The Sower

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Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens (633 Osceola Ave, Winter Park, FL) was kind enough to allow my Sunday morning Crealde Urban Sketch Class students a chance to sketch in their gorgeous sculpture garden. I decided to do a very quick sketch of a student as she sketched The Sower.

The Sower created in 1911 is a prime example of Polasek’s mastery of the human form, the dramatically
modeled figure of the Sower has a classically inspired face and a
strong, muscular body. Using the parable of Jesus about the sower – “a
sower went forth to sow” – as his inspiration, Polasek’s interpretation
shows a man scattering the seed of good throughout the world. Sower won
an Honorable Mention in the spring 1913 Paris Salon.

Albin Polasek, (born February 14, 1879 and died May 19, 1965) was a
Czech-American sculptor and educator. He created more than four hundred
works during his career, two hundred of which are now displayed in the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, Florida. 

In 1950, Polasek retired at age 70 to Winter Park, Florida, design­ing his home on pic­turesque Lake Osce­ola.
Within months he suffered a stroke that left his left side paralyzed. He subsequently completed eighteen major works with his right hand only. Towards the end of 1950, at age 71, he married former student Ruth Sherwood
who died 22 months later in October, 1952. In 1961, Polasek married
Emily Muska Kubat. Upon his death in 1965, Polasek was buried beside his
first wife in Winter Park’s Palm Cemetery, where his 12th Station of the Cross (1939) is his monument. Emily M. K. Polasek died in 1988.

The Winter Park Paint Out is a wrap

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SOLD

On one day of the Winter Park Paint Out each artist is asked to paint on the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens so that visiting patrons could see the artists at work. I decided to paint the bright Van Gogh yellow building which is the heart of the paint out. Albin Polasek sculptures from the are all over the property. In the entry court yard artist Cynthia Edmonds was painting the sculpture of a woman playing a harp called the Emily Fountain. Water trickled from the harp to create the strings she plucked. Cynthia came over to say hello and see what I was working on. I then realized that she was the face on the Paint Out banner waving in the breeze in front of the museum.

I consider myself a bit of an outlier at this week long event. I am not a traditional plein air painter in that I do not work on canvas with oils. My approach is much more linear, intending to document a moment every day. Most of my work is created indoors in theaters and rehearsal spaces, so it is a change of pace to capture the intense Florida sun. I definitely learned plenty by getting to rub shoulders with so many talented artists. I also learned that I must bump up my schmoozing skills. I am so used to documenting events that it is hard to go into sales mode. This is my blind spot, my kryptonite.

Several other artists joined the ranks this year who added some variety to the mix of work created. Orit Reuben works in pastels and the intense color she can get definitely can result in some vibrant work. John Gilbert is another watercolor artist so I am no longer on my own tacking that medium at the paint out.

Winter Park Paint Out Sunset Paint In

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Twenty Five artists have been creating plein air paintings all around Winter Park this week as part of the Winter Park Paint Out. On one evening, the artists gathered at the Winter Park Racquet Club (2111 Via Tuscany Winter Park Fl) to paint the sun set. The paint out is the Albin Polasek Museum‘s big fundraiser for the year. As a participating artist I  was told to sell the painting as soon as it was created. One artist from Venice Florida had several paintings already framed and somehow hung on a tree. I wondered about the logistics. I’m sure he didn’t drive nails into the tree. He must have wedged s shaped hooks into the bark.

I decided to focus my attention on the view down the boat dock. For some reason there were orange traffic cones on the sidewalk, and I decided to sit next to one. I decided to leave out the orange cones and a sign that said that only Racquet club members were allowed on property. As artists set up they chatted with each other. I arrived about 5pm and the sunset wasn’t until 7:56pm. Many artists put a single ground color on their canvas and then waited for the right moment to strike.

Pam ended up going to the Polasek Museum since most of the Paint Out events are there. We were texting ans she said “I am here.” I responded that I was down by the dock. Well, there is a dock at the Polasek as well. By the time we realized the mistake the grounds keeper at the Polasek had closed the gates and locked them effectively locking her inside. Ultimately he spotted her car and let her out.

