Every Sunday there is a figure drawing class at Crealde from 10:30am to 12:30pm. I usually have other events on my plate but this Sunday I decided to get back to figure drawing. It is so nice to have a model stand still for five minutes or longer. Amber is a young petite model who had a steely focus when posing. She would stare at a spot right above everyone’s head and remain totally still. She didn’t take the most dynamic poses but I was overjoyed to be able to relax and take my time with my drawings. I filled 2 spreads in my sketch book with tiny studies before I decided to expand my view to incorporate all the artists. There were some female artists as well, they just happened to be on the opposite side of the room. Paul McNear runs the class starting with 2 minute poses then 5 minues then finishing up with 20 minute poses. Paul is the artist with the checkered shirt, I love drawing his expressive face.
Once I started this sketch I didn’t take any breaks, while others chatted away, I was adding washes and adding background details. The devil is always in the details. I loved that there was a poster on the wall that said simply, “Hope.” Every drawing begins with a bit of hope and faith. With this sketch I didn’t do any preliminary pencil work. I attacked the drawing by going straight to ink and I feel the result is bolder with more chances being taken. If I do this more often I should be able to finish my sketches on location much faster.
Puzzle
Brian Feldman informed me about this sculpture titled “Puzzle” which is located in the Orlando Cultural Park on Princeton Street right across from the Science Center at the corner of Alden Road. I had no idea this even was a park. It looks like a vacant lot. It used to be covered with greenhouses. The installation was put in place by artist Chris Scala on August 18th and will be up until September 18th. If you drive past this location daily you will be surprised to find these bright yellow lightweight pieces change position every day. I e-mailed Chris and he told me to stop by that evening at 6pm when he would be moving the pieces again. As the sun sets, it paints the whole field a bright warm yellow and the long shadows grow more dramatic.
I arrived a bit early and walked around for a while before finding a shady spot which offered a good view of the sculpture. As I sketched, I noticed a MINI Cooper drive up and park on the road behind the sculpture. I added the car to the sketch noticing two men as they removed tools out of the back trunk. They approached the largest puzzle piece and knelt down using a power tool to remove stakes which held the light sculpture in place much like a tent. After they finished moving this piece, Chris walked up to me and introduced himself. He pointed out that over the course of the month, the pieces of this “puzzle” will move closer together and join, becoming first three then one large unit.
Chris went on to explain that a group of skate rats have been vandalizing the sculpture ever since it was installed. They would spray paint obscene messages and punch holes in the sculptures until he felt he had to remove the damaged pieces. When I asked him about the graffiti which claimed that the artwork was our tax dollars at work, he explained that there have been huge budget cuts in the city’s Public Art department. It took him eight months of hard work to get this installation approved. Paul Wenzel, the Public Art Coordinator for the city of 0rlando was instrumental in guiding him through all the never ending paper work. While the city is sponsoring the project, allowing him to use the park, he is not being paid anything for all the ongoing work he is putting into the piece. Chris goes on to explain that this sculpture is just a study for a larger permanent piece he wants to make with wire forms. He likes how the wire forms allow a viewer to look past the surface of the sculpture seeing the inside form as well as the overall structure.
As we were talking two kids on bikes shouted out, “Why are they moving that way again?!” Chris pointed out that they were probably two of the kids vandalizing the project. They circled all the way around the block watching the artist’s progress. Suddenly I felt I was in a war zone. Chris and Lance Parker, who is helping him with the project, moved the pieces further west closer to the street lights. Chis thinks by moving the pieces into the light it might slow the destruction and vandalism the artwork is being subjected to. On one sculptural piece a capital A in a circle is crudely sprayed. Lance explained that this is a symbol for anarchists. Even anarchists have to conform to a certain code. I get the feeling that as soon as I leave this site, and the sun is set, the spray cans will come back out and the mindless destruction will continue. I wonder why there isn’t more public art in Orlando?
