Purple Rain

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In March of 2019 John Hurst celebrated his 50th birthday along with his twin sister Alecia at the Abbey (100 S Eola Drive, Suite 100, Orlando, Florida 32801). The party was actually a surprise orchestrated by John wife Chimene Pindar Hurst. As she said, “
I have done what any self-respecting wife of John would do, and hired
an amazing Prince impersonator (Sir Jac) with his full band, horn section, sexy
backup dancers, the whole shebang. We have seen him perform and it’s
really fun. I booked The Abbey (100 S Eola Dr #100, Orlando, FL 32801) for the night, a cool venue around the
corner from us where they will play and we can do it up all night! Full
bar, projector, stage, [and a] great sound system.”

When Pam and I arrived there was a thong around John and the venue was packed. I decided to slip through the crowd and find a seat on the sidelines with a view of the stage. I sketched the stage as the band set up. Once they began to perform I placed each performer into the scene in turn. One of the back up performers was a performer and model I had sketched at other events. She had a great voice but was limited in her dancing moves by a pair of very high platform shoes. The prince impersonator (Joey Colon) himself was full of energy. He performed non stop for the duration of the evening. He has been performing as Prince in The U.S.A. for over 10 years. There is an uncanny resemblance, with every body movement sound being like the Purple Legend.

Orlando seems to be a hub for impersonators perhaps because of the theme parks. Anyway the band was great and I tried to capture a fraction of the high energy performance. AS they performed Purple Rain, I covered the sketch in Purple washes. John found me hard at work and introduced me to his twin sister. Back in high school in Tenafly, New Jersey, I studied American History with John’s dad. As extra credit for that class I built a scale model of a dutch settlement home out of sandstone blocks that I cut using a tile saw. When John and I worked together at Disney we discovered that one degree of separation. The world is a small place.

John really is a Prince fanatic. John resisted social media for the longest time. After the party I began noticing that he posts some Prince related trivia every day on Twitter. He was on the dance floor throughout the night and when he was asked to get on stage. He held his own playing guitar and singing. John works for the animation industry as a storyboard artist but he might have missed his calling as a rock and roll star. The birthday cake was shaped as a purple frosted guitar. Drinks flowed and by the end of the evening Pam and I were dancing as well. It was a fun night and I got to see a side of John that I had never seen before.

The 49 Mural Roundtable Meeting

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Mural artist Michael Pilato came to Orlando from Happy Valley, PA shortly after the Pulse Nightclub massacre to create a mural as tribute to the 49 who were murdered on the evening of June 12, 2016. He introduced the idea of the World Mural project which would have murals around the world in places that had experienced tragedy. He attended my 49 portrait creation project at Falcon Bar and from that he imagined a group of artists working together to bring the mural to life. For his mural to be a success he needed public awareness so this round table was formed to get people on board to help with his vision. 

 Besides the painted mural he wanted a viewer to be able to point their smart phone at an individual and a 3d rendering would appear of the person walking off the surface and telling their story. Several people from a computer graphics company in Vancouver were at the meeting to explain how this tech might work. I tried on a headset and was able to walk around in a recreation of a civil war battleground. I walked up to the end of a cannon and looked down inside the barrel. It was possible to walk around soldiers as they prepared to fire the cannon. Such interactive tech is inspiring but in the end the mural just needed old fashioned brush and paint to be created.


Chimene Pindar Hurst first asked Michael to

create a mural in Orlando. Chimene’s father took on he roll of keeping the round table committee on track. Michael’s mural partner, Yurly Karabash arrived and the mural really started to take shape. I contributed 4 portraits of victims, recreating the portraits I had done on the evening that the 49 portraits were created. In the restructuring of the mural, all 4 of my contributions were painted over and replicas were painted in other sections sort of in my style.


Besides my small contribution to the mural, I also was hired by Michael to create several renderings that showed a new vision for Lake Beauty right next to

Orlando Regional Medical Center where all survivors who had been shot were taken and treated on that fateful night. The medical center is just a few blocks north of the Pulse Nightclub and because of that some lives could be saved. I went to the lake and drew the setting on location and then returned to the studio to make the changes to the setting that Michael envisioned. 49 plaques had been placed around a fountain already in the victims honor. the trouble with this otherwise peaceful lake is that it is right next to the very busy Orange Avenue.


