41 Annual Christmas in the Park

Posted on by Thor

Pam Schwartz and I met at Winter Park‘s Central Park (150 W Morse Blvd, Winter Park, FL) for the 41st Annual Christmas in the Park hosted by The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art and the City of Winter Park.

At 6:15 p.m. nine century-old Tiffany leaded-glass windows were lit. They were scattered across the lawn with two framing the chorus on stage. When I arrived I voted against muscling my way up to the stage, instead I was fascinated by the lines of people who would needed to shoot cell phone photos of the stained glass. I recognized the docent who was cheerfully talking to people about the history of the stained glass panel.

On the Central Park main stage the 160 voice Bach Festival Society Choir performed. I was seated behind a hedge and a secondary stage so I never actually saw anything that happened on stage. However the constant stream of people pressing close to the stained glass was just as entertaining for me.

Anyone who stopped to read the tombstone label was illuminated a ghostly green from below. This particular Memorial Window created  in 1909 was for a chapel for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged, Indigent Females which provided housing and pensions for poor elderly women. The ARRAIF was located at 891 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, N.Y which was founded in 1883 and closed down in 1974.   In 1908, a Mrs. Sage gave the association a gift of $250,000, that was used to  extend the building south to the corner of West 103
Street. The architect for the addition was Charles Rich. The addition
included the installation of Tiffany windows to the Chapel.

Tiffany wanted to return the art of glass making to the glory days of Medieval churches. Each piece of glass has a variety of color, tone and texture that became known as opalescent. The glass has imperfections, streaks, bubbles and folds that become a part of the beauty of the finished piece. The design was symmetrical yet elements within that design stepped outside of the symmetry creating some tension. I love any art that accepts imperfections as part of the process.

The crowd on the lawn came prepared for the occasion. Some had entire picnics with bottled of wine and Christmas lights to decorate the tableau and themselves. One of the songs was of course Jingle Bells and people knew to come to  the concert with their own jingle bells that they jingled and jangled in time to the music.

Illegal Art in Winter Park

Posted on by Thor

I went to the The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (445 N Park Ave, Winter Park, Florida 32789) for Spring Friday Nights. The Museum’s annual Rites of Spring Celebration included free
admission, live music, tours, and more.

Of  interest to me was, The Domes of the Yosemite, the largest
existing painting by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), which was making its
post-conservation debut at the Morse through a special loan from the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum
in Vermont. The monumental 1867 painting, which had not been seen
outside the Athenaeum since its installation there in 1873. The huge painting was created in the context of the Hudson River School. These
loosely affiliated landscape artists produced grand, romantic images of
New York’s countryside. In this genre, no artist’s work was more luminous, theatrical,
or better loved. The painting was commissioned for $25,000.

I settled into a seat and started sketching the monumental painting along with a round Tiffany stained glass window that dominated the gallery. I had finished the line work and was blocking in some color when a guard stopped me. She was concerned for  the wood floors and asked me to stop. I have never spilled a drop of color doing my tiny watercolors, but she must have considered me an anarchist and or a slob. I added a few color notes like, Grey, Ochre, Orange, etc to let me know what my plan had been when I started painting. I then went outside the museum and sat on a bench to block in the colors there. That was an act of civil disobedience since sketching on Park Avenue is illegal in Winter Park. I walked back into the museum one more time to check the color scheme and went out to paint again. Outside it grew dark as the sun set. I grew discouraged and left. I haven’t returned to the museum since.

The Bierstadt is no longer at the Morse. Winter Park has an crazy back woods ordinance that prohibits the creation of art in it’s downtown streets. It seems the Morse also considers sketching, an illegal act. Sketching on the public bench outside the Morse could have been punishable with a $500 fine and or 30 days in jail. Welcome to the Central Florida arts scene.