Adventures with Hal
When I put out a call on Facebook to see if anyone wanted me to sketch them doing what they love in life, Hal Studholme was one of the few who responded. We scheduled a day to meet about a month out. Hal gave me his phone number and suggested we meet at a Cuban Sandwich shop on Lee Road. He said his studio was right near by. When I got to the Cuban Sandwich Shop I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich which was the cheapest item on the menu. When I went to pay I suddenly realized I didn’t have enough money in my wallet to pay for a drink as well. I tried to pay with a card but the woman explained that they only take cash. I asked her to subtract the soda from my order and gave her the last three bills in my wallet. The outdoor tables were full of customers. I had never met Hal so I had no idea what he looked like. His Facebook picture was of a cast of actors on a stage. I asked a man if he was Hal and he laughed and said no. I finally called and Hal said he was on his way.
When Hal arrived he ordered a sandwich and we started to talk. He had on a bright Hawaiian shirt and purple tinted glasses. He went on to explain that he had studied Asian Philosophy and comparative religion for years. He found that the students that seemed to understand him the most however were the visual artists. He decided to change course and study art instead. He came to Orlando because he won a full scholarship to go to UCF. However a new state law required that he be a state resident in order to get the scholarship money. Since he couldn’t afford to pay, he decided to wait a year at which point he would be a state resident. The second time he applied, the funds for the scholarship were gone.
I told him that I knew little about his art and he said he wanted to show me something. He went to his convertible and pulled out a brightly colored child’s travel case. He unzipped it and pulled open the front flap. It was like he was opening a treasure chest. I was thrilled at what I saw. Inside were thousands of post cards with collage elements and rough drawings all over them. He had a show of these cards in NYC. He explained that he is still making them and each is intended for an audience of one. As an odd twist he said many were mailed to a dog in NYC. Seeing these fractured and chaotic images, I suddenly realized that the pattern on his Hawaiian shirt made perfect sense. He said he had become a bit of a cliche, a middle aged man with a convertible and six Hawaiian shirts.
He invited me to his studio but warned me that I might be shocked by by the chaos. I knew I was in for a treat. He explained that the walls of his apartment were all bare. He finds the blank walls liberating. He opened the door to his studio and everywhere I looked there were scraps of paper. His work space consisted of his sitting on foam puzzle pieces with a pillow stuffed in the small of his back. All around him were scraps of photos and images that he would rip and cut before pasting them to a post card. He opened a book and ripped off an image of thousands of flamingos. During the course of my sketch he seemed to finish quite a few cards which he then threw into a cardboard box. He explained that they were not finished, but would later resurface to be worked on again.
Hal has a number of photos of squirrels. He gets these shots with a toy cameras while lying on his stomach and waiting for the squirrel to approach. He showed me a book about an artist named Jenny Read who was a young artist who wore her heart on her sleeve. She was murdered since her studio was in a bad neighborhood. Her friends and family then assembled this book of drawings and letters she had written. I desperately want to get a copy of this book. It was a thrill to sketch this artist who is obviously obsessed about making art. In Hal’s bathroom I found the following quote from Henri Cartier Bresson, “I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.” In the mail I got a postcard from Hal which demonstrates the uniqueness of his vision.
Red Chair Affair – Back Stage
I got to the Bob Car Performing Arts Centre at 5:30 and entered the performers’ door. Inside, a small room was packed full of actors and there was an amazing spread of food. I was sorry I had eaten at home. I wandered through the maze of backstage hallways past all the dressing rooms, in one a guitarist was lightly strumming his guitar. I then found myself on the main stage. The curtains were down and there were row after row of tables set up with red chairs on them. I knew that my goal with this first sketch was to catch Brian Feldman, who was going to be dressed all in red and seated in one of the tiny IKEA red chairs in a performance piece called “I Am a Red Chair.”