Michael imagined a series of arching walls covered in greenery. Misters would soak the air cooling the area around the fountain. At night lights hidden in the greenery would light up with all the colors of the rainbow. The mist would soften the lights at night. A lower level path path was imagined that would literally be below the lake surface in spots with water cascading over the clear Plexiglas walls. Colorful plaques were imagined across the lake and a tiny gnome village might appear among the knees of a cypress tree. Catacombs could be created on a round peninsula that just out into the lake. Lake Beauty is already a peaceful and serene place despite the incessant sound of traffic. Each new suggestion was intended to make it even more of a place for reflection and healing. The project was pitched to the hospital and nothing ever became of it. Susan Stauffer Beckmann is the public relations person for the mural. It was propped up for a day on June 12, 2017 at Lake Eola for people to see. Rather than being painted on a wall, it is painted on sections of marine grade board so it can be installed anywhere. It was installed on the side of a bar in Thornton Park for a while, but that is not intended as it’s permanent home.

What went up as a temporary memorial at Pulse. Resembles the curving wall design envisioned for lake Beauty. Only instead of being covered in foliage it is covered with thousands of photos from the community response after Pulse happened.

49, 53 and Beyond Kids Mural

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Susan Gromala Crary helped home school students design and then execute a Pulse themed mural in the stairwell leading up to the studio where Michael Pilato and Yuriy Karabash painted a pule mural that now hangs next to a  laundromat on Washington Street across from Dexter’s in Thornton park. Chimene Pindar Hurst asked Michael and Yuriy to come to Orlando to work on the mural. I do not believe that the mural is permanently installed in Thornton Park and I am not sure of where it will finally reside.

The children’s stairwell mural however is a permanent fixture at the Colonial and Mills Avenue studio above the pizza joint. While painting the mural a can of yellow paint was spilled, and rather than get upset, they incorporated the yellow paint into the overall design. Yellow hand prints and puddles of yellow can be found  all  the way up the steps.

The home school students sang as they worked. One student used a tiny brush to paint in her section of the mural. Susan said that was her style. Inspirational phrases swirled around the myriad of rainbow colored hearts. It was inspiring to see the community come together to help make this studio pace livable and to paint bright colors to try and help the city heal.

Inspiration Mural stairwell.

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Michael Pilato from Philadelphia and Yuri Karabash from the Ukraine used the second floor studio space above Anthony’s Pizza as a place to paint the first mural devoted to the 49 victims of the Pulse tragedy. Chimene Pindar Hurst arranged for home school students to paint a mural up the narrow staircase leading to the studio. Susan Gromala Crary, an artist who has done murals on Disney property, volunteered to get the kids started on the project.

She had each student do small thumbnail sketches of ideas they wanted included in the mural. Since social media like twitter and Facebook are so important to the kids, she found that the power of words had to be incorporated. Ultimately large flowers were painted with 49 heart shaped pedals. A rainbow exploded it’s bright colors up the steps. Then words were incorporated like inspire, and positive.

Any creative endeavor has its setbacks and happy accidents. While painting a large section of the rainbow, a cup of bright yellow paint spilled on the steps. Rather than getting upset about the spill, Susan encouraged the kids to incorporate the yellow into the overall design and concept. Each student dipped their hand in the puddle and hand prints were placed on each step. A videographer recorded the afternoon of creative working and singing. Each painter had their own technique which Susan encouraged. One girl used tiny strokes with a tiny brush to fill in sections of the mural. She persisted and completed the work. In the end that is what matters most, something new and unexpected was created.

The Inspiration Mural.

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In July of 2016, shortly after the horrific Pulse Nightclub shooting, Michael Pilato began his work to create the inspiration mural. Yuri Karabash his assistant joined him shortly after. Chimene Pindar Hurst, a Thornton Park resident was instrumental in bringing this creative team to Orlando. Chimene’s husband John was a college friend of Michael’s so it was a creative reunion. A second floor studio was donated above Anthony’s Pizza on the corner of Mills and Colonial. Local residents rallied to repair and furnish the place which needed lots of work. Michael recalled waking up one night to find a rat breathing in his face. He punched the rat and wet back to bed.