An artist in a straw hat leaned up against the boat dock posts sipping his wine. I considered putting him in the sketch but erased him when he walked away. This turned out to be Jonathan Stemburger who is an artist who like myself documents events around town by sketching. He asked me questions about the paint out and I mentioned that I had sketched the event for several years before becoming a participating artist. I planted the seed that made him want to join in. Whereas I tend to blend in since I work in a tiny sketchbook, he works large. As he tried to get in with his easel and supplies he was stopped since he wasn’t an invited artist. He took it in stride and stayed, continuing to ask artists about their work.

Pam and I shared a pita creation from a food truck. Lettuce drizzled in balsamic vinegar fell off. The problem was it fell off onto my dress shirt and the balsamic made it look like I had been shot. I moved the Paint Out name tag over the splatter on my shirt but then another spot showed up somewhere else. I should never eat and paint at the same time. I’m not that coordinated.

The sun dipped down behind a bank of clouds which I figured would be the end of any spectacular sunset. Then at the last moment the horizon lit up the most spectacular vibrant pink color. The under sides of clouds also suddenly glowed that bright pink. I panicked, there was no way I could reproduce that color with the limited palette I had. I ultimately had to admire it and just enjoy the show.

Tonight is the big gala Paint Out Garden Party at the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens (633 Osceloa Avenue Winter Park). All the painting created during the week will be on display. Tickets are $125 at the door. Patrons can mix and mingle with the artists and enjoy an array of food from the areas finest caterers, all while enjoying the gardens, local entertainment and the exhibit. All of my paintings created over the course of this week are available for purchase with proceeds benefiting the Museum and Sculpture Gardens. Come on out and support the arts.

Winter Park Paint Out Welcome Reception

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The Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens will host the eleventh
annual Winter Park Paint Out Plein Air Festival from April 21 to 27,
2019. The museum, sculpture gardens, and gallery will be free to the
public during the week-long event. Twenty-five professionally-acclaimed
plein air artists will paint at the Polasek Museum and locations nearby
with art lovers invited watch the artists at work, view their recently
completed paintings in the gallery, and attend free painting
demonstrations. More than ten free instructional demos with the artists
at the Polasek Museum and nearby locations will take place during the
week of the event.

Twenty five artists descended on the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens ( 633 Osceola Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789) for a group photo in front of the building. There was a gorgeous blue wisteria in bloom and the photographer wanted us all to pose in front of it. With so many glorious blooms there was a swarm of bees busy flying from flower to flower pollinating. Being tallish I had to stand in back with my head in the blooms. The photographer asked us to smile and I grimaced, certain a bee was nesting in my thin hair or settling on the tip of my nose. Ultimately I survived the excruciating photo shoot.

What followed was a several hour mix and mingle with some finger food and wine. Pam and I joked with several artists as we sat in the blue lawn chairs behind the museum. When it grew quiet, we realized the party had moved inside. There was a loud speaker which amplified everything said inside. When we were trying to hear what was going on inside it became impossible with everyone talking at once.

Contributing artist had painted small square canvases for Hal Stringer. This was his birthday and also the first day of his retirement. We were seated right next to the birthday cake which had lots of candles on it. I didn’t have a chance to count them. Hal made an announcement that he hoped that the number of candles would match the number of paintings sold this year.

Each artist would be hanging the painting created during the week on a section of the gallery wall that was designated with a number. Those spaces were assigned lottery style. Hal had created 30 small square paintings. The artists each were asked to pick up a painting. A number was inside each painting and that number would be the artists gallery spot. I picked up a deep maroon painting. I had considered a blue painting and a bright orange painting was also on my radar. I agonized before picking. My spot was number 13 which was in the second gallery room right next to the bathrooms. Last year I had exhibited in the spot right across from 13 even closer to the bathrooms. I think exhibiting near the bathrooms is a good thing. Everyone had to go there at some point and after they relieve themselves they might feel cheeky as they walk out and want to buy some art. I will be hanging a new painting each day at the museum. Be sure to stop out and check out all the work as it is created in the Polasek Museum Gallery.

Winter Park Paint Out Open House

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The Winter Park Paint Out (WPPO) is officially under way. Easter Sunday April 21, 2019 was the open house at the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens (633 Osceola Avenue Winter Park, FL 32789.) After dropping off a painting for the gallery walls, I went in the gorgeous gardens and decided to sketch these two musicians from the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestras.Tonight I will frame this painting and it will hand on in the Polasek Museum for the week along with every other painting I do this week. All the work is for sale. A portion of any sale will go to support the great work they do at the Polasek Museum. Mention that you are an Analog Artist Digital World fan, and you can get a 30% discount on an original painting of mine in the gallery.