I found the empty chair Brian was to sit in by reading all of the silent auction sheets until I found the one with his name on it. Unfortunately, his chair was sort of isolated and off on its own. I had hoped to sketch Brian in the foreground with a line of red chairs marching off into the distance. After walking around his chair and viewing from all angles, I finally decided to sit with my back against the giant main stage curtain and use the chairs on a table next to me as a foreground element in the sketch. The emotional impact of the sketch is much different than originally envisioned, but I like that he seems distant and small, isolated as the party swirls around him. VIPs had paid $225 for the privilege of viewing and bidding on the red chairs as well as sampling food from some of Orlando’s finer restaurants. A gorgeous woman in a tight red dress stood at the table in front of Brian for the longest time. I imagined she must have been arm candy for a rich young bachelor.
Margot Knight walked over to me and asked if I found it difficult to sketch in my suit. I actually did have a problem, since I placed a pen in my fake breast pocket only to find it disappeared inside the suit’s lining. I had to force it out by cutting a hole in the inside lining of my jacket. I also had placed an open pen in my shirt breast pocket and it had bled out into the fabric. Luckily my jacket covered this black wound all night. Director John DiDonna approached me when I was done with my sketch and said he had a place for me to sit on stage right. The tables full of chairs were quickly wheeled off the stage and I kept stepping out of the way of stagehands carrying chairs and tables. John walked past with a couple of chairs saying, “This is my life.”
Brian, however, was still seated. His auction item was twofold – to be a Red Chair, as pictured in this sketch, for two hours at the location of the highest bidder’s choosing, and to work with them, or whoever they named of their behalf in the marketing and creation of their very own performance piece. He said one artist kept coming up to him to see the latest bid. The artist was a bit upset that people were bidding on Brian and not bidding on his art. When the auction ended, Brian had been sold for $80.
John DiDonna pulled me aside and told me I would be in front of the main stage curtain, sitting beside the American flag. I walked on stage and stared out at the several thousand people as they were busy taking their seats. I desperately wanted to face the audience and start sketching, but I decided I should stay on task and get a sketch of the performers. I folded my hands and waited…
Thomas Thorspecken Sketches the Audience
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Out and About with Jeremy Seghers (WPRK 91.5 FM) Interview
Orlando Weekly Review of the show
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Hannah Miller video edit
Available
For the entire month of August, performance artist Brian Feldman has decided to make himself “Available” to do anything you need help with. Do you need your car washed? Laundry folded? Lawn mowed? Dog walked? Dinner prepared? Someone to go shopping with? Someone to see a movie with? Kids watched? Help crossing the road? Services of the self-proclaimed greatest designated driver of all time? Just fill out the form and he is available for you. It is like hiring a friend to help out for FREE!
One request caught my eye from the start. Karen Cali (KC), a figurative artist, wanted Brian to post nude for her. As KC wrote, “I do charcoal work from the figure and there’s a shortage of male models in general and my money to pay models in particular.” There was a mad flurry of e-mails as this private sketch session was arranged. Several sketch locations were considered and then discarded, including the Mobile Art Show and Blank Space. Since I was having a sketchbook display at Frames Forever & Art Gallery, we finally decided this would be the perfect spot for a quiet Sunday morning sketch session. Katie Windish, who owns the shop, is still offering huge clearance discounts on everything in stock. She even bought in a whole pile of art books, DVDs and other items from home. She had a tiny digital camera that she wanted to sell and before Brian got to the shop we duck taped it to the far wall opposite from where he was going to pose. We made no effort to disguise the camera, we just wanted to see if he would ever notice it. It took him about half an hour, but when he did notice it we all had a good laugh.
KC had bought her own artist sketch bench and a flood lamp. Brian hung a black drape over the windows of the shop door. KC and I dropped our cell phones off in the back room of the shop with Katie. She was busy working on a framing job and wasn’t prepared to see Brian nude, so she stayed hidden. She did stop out when Brian had a break and was in his bathrobe. I showed her my drawing but kept my thumb over the private parts. KC did a great job of posing Brian and reassuring him as he found his pose. He is actually a really good model since many of his performances involve stamina and patience. KC did two drawings and I worked on this blog sketch. The second pose was a standing pose, and offered the full monty. I decided to stick with this sketch where his clenched hands hide his privates. I have a newfound respect for the lengths Brian will go to for the sake of his art.
