her so I just sat in the front row of the theater and started sketching the stage. I figured I could draw the stage and then just draw in the auditioning actors when they arrived. I was a bit disappointed since I had hoped to find a long line of aspiring actors all waiting for a chance to be in the play. The morning started off slow.
Beth Marshall showed up and she told me the rough outline of the story. Crimes is the story of 3 sisters in Mississippi. One sister has sacrificed her life to take care of the father and the family estate. Meg is the black sheep of the family and she is a force of nature and larger than life. The third sister is a bit of a socialite and is concerned with her reputation. The play revolves about these women coming to terms with their fathers death and coming of age. The women’s names are Babe, Meg and Lennie. There is also a cousin named Chick.
Slowly actors began to arrive and each would enter the theater and then present a short monologue. If this monologue was good enough, the director then asked the actor to go in the hallway and rehearse a scene from the play. When they returned Jason Horne would often read along with the them so there could be some interaction. Jason would even read the female parts if needed, which was quite humerus. In this sketch Jason is reading with Britni Leslie. She had on light southern summer dress and looked the part. She was ultimately cast as Babe and Jason was cast as Barnett.
Winthrop
The next leg of the trip involved finding a horse stable where Terry could get in a trail ride. By iPhone she found a lodge just outside of Winthrop Washington. We stopped at Winthrop an walked about for a bit to take in all the renovated Western architecture. Bikers were around in abundance as well. I decided to sit outside of a saloon to get this view of the main street with the Harley’s in the foreground. I miss timed adding color to the bikes and before I knew it the bikers had roared of. I threw down splashes of color wherever I felt the sketch needed them partly from memory and partly from direct observation. Terry had scoped out a cinnamon bun and ice cream store that I hope we will go back to tonight.
I also sketched the horses just prior to the trail ride. I ran into similar issues where I would start sketching a horse and then immediately a child would hop on and the horse would wander off. Life just keeps forging ahead with little regard to the limited patience of an artist. “Stand still laddy!”
The Killer Whale Pod
As the Mystic Sea sat quiet in the water, a pod of killer whales swam right towards us. They swam by on both sides of the boat and one crossed right under the boat surfacing right near where I was perched as I sketched. Since I wasn’t crowded up against the railing on the opposite side of the boat, I was the only one who got to see him that close. I felt his spray.
Terry was getting annoyed that I was spending more time sketching the tourists than watching the whales. Sketching the tourists as they ran from one railing to the other was definitely more entertaining than watching the blow spouts and dorsal fins. One person would point out to sea and then everyone would rush to that railing tipping the boat slightly. Digital cameras and binoculars would come out and thousands of shots must have been fired off catching every nuance of the whales brief surfacing.
After this sighting the captain maneuvered the boat several more times to follow the pod, giving everyone on board more views of the whales. At one point the whales churned up the water feeding on a school of fish. One slapped the water’s surface with his tail.
I spoke with one fellow passenger that once lived in Orlando but moved to Seattle 3 years ago to work for Microsoft. He said he never regretted the move. He also said his son is studying to be an artist. Are every one’s children studying to be artists? Kids wake up, art isn’t easy.
The Mystic Sea
We boarded the Mystic Sea at Anacortes in Washington State. Anacortes is about a two hour drive north of Seattle. The boat traveled through the myriad of islands heading to a spot near San Juan Island where the spotter plane had last seen a pod of Killer Whales. On the several hour trip out the captain informed everyone that a fishing vessel had capsized and sank the night before in the waters we were traveling in. He asked us all to look for debris. When we got to the location the spotter plane had mentioned, there ware no whales to be seen. It took us another half hour to find the pod of whales.
There were 20 to 30 whales in the pod and the captain stopped the engine when he saw that the whole pod was swimming right towards the boat. There are very strict rules about how a boat can function when spotting whales. One woman a week before had slapped the water with her hands from a smaller craft and she was fined $12,000. Our boat was used in the filming of Free Willy 2 when that film was being shot.
Producing Large Arts Events in Orlando
Mark Baratelli hosted a two hour event at Rollins College which gathered together the people who organize large arts events in Orlando. Mark is planning to organize an Improv Festival and as the moderator he asked each of these people advice on how he might best organize his Festival.
The Organizers in the sketch are (Left to Right):
Jamie Donmoyer of the Orlando Puppet Festival
James Schoepflain of the Orlando Hispanic Film Festival
Beth Marshall of the Orlando Fringe Festival
Carol Moreland of the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival
Chris Blanc of the Florida Film Festival
John Carter of Nerdapaloosa
and Mark Baratelli
The line from Chris Blanc which best summarized how to set up a first attempt at a festival was:
“Keep it simple. small and centralized”.
