Mary Halvorsen Septet

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On Monday July 1st at 7:30pm there was a free Concert by the Mary Halvorson Septet at the White House (2000 South Summerlin Orlando FL).  Mary Halvorson is a multiple award winning musician leading the charge towards a new musical landscape. She learned much with Anthony Braxton over the years and plays with a septet of the best musicians around. Presented by the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Civic Minded 5.

Mary Halvorsen has been an artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center of the Arts and she teamed up with the jazz musicians who used to perform with the great Sam Rivers who unfortunately passed away.

The visual artist for the night was Woody Igou. He had a kinetic sculpture set up in front of the stage which mostly consisted of thick PVC tubes. He poured two compounds into the tubes and a chemical reaction caused a yellow foam to ooze out much like a science fair volcano project. The musicians eyed the sculpture with suspicion before they played but once they knew they were safe, they began playing Mary’s original compositions. The music was new aged and cutting edged.

Seated in the top balcony, I lost all light when the sun set. I had to guess at which colors I was putting on the page. In some ways working in the dark was like the music which didn’t adhere to classic forms. Sometimes you have to let go of expectations and search blindly in the dark. The White House concerts have become increasingly popular since I first started sketching there.   

Mark your Calendar!  The next free White House Concert on Sunday, Aug 11, 2013 features P.J. Rohr who will play jazzical music
(Claude Bolling and more)
with her favorite pianist, Lee Lallance. Visual art will be by Maryse Jupillat. Doors open at 7PM and the music starts at 7:30PM. The White House is at 2000 South Summerlin Orlando FL.

Art and Process

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On November 14th, I went to Urban ReThink to hear artists Brian Phillips, Dina Mack and Tory Tepp talk about their Art and Process. Dina Mack lead off showing her work from inception to today. She worked in the beginning by doing collages. Her work later matured and become austere in its simplicity and abstraction. She did an instillation in which she froze written documents in ice and then let them melt in the gallery. For the Corridor Project, she had a series of cloth napkins which she used to blot her lipstick. She vividly remembers her grandmothers perfume, so she scented the fabric. The lipstick stained napkins were an autobiographical look back at memories she had of her mother and grandmother.  Her grandmother used to give her a butterscotch candy if she sat still in church. The sound of the wrapper still brings back the memory, so she filled a vintage purse with butterscotch wrappers. The ephemeral installation was installed on the lawn of the Mennello Museum for only a few days. The sense of smell is only now being researched. Apparently all the Marriott hotels in the country use the same perfumed cleaning products. A scent can trigger many vivid memories. Much of Dina’s work speaks in a whisper, implied, like a scent on a breeze.

Tory Tepp is now a resident artist at the Atlantic Center of the Arts in Daytona Beach. He began his career as an artist doing traditional paintings. He hit a wall where he felt painting didn’t have any meaningful place in today’s society. He stagnated, not knowing where to go as an artist. Then he started planting seeds and growing a garden outside his Los Angeles studio. This garden helped him feel more connected to the people in his neighborhood. He started using abandoned shopping carts as planters. This evolved into Urban art with a taste of nature. An installation at a college consisted of a series of grass covered dirt mounds that acted as a natural place to meet, lie back relax and mingle. He is now working on a similar installation as part of his Atlantic Center of the Arts residency. With any luck, I’ll get out there to sketch the work in progress.

Brian Phillips showed his illustrative work. He has a whole series of paintings of house fires illuminating the night sky. He has some of his paintings hanging at Urban ReThink now. One piece in particular caught my eye. It was a painting of a stone arrowhead with a bold flat backdrop. This simple image implies much about the violence of survival. That image lingers. Brian didn’t claim any deep rooted underlying themes to his work. For the people intent on finding hidden meanings, he did a painting of a house fire and diagrammatically circled some embers. The diagram pointed to a bird, leaf and phone. It was pure nonsense. He paints because he loves the process.

I’ll be giving a talk on my art and process this Wednesday December 12th from 7PM to 9PM at Urban Rethink, (625 E Central Blvd  Orlando, FL, 32801). Rick Jones will be presenting, discussing and displaying his works on the ReThink wall, along with photographer Hannah Glogower. Stop by and say hi.

Artists Process

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As part of the Corridor Project‘s first show, Walk on By, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, a UCF art instructor, sat in a thrown outside Urban ReThink starting at 6pm on September 5th accepting trash offerings. That evening artists gathered at ReThink to talk about their art and process.

Wanda was dressed in a tight red corset and had a huge wig of purple hair which was woven and balled up. Red and white jewels glistened in her hair. From the moment I entered, I knew I wanted to get close to her to sketch. Wanda’s regal performance piece had previously been done at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.