Maisy May Marrs
I fist sketched Maisy May Marrs at an event called Blend. I then saw her at Blank Space where artists are permitted to come in each Thursday to work in an open studio environment downtown. Through Facebook I asked if I could sketch her studio and she agreed. Her husband Ron was home for vacation for a week so we agreed to set up a time around lunch for me to stop by. Maisy had prepared a delicious bean soup and I chowed down before getting to work. The small studio room is known as the Pink Room because the curtains are pink and when the morning sun comes through it makes everything in that room and some of the living room a pink hue. . It is a tiny and intimate space being perhaps a 10 by 10 foot cube. At first I considered sitting in the doorway but I only got a view of Maisy’s back from there, so I shoved myself into a corner of the room where she kept her witch’s broomstick. She has drawn me several times and I always laugh out loud at the results.
Maisey began to sketch out one of her wide eyed little girls as I began to sketch the studio space. I asked about a funeral urn which was on a top shelf and it turned out to be her mother’s ashes. There were dried roses and a high school art piece which was a coffin shaped box with a nude woman struggling against her bonds and a red robed priest inside. Maisy’s art on a whole is fun and lighthearted. Some of the pieces look like children’s drawings. It was refreshing to see such childlike innocence in her work.
Outside her studio window she can see ducks as they swim around the apartment complex retention pond. it started to rain outside and then the rain slowed. Ron called out from the living room that he was going to get the mail. As soon as he left and got half way to the community’s mailboxes, it started to pour. Maisey looked out the window anxiously. When he got back she shouted out, “Did we get anything good?” Ron shouted back, “Some junk mail and pneumonia.” I started to run out of time and all the infinite detail in the room was overwhelming. Maisey would peek over once in a while to see what I was up to. She kept the afternoons work fun and light. It was great to sketch and laugh the afternoon away with a fellow artist.
Wendy with a Chance of Rain
This month’s concert held at the Timucua White House (2001 Hamilton Lane, Orlando) featured singer-songwriter Wendy Feaver. This was to be Wendy’s last performance in Orlando before leaving to get her masters degree up in New Jersey. The artist who painted the entire length of the concert is Maggie Sharar. She was pregnant with her first child and while most of the paintings on the walls were for sale, one was not because she is saving it for her doula. Benoit Glazer introduced the concert and his two children each performed a piece at the piano.
When Wendy took to the stage she explained that she would be playing some cover songs and plenty of original material. She felt that it was fortuitous that it had just been raining and as she stood outside prior to the concert she saw a huge rainbow that went from horizon to horizon. She began the concert with “Everyone knows it’s Wendy.” I enjoyed the original songs, some of which had to do with insecurity and of course, love. Wendy has a lighthearted way of delivering the songs, sometimes tapping on the piano lid for some percussion.
Sheila Marie Ernst sang and played guitar for the second set. Her gentle voice had a way of reaching in and pulling just the right heartstrings. All told it was an uplifting concert.
Guests to the Glazer home bought bottles of wine and there was a fine spread of deserts in the entry room. After the concert, people greeted one another and it became an informal party.
If you haven’t been to the Timucua White House yet, you are missing out on one of the best venues in town. Grab a bottle of wine and come out on August 29th when there will be a trombone recital.
Karen Russell
Karen Russell will be the featured artist at the TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show # 12 on Thursday, August 19th from 7 to 9pm outside the CityArtsFactory in a U-Haul truck. I first met Karen at a Kerouac House event. She had a dark brooding air about her that lead me to think she must be an artist of some kind. I have since seen her several times around town with her edgy, twisted, expressionistic, figurative work. I am always reminded of one of my favorite artists, Egon Schiele, when I see her work.
I have always loved sketching artists at work in their studios and I decided to make it a personal mission to sketch each artist that exhibits in the Mobile Art Show as a way to promote their work. Karen’s studio is located in a small ramshackle home set back far away from the road. There was a canoe in the driveway and I noticed that all the windows were painted over. When she greeted me and showed me the living room, the windows glowed with vibrant color like stained glass – only messier. There was an empty pizza box on the sofa and I heard a roommate laughing to himself in a back room.