Michael attended my 49 portraits night in which local artists painted and sketched portraits of the Pulse victims in one evening. That night inspired Michael to want to use local talent to paint portraits on the mural he was creating. Some of the artists from my project painted portraits onto Michael’s mural. Those portraits float above the surface in rainbow colored hearts. I painted 4 faces, several of which had to be moved and thus repainted. The mural was in a constant state of flux and is still a work in progress.

On June 12, the mural which is made from a series of marine grade boards was assembled for the first time and exhibited at the Pulse nightclub at the 2AM and 10AM events. The boards were mounted on large sheets of plywood and supported by 2 by 4s that were nailed into triangular braces. “Raising the mural into place was like a barn raising.” said Chimene. After the Pulse event was over, the entire mural had to be moved again to go to Lake Eola where it would go on display during the evening’s candlelight vigil. I was asked to sit at the Albin Polasek Museum table to help promote “Summer of Love: Reflections on Pulse at the Albin Polasek Museum (633 Osceloa Avenue Winter Park Fl 32789). That show which opened in May is running for five months.

There were concerns that the mural supports might become a hazard if people tripped on them. If the huge wall fell it could cause damage. It rained all afternoon and when I got to Lake Eola Vigil, I was pleased to see that despite the concerns, the mural stood tall on the walkway to the right of the Disney band shell.  Crowds of people walked past and took cell phone photos. The crowds got thicker despite the rain. I worked under my umbrella, trying to keep my tablet dry. Pam Schwartz, the History Center curator and some of her staff stopped to say hello and she was kind enough to hold the umbrella as I finished the sketch. We joked about how I had to leave out so many details from the mural because I had to work fast.

Beside me the Kimball sisters, Casadie 14, Delanie 11, Emmalie 10, and Fynnlie 7, were handing out paper hearts colored with crayons to resemble rainbows. These young girls had lost their father before the Pulse attack and thus they know what loss feels like. They were “Spreading love, because there’s too much hate in the world.” They had 2000 hand made hearts to pass out and when done they will have handed out over 20,000 hearts. Passers by accepted the hearts with thanks. There was visible love in the crowd. People hugged and couples caressed hands. The crowd wasn’t as thick as the vigil a year ago, rain likely chased some away. But the memories are still fresh. There is a storm on the horizon. That will not keep Orlando down. we answer hate with love. Pulse themed buses were parked around the vigil possibly to block potential hate mongers. Connections in the community grow stronger and we all hope for a better world. It isn’t a 1960’s ideal, but something we need to work hard for.

49, 53 and Beyond Children’s Mural.

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Michael Pilato a mural artist from Philadelphia has come to Orlando to create a series of murals dedicated to the 49, 53 and beyond who were directly affected by the tragic shooting at Pulse nightclub. He has moved into the empty apartment above Tony’s pizzeria on the corner of Mills and Colonial. This run down apartment was formerly known as “The Space” and has been the location for quite a few cutting edge exhibits and performances. Volunteers have been working tirelessly to make the space livable. New floors are being put in, along with a new sink and cabinets. Piles of scrap wood were piled in the hall, waiting to be taken to the dump. There was no air conditioning and some window panes were broken and missing. Michael was bitten by mosquitoes on his first night in the space.  The groundwork for this artist studio is a true labor of love.

Long narrow staircases lead up to the space. Chimene Pindar Hurst came up with the idea of having home school students create a mural on the walls of the front stairwell. Susan Gromala Crary has done murals on Disney property and she stepped in to spearhead the project. Day one had the children sketching and writing ideas on paper. The kids wanted to sling paint from the start, but Susan assured them that they needed a unified plan before paint touched the walls.  They circled up to share ideas and chat while they worked. The moms sat on the opposite end of the room, also chatting. Susan took all the sheets of paper home to her studio to create a unified concept that incorporated all the separate ideas.

When the kids were finished, Susan sat with them and enthusiastically let them know which ideas inspired her the most.  She collected all the sketches and notes and the conversation she had with the kids gave her a definite idea of how to proceed. Words are very important to these kids because of texting and the internet. Therefor words of love and inspiration would weave themselves in to the visual tapestry of the mural. The plan was to have the kids come in weekly to get the mural painted.