Sarah Lockhard invited me to participate in a Creative City Project she was organizing in Lake Eola Park with Brie Hinman. The Creative City Project was birthed out of the belief that artists
can change a city for the better by making it a more beautiful,
meaningful and interesting place to live.
The original plan was for me to do a digital sketch projected live while Brie danced to a Tom Waits poem. Creative project have a way of morphing and we didn’t have any opportunity to rehearse, so I decided to simply sketch the dance event like any other event. Sarah told me the morning before that Brie would be dancing on the grassy peninsula beside the Japanese pagoda. I arrived a half an your early to start blocking in the composition.
Ducks, geese and swans populated the peninsula and the was bird droppings everywhere. I don’t think they had planned for this so I fired off a text to Sarah that simply said, “Bird Poop!” I found a spot near a tree stump and started sketching. I planned to put the dancers in when they arrived. The tree stump ironically had a brass plaque that said thee tree was planted in dedication to the patients that suffered from Cancer at Florida Hospital. That scarred stump was an odd form of education.
I finished the sketch and started populating it with geese. The dancers were late. I saw a girl on the dock next to the pagoda and I figured she was the dancer. The sky’s were overcast and it rained lightly several times but not hard enough to stop me. My sketch was finished when Sarah, Brie and Genevieve Bernard showed up. Genevieve set up a picnic blanket to relax and watch the dance. A small boom box was used to play the sound track from Amelie. Brie was dressed in a light flowing blue skirt and she flowed with the music. It began to rain and Sarah joined the dance with her umbrella. I quickly sketched them into the scene. The rain grew heavier but Brie continued to dance. It was a magical moment. Soon my umbrella started leaking sending large drops onto the watercolor. II had to pack up and go in order to save the sketchbooks from getting permanently damaged. as I left, Brie and Sarah were still spinning in the torrential rain. Some creative endevours last but a moment.