Her studio had two mattresses on the floor, one with red sheet and one with blue sheets. She was working on a huge canvas which was leaning up against the wall. The only way I could get a sketch of her in the tight space was to crawl across the blue mattress and lean against the wall in the corner. On her laptop computer Karen played an online educational program called TED, about the flight of dragonflies across the ocean. Another program about robotics had me so fascinated that I stopped to watch for a bit.
She is working on a huge painting of Sirens. The stark, almost Egyptian poses express to me a constant mortal angst. While sketching, I liked integrating Karen’s arms as she painted, into the fray of gestures. The door and several of the walls had been punched or kicked, leaving large holes. In the hall, her work was hung at an odd angle. I felt like I was in a true artist’s garret. It wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the sketch that I noticed that the sirens were standing on a pile of human skulls, and that their feet were birds talons.
Carl Knickerbocker – Suburban Primitive
I bumped into Carl Knickerbocker at an art opening at the Peacock Room, we started talking art and I asked him if he would mind if I visited his studio and sketched him at work on one of his larger canvases. He told me he had a canvas ready and planned to paint the Annie Feiffer Chapel which is at the Florida Southern College in Lakeland. He suggested I should get there myself someday to do a sketch. Frank Loyd Wright had designed the chapel and he personally supervised its construction. Students from the college who Wright referred to as “Children of the Sun” had helped in the buildings construction.
Carl lives out on the East side of town in Oviedo. When I drove up to his home I knew I was in the right place because one of his Honda Element Art cars was parked on the front lawn. The second I walked through the front door I knew I was in the home of a serious working artist. The living room was used as a storage space for Carl’s huge canvases. Rather than having them stretched, Carl had a seamstress sew loops on the tops of the canvases so that they can easily be hung like curtains.
His studio is located right off the living room in a sun porch. Most of the painting was complete. He just had a few oranges that he wanted to add to the painting as I watched. He used a large painters palette to lay out the pure florescent orange acrylics. He quickly used a palette knife to lay in the color with bold strokes. He then used a hair dryer to dry the paint a bit. He then re-attacked the surface with the knife to get the impasto texture he was looking for. Carl decided he didn’t like the color of Frank Loyd Wrights building so he changed it to a cool blue. He was infatuated with the red steps which lead into the building and these became a very important pyramid shaped element in the final composition. He felt that the building resembled a UFO and so he had it floating above a black ground into which are scratched two Gator-Men.
I asked him how he first came up with the idea of using 3D glasses to see his work and he told me about an artist names Key Scramble Campbell who was a bit of a hippy and a psychedelic artist. Campbell had done his painting to be seen with a black light and he also experimented with the 3D glasses. Carl bought 60 3D glasses for his show at the Museum of Florida Art. This show exhibited many of Carl’s larger pieces. One painting of Mermaids of Wicki Wachi, is stunning when viewed with the glasses. The mermaids seem to float above a sea of deep blue pigment as if you were seeing down to the bottom of a pool of water.
On shelves next to me while I sketches were a bunch of objects which were used in the making of a 6 minute short film called “A Dog Goes From Here to There.” Heather Henson was pivotal in suggesting Carl make this film so she could have it shown in her Handmade Puppet Dreams Film Festival. Carl’s bold painterly style is used as the basis for this amazing short. This film was first shown in NYC on December 6th of last year. It had since made its way around the film festival circuits, including Providence, Atalanta and Prague. Carl said he will submit the film in a few more festivals this year.
Carl showed me around his home and when he opened the door to what was once a guest doom, I saw hundreds of paintings stacked against the walls. He has enough inventory to fill the Menello Museum several times over. He said that now that he is getting older he is focusing more on exhibiting his work in large museums. He recognizes that as he gets older these large paintings will become harder and harder to do. He is racing against time to make his mark. As I got ready to leave, He gave me a car magnet of one of his Crocodile-Men. I now proudly exhibit it on the back of my truck. When viewed with 3D glasses the painting floats magically.