If you have never been to the Polasek you should head out this week sometime since admission is free for the duration of the WPPO. The other painting I hung on the walls is a nocturne of the Lake Eola Fountain.

Twenty-five professional plein air artists will paint at the Polasek
Museum and locations nearby with art lovers invited to watch the artists
at work, and view their recently completed paintings in the gallery and
attend free painting demonstrations. A full list of painting demonstrations and events can be found on the WPPO website. I plan to document as many events as I can.

Besides doing journalist sketches of the WPPO events, I plan to do a series of paintings of Park Avenue at night. On Friday April 6, 2019 from 5pm to 8pm, I will be giving a happy hour demonstration called Digital Poetic License. Poets from the Kerouac House Project will be reading poetry in the Polasek Garden as the sun sets over Lake Osceola, and I will be doing a digital sketch live on my iPad with the sketch in progress projected on a movie screen so that the audience can see my thought progress in real time. All artwork from the WPPO may also be viewed online as it is created at winterparkpaintout.org and of course my art work can be seen here daily.

Art and Poetry at the Polasek

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The Albin Polasek Museum and the Jack Kerouac Project,  joined forces to present this night of live art. Local poets and winners of the Winter Park Paint Out’s live poetry contest on Allpoetry.com read their work while I did this sketch which was projected live on a screen as I created it. It was the golden hour as the sun set illuminated the Polasek gardens a gorgeous golden tone. In the distance a painter was capturing Lake Osceola on canvas. I will be doing a similar sketch again this year at the Winter Park Paint Out which runs from April 22 to April 28, 2019.

I worked quickly to try to capture the fading light as the Kerouac House resident author Laura Lee Bahr read her work. She is the author of two novels, Haunt and Long-Form Religious Porn. Haunt was translated into Spanish under the title Fantasma. Laura has been a screenwriter for various award-winning films, including Jesus Freak and the little death. Her debut feature as writer/director, Boned,
won “Best Micro-Budget Feature” at the Toronto Independent Film
Festival and is currently distributed through Gravitas Ventures. Her latest book, Angel Meat, a
collection of her short stories, is available through Fungasm Press. To
promote it, she created the “Bahr Crawl,” a string of readings across
the U.S. and overseas where local authors join her in a celebration of
the spoken word. She lives with her sweetheart and two lovely felines in Los Angeles,
CA, where she teaches at a school for twice-exceptional students.

The Kerouac House is in cozy College Park. Jack Kerouac lived in the area for a short time in
1957–58 when his classic work On The Road was published to much acclaim. It was also the place he typed the original manuscript of his sequel, Dharma Bums. Four authors each year take up residence to focus on their writing without having to worry about paying rent.

Five Centuries of Florida Cattlemen History

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Photographer Bob Stone gave a talk at the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in the Capen House (633 Osceola Avenue, Winter Park, FL). It was a crowded event so seating was limited. I went back to the car and got my artist stool so I could get to work sketching. A few seats did remain open, so Pam managed to sit as well.

The cattlemen history began way back in the 1500s when Spanish settlers first brought cattle to Florida. Raising cattle has been a long tradition in Florida. One cattlemen explained it this way, “You can plant crops, but at the end of the harvest you have to load that crop onto the train. The cattle just walk onto the train themselves.” It is possible that the word cowboy originated as a derogatory reference to blacks who worked raising the cows. One woman in the back row was a real character who clearly has been raised in the cattle culture. She pointed out that some whips used to be 15 feet long and someone she knew could flick a match out of your lips from 15 feet away.

Bob had an amazing collection of historic photos that showed how raising cattle has changed over the years. Ranchers used to create cattle “dips,” or troughs in the ground and fill them with a poison that killed the bugs. When development encroached, these toxic sites had to be cleared.

Christianity has long been ingrained in cattleman culture. One photo showed a cowboy being baptized in a metal cattle trough, while other photos showed bull riders praying before getting on the back of a bull.

After the talk, Rachel Frisby invited everyone to see the exhibit, “Lay of the Land: The Art of Florida’s Cattle Culture.” This show, in collaboration with the Florida Cattleman’s Foundation, explored the 500 years of Florida cattle culture through art and hand-crafted items such as saddles and spurs. My favorite discovery at the exhibit was the sketchbooks of Sean Sexton. He has been documenting life on a cattle ranch in his sketchbooks since 1973. I desperately wanted to flip through the sketchbooks, but they were behind glass.