She began her discussion by asking the audience what they felt her performance was about. I hadn’t seen her performance, so I kept quiet. Her question rang forth like a challenge. The room was dead silent. A little boy started shrieking and complaining in the corner. With a regal flair Wanda raised her hand and shouted out “Excuse me!” The mom ushered her son out the door. Wanda explained that people often dump their shit on the people closest to them. She said her performance art was about intimacy. In one performance piece she invited people to lie in bed with her. In the quiet moments, some people cried.


Jessica Earley who yarn bombed the front of Urban Rethink discussed her art. She is soft spoken and began her talk by warning us of her shyness. As she discussed her art, she was never at a loss for words. She gazed at the far wall of the room as she spoke. Her thoughts and passions rang true. The projector wouldn’t work but Dina Mack helped her get it running. Jessica showed us some of her more controversial paintings that she had done. One painting she did was actually censored by a costumer in a local restaurant. Her paintings often visualize woman’s issues. Some show a woman’s longings to someday have a child. A painting showing a nude woman and child couldn’t be hung. The woman had some knitting covering her lap and a single strand of yarn lead to a baby who had on a knit cap and diapers. Black crows then flew up from the child’s head towards a flaming blue cell. Jessica has been painting for the past three years and her work is astonishingly intimate and sincere. A common thread through the evenings discussions was that artists love to experiment and explore different mediums. Jessica wants to continue performance art, music, dance, installations and visual art. Self expression can come in many forms.

Master Playwright Residency

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The Atlantic Center of the Arts in New Smyrna Beach has a master artists in residency program. Residency #142 put students in touch with three talented playwrights, Annie Baker, Heather Woodbury, and Dael Orlandersmith. The Mad Cow Theater opened its doors so these women could discuss what it is like being a playwright in America today. I arrived at the Mad Cow Theater rather sweaty and worn around the edges from several other sketch assignments that day. The lobby was packed and the room hummed with conversations as people enjoyed wine and finger food. There was a table full of name tags and I didn’t see my name. This was a much bigger event than I expected, and for a moment I thought I might not get in.

Exhausted I sat on the windowsill and observed all the excitement in the room. I heard a woman say, “let me grab my wine.” She reached behind me and grabbed a cup. I had almost sat on it. Thank god it didn’t spill. A young woman sat next to me to relax. Mitzi, a perky young mom, started talking to her and I discovered I was sitting next to Annie Baker, one of the playwrights. Mitzi was talking about one of her children and Annie who is 30 wondered if she would ever have time for a family. Mitzi’s husband, a handsome man in a light suit and dark spiked hair joined the conversation. He thought Annie was just in her mid twenties and he said, “You look too young to have written five plays.”

The cow bell rang letting everyone know it was time to enter the theater. Peg Okeif was the moderator. The Mad Cow Theater will be moving this year to Church Street Station which will put it in the midst of all the new nightlife being generated thanks in part to the new arena. Excerpts were performed from each of the three women’s plays. I discovered that I was seated next to all the actors who performed that night. I moved aside each time they went on stage to read. Each of the readings had an amazing blend of humor and serious drama. I was left wanting more.

The moderated conversation with the playwrights afterward inspired and charged me. Annie Baker who wrote “Circle Mirror Transformation” said, “Art is about holding up a mirror, that mirror can be smooth and representational or distorted. We try to show what peoples lives are like and what the inner landscape of peoples minds look like. Art is about chronicling.” I was surprised when Dael, who wrote Yellow Man, pointed out that several college professors discouraged her writing. Heather had similar experiences. Annie spoke about a professor who wanted to share the true secret of great playwrights. The students leaned forward with bated breath. He said, “The best playwrights are the ones who read the most.” Annie noted an alarming flood of people who want to write yet they have no interest in reading. Dael pointed out that the more she reads, the more she humbly realizes what she doesn’t know. When asked about the artist as recluse Annie pointed out that she has the best of both worlds. She writes for months at a time alone and focused then she gets to work with the actors offering plenty of interaction. Asked how she knows her play is done, Annie said, “The play is never exactly what I hoped it would be when I started. But even though it might have a swollen eye and be misshapen, I still love it like a child.”

Heather Woodbury’s plays are created on the web allowing a full view of her creative process. Her serialized ongoing online videos create a world she hopes people will want to return to again and again. She plays every roll. I’m fascinated with the way she is embracing and recreating her art for this new digital medium. There was concern that only the rarefied elite go to plays anymore since ticket prices are so high. Great plays speak to everyone. By the end of the evening I felt a glowing kinship with each of the playwrights. I wish I could have talked to each at length but when the evening ended they were surrounded. I rushed out of the theater after grabbing a card from Heather and walked the streets downtown feeling rejuvenated.