I became interested in the comments of Beth Marshal when she started talking about the Lake Eola incident I had witnessed the day before. She spoke about the larger issues revolving around the incident. Beth and all the panelists had a heated discussion to hear it all head to The Daily City and listen the audio from the event.
Beth said, “There is one thing about how to get a permit with the city, that has its own set of problems, but it is really pretty much self explanatory. It is relatively inexpensive. It is not something that can be done quickly. I completely understand why this small group who was just doing this 20 minute thing, didn’t get a permit because they were just going to the park and dance, big deal.”
“The issue isn’t getting the permit as much as it is the logistical hassles. The problem is in the fine print, for example, if I have someone who decides they want to put a poster on a city light pole, that can’t happen, because there is some fine print prohibiting that. So the city will come and take a picture of the poster on the light pole and they send that to me and tell me, Beth, you have to do something about this poster on a light pole. So I walk and I take the poster down. Then I get an e-mail from the city that says, you need to do something about the tape on the light pole.”
“If the city wants us down here doing our events, if the city wants us to have a community presence that generates dollars that come out of market back into our community, then you have to make it easier for us to do it. Period end of story.”
Welcome Home, Pay Up
I just got back from a beautiful trip to the Pacific Northwest and started going through the pile of mail. I discovered a letter from the City of Orlando saying I had not paid a parking ticket and since payment was overdue, I owed a fine as well. What Parking ticket? I had never seen one. I discovered after some research that the ticket was issued on the opening night of “War of the Worlds“. On that night I had gone to an opening night pre-party at the Savoy. Parking is near impossible in the antiques neighborhood where the bar was located and I drove around for quite some time to find the perfect spot. I parked in a residential neighborhood far from the congestion and enjoyed the long walk to the bar. I didn’t get the ticket for parking in a no parking zone but instead it was for parking with the butt of the car facing west instead of east.
I had just experienced a surreal display of authority at Lake Eola and decided I needed to further my experience in the city by dropping off my $45 parking ticket check in person. I was shocked when I walked up to the City’s Parking Division. The city placed this cash cow in the ground floor of a 5 story parking garage. This bureaucratic edifice resembles a movie ticket booth only a little bigger. It is playfully decorated by 32 colorful ceramic tiles decorated by school children to give the passer by a warm feeling that art is alive in the City Beautiful. I expected a long line at the pay out window but instead found I could just walk up to the window and deposit the check as if in a bank. I was curious to see my original ticket but knew that would cause a long and arduous wait. I just smiled and paid keeping my comments to myself. I don’t think I could have reasoned with the woman behind the window anyway. I am sure she has seen it all, besides video cameras were located everywhere. Big brother was watching.
As I sketched homeless would wander by, some with bikes and some with loaded carts, heading back to Parrimore returning from their day downtown. A young couple shouted down to me from the parking garage 2 floors above “Hey, don’t forget to sketch us!” Every 15 minutes or so another person would walk into the Parking Division to drop off a check or cold hard cash. The stream of people was steady and sure.
Post Script. I got a mutilated letter crushed into a plastic postal bag that says “We Care” in the mail today from the City for my Parking Violation Notice. A quarter of the letter had been ripped out by some sorting machine. I got to see the picture of my truck beautifully parked with no warning signs in sight. Sigh, I am so innocent.
Activists or Anarchists?
I arrived at the Lake Eola Band Shell a few minutes late for an MP3 event called “Push Play“. Since the event was downtown, I asked my wife Terry to come down during her lunch and enjoy the show. People had their headsets on and had already begun to perform. All the participants had MP3 players with an audio file they had downloaded from the internet. Following the example of Improv Everywhere the participants would listen to the audio for instructions. The audio began…”This experience is about joy and fun. It is about embracing the unknown and each other with an open heart and a playful spirit.”
Not being a techie I did not have an MP3 player so I observed as an outsider. Everyone began jumping up and down waving their arms in the air. They then began to form long lines behind people who like me had no clue what was going on. Terry arrived with a long line of people walking behind her and mimicking her every move. She waved to me as did her line of followers. When Terry settled in all the 30 or so participants began to dance. Periodically everyone froze and then began to dance again.
Then the unexpected happened and the event turned surreal. 4 park Rangers showed up and they looked concerned and confused. The participants all began to lie down on the benches for a nap and what was a playful experience suddenly looked like an anarchist demonstration to the Rangers. The lead Ranger started shouting and asking to see the person in charge. Since everyone had headsets on no one heard him. I turned to Terry and said “This is bad, there is a law in Orlando against performance artists in public places and there is a No Loitering law forbidding people from lying down on benches in Lake Eola.” The parks Rangers used their walkie talkies to call in several Bicycle Police Officers.