Paint Out Garden Party

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Held on the last night of the week long Winter Park Paint Out, the Paint Out Garden Party was held at the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens. Tickets were $100, but exhibiting artists were allowed to bring one guest for free. Guests were dressed in cabaña chic/garden cocktail attire which in Orlando means the usual informal ware. I decided immediately that I wanted to sketch the band called The Gazebros.

Pam arrived and we go a few drinks and bites and then I got to work. She explored and found the other food stations around the property. My favorite dish was a very basic Mac and Cheese. I ate one heaping plate as I sketched. As an artist, the breaks between songs felt like an eternity. The band’s covers like Simon and Garfunkel‘s “The Boxer” were recognizable and nostalgic. As the sun set, the light grew golden. Much later in the evening I saw the band playing in the dark. This scene with the iPads illuminating the singers was the scene I wish I had sketched. Hopefully I can catch this band again at a night time gig.

Inside the “Wet Gallery” none of my sketches had sold. Other artists had sold 8 to 10 pieces already. This wasn’t a competition, but I certainly need the cash. I decided to slash prices from $800 a piece to $600 per piece. Organizer Hal Stringer changed the prices with a magic marker. Pam and I stood near the work to answer any questions and to joke with prospective buyers. Pam is a natural at talking to people and telling stories about how each piece was created. Several of the artists came up to my work to point out that they were in the paintings. I think that the other artists liked what I was doing although it wasn’t Plein Air oil painting. Hal Stringer started pointing out several pieces to a friend and then he let me know that he had bought my painting of Man Carving His Own Destiny. Although only one piece sold, I can take solace in the fact that a true art expert bought my work.

When My sketch was done, we did the rounds to see what food remained. The Mac and Cheese had run out. Pam had found some amazing extra peanutty peanut butter cookies. Unfortunately those had been devoured as well. This is the disadvantage of sketching while most guests are eating. I had to satiate myself with one more sangria.

They Love to Watch Her Strut

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This year I am one of 25 artists participating in the Winter Park Paint Out. Each artist is assigned one morning or afternoon session in which they have to do a painting on the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens property. I was assigned to paint on Thursday afternoon. I stop by every afternoon anyway to drop off the previous day’s painting for the gallery wall. My wall by the way is right next to the bathrooms in case you go and want to find my work. I have been told that is a good spot to have your work hang since everyone has to go to the bathroom at some time.

I wandered the property checking out each artist’s work in progress. There is always so much to learn just seeing how different artists block in their paintings. My second priority was o find a shady spot to park myself to do a painting. My baseball hat was left behind on the Frontier plane I took back to Orlando last week. I know the hat was on the plane since I used it to hold all my belongings going through security. After all the passengers were off I went back on the plane to go to my seat to see where it fell. I was damn near tackled by a male stewardess who shouted at me “GET OFF THE PLANE repeatedly. I understood him the first time and backed off. He called back on an intercom for someone to look at seat 30A and immediately announced that the hat wasn’t there. Did they even take the time to look? Another passenger had worn his expensive headphones on the plane and he hoped to get them back since they must have fallen off while he slept. His was a lost cause as well. Clearly these items were pocketed. That is what you get for flying a low budget airline. As I walked away one of the airport cleanup crew said “I apologize for his behavior.” That can’t make up for Frontier crew treating customers like crap. I plan to get a new hat at some point and I will pay to have “Never Fly Frontier” embroidered onto it.

This statue by Albin Polasek is titled “Maiden of the Roman Campagna.” In stark silhouette, she looks like she is wearing headphones and dancing to music. The house next to the Polasek Museum was playing a Bob Seger  song called “They Love to Watch Her Strut.” “They do respect her butt, they love to watch her strut.” I imagined that was the music she was listening to as I sketched. She is actually holding a long strand of braided hair, but I preferred to leave her listening to headphones. That song played on a loop for the next two hours or so. I don’t know why someone would ever want to hear the same some over and over again for. I started to wonder if I should let someone know that the person on the property next door had died while listening to the song and the music would repeat for eternity until someone found the body.

Multiple patrons stopped to see my sketch in progress. A little boy was curious about my brush which holds water in it’s handle. He felt this as like having a James Bond water gun with you anywhere you went. He desperately wanted one so he could squirt his friends by surprise.