When the police arrived and asked for a leader, the participants began to laugh uncontrollably as they had been instructed to do on the audio file. They then placed a finger to their lips as if to say Shhhh and they all raised a hand and made peace signs. The police blindly interpreted this as an anti war demonstration that they had to get under control. The police and Rangers thought the participants were mocking them. As the Rangers forced everyone out of the Amphitheater the MP3 participants were listening to a song titled Peace, Love and Happiness on their headsets.
Terry and I were asked to leave the area as well although my sketch wasn’t finished. It turns out that most of the entrances to the theater had NO TRESPASSING signs hung on velvet ropes. In order to sketch in the final details I sat at the edge of the roped off area adding background details. With the crowd contained on a grassy knoll the lead Park Ranger became more indignant claiming he had been ignored and everyone should be sent to jail. He was finally able to assert some authority to a captive audience. Jane Thompson stepped forward trying to reason with him and assumed responsibility for the group. A Police Officer took her license and issued her a summons that banned her from Lake Eola Park for one year. You might wonder what her deviant agenda might be, well she is the President of A Gift for Teaching which helps transfer the communities surplus materials and resources FREE to teachers and students in need. I applaud her efforts to bring this organizations work to the public’s attention. My simple act of sketching suddenly felt like a quiet plea for freedom of expression. The police watched me with suspicion until I finished my sketch. The irate Park Ranger asked me to step aside so he could take a picture of the NO TRESPASSING sign I was sitting near. Perhaps he needed that photo for his trophy case or to remind me that I was sitting dangerously close to the forbidden zone. In Iran thousands of brave people took a stand for democracy but here in Orlando you might face possible arrest for dancing in a public park.
A related article at “The Daily City“.
Deception Pass
Our Washington State vacation was quickly drawing to a close. Deception pass is a straight separating Whidby Island from Findalgo Island. It connects Skagit Bay with the Straight of Juan de Fuca to form a churning boiling water mass. Tourists can walk across the Deception pass bridge. You can barely see the small forms walking the bridge in the sketch. Construction of the bridge was completed in 1935. Vertigo dampened Terry’s desire to walk across the bridge for the view. Instead we drove down to the water where fishermen were busy trying to catch Salmon.
I set up shop and started sketching near a barefoot young couple who were snuggling on a blanket and enjoying the view. I liked the way the bridge sort of mirrored the gentle curve of a large drift wood log. Some people took the flat smooth stones and skipped them across the water, others caught fish as the sun set. After a fish was dragged up on shore the fisherman would then bash it in the head with a rock, the bloody details of which I really didn’t need to see. Several other fishermen were arguing with each other about where they should be casting. These guys almost came to blows simply because one fisherman was casting to close to the other guys sweet spot near a rock. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing!
There is a Bison in the Lobby
At the Sun Mountain Lodge in the Cascade mountains we found this huge Bison standing in the lobby. As I sketched him several families approached and took pictures of their children next to this Bison named Floyd. One little girl asked her mom, “Is that Floyd’s real tongue?” Her mother pondered the question and said “Well I know they replace the eyeballs with glass but I am not sure about the tongue. I suppose it could be his original tongue.” The little girls father offered to lift her up to see the tongue up close but she screamed and backed away shouting “NO!”
Little kids were fascinated with Floyd and respected the fact that he didn’t want to be touched. The Bison is a beautiful beast and I tried to imagine huge herds roaming the open ranges around the Lodge. Deer were to be found in abundance every night at dusk. They would roam the grounds eating the fresh grass and sometimes the garden flowers. They had no fear of humans at all. One camped outside our window and didn’t even turn its head as we spoke about her. The ears did twitch indicating she did hear us however. The other wildlife that could be seen each day were the chipmunks.
Dr. Sketchy Grows
This is a public service announcement to let you all know that Dr. Sketchy will be having a sketch class tomorrow night Wednesday September 2nd at Tatame Lounge 223 West Fairbanks Avenue Winter Park. This month the model will be Jessica Nova and she will be dressed as Poison Ivy and Emma Frost.
This is a sketch from the August event. As usual there was a huge crowd of artists and the event seems to be bursting at the seems. The couches are cozy although the pillows sometimes got in the way as I was swinging my arm about to dash the lines down on the page. As usual there was a contest and the winner would get a Pixar’s Making of “Up” book. They asked the crowd of artists what foe the model should be pitted against. No one was offering ideas so I shouted out “A spider” the room fell silent and some other ideas were thrown out then another artist shouted “Spider”. So for the last pose everyone had to include a spider in the sketch. I really wanted that Pixar Book yet I had only done one sketch for the whole session so I was kind of stuck. I finally decided to put a very tiny spider on the napkin in the lower right hand corner of the sketch. Since I figured the judge might miss this subtle invader I also labeled it. It is actually a pretty big spider if you think about it, it is probably the size of a quarter.
Well I didn’t win the book. Someone with a great big cartoony spider won that, but I did win a plastic cup that blinks. It is actually quite cool and my pet cockatoo Zorro loves it.