Ford-iFy the Arts Groundbreaking

Posted on by Thor

I went to the groundbreaking ceremony at City Arts in Downtown Orlando. I arrive rather early and set up across the street to sketch the courtyard and Kean building. the event was held just days after the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis vetoes all funding for the arts.

A new gate had been added to the entry of the courtyard with two swans and surprise and delight written in the clouds. People gradually started to gather at the gate to kibitz and schmooze.

The new yet to be fully constructed courtyard will be named in honor of Ford Kiene, the former owner who donated the historic green of the green Rogers Klein building. He donated the building to the city of Orlando.

Ford-ify the Arts is a fundraising event organized with the intentions of raising capital to construct a courtyard on the north-side space adjacent to the Rogers Kiene Building (home to CityArts). The vision is to create a beautiful public space in the heart of Downtown Orlando, which complements Orlando’s oldest commercial structure, built in 1886. This space will be used for diverse, inclusive, and creative arts engagement, as well as private gallery-related and specialty events. Interstruct, Inc. created the concept and design of the courtyard.

The design seems to consist of a clear arched canopy that looks like it might blow away in a hurricane or high wind. Murals already exist though they might be planning to change them, and there are benches for the homeless to lounge on. In the promotional image a couple walks hand in hand towards the back wall of a parking garage as if strolling on the beach.

As I was sketching a guy walked past me twice with a hand truck stacked with cases of beer. He pointed out to me that the Rogers Kean building was  donated by the guy who stated the beer distribution company he worked for. Its a small world.

Fringe: Love Crumbs

Posted on by Thor

The Orlando Fringe show, Love Crumbs is being performed at the upstairs theater in City Arts in Downtown Orlando. Due to some technical issues the press preview for the show was canceled, so the performance I sketched was the first time the show was being performed with all lighting and sound cues in place.

This show has heart, showcasing love in all its forms. Several members of the cast had to deal with people not being able to pronounce their name correctly. Ha’ani Hogan was often mistaken for being Hawaiian but she offered the audience a lesson in geography to note that her families home island of Guam is actually closer to Australia that Hawaii.

On monologue which hit me the hardest was a man reading from his diary about the isolation he felt after becoming divorced. Over time he began to accept the isolation. His life began to turn around when he started going to a coffee shop regularly. Like Norm from Cheers people greeted him as he entered. He felt he belonged. He met a woman but that relationship didn’t last either. This time the isolation didn’t hit as hard, he wanted the best for her. Projected on the screen during his performance was a tiny sapling of a plant held up by spindly planter legs. It reminded me of the air plants I have started to use to camouflage the broken fence posts in the yard of my recent rental. New life softens the darkness.

Danielle Ziss gave a moving angst filled performance that took place in a pristine colonial kitchen. I know Danielle for hosting amazing story tellers, but this was a story that plumbed the depths of despair using movement and raw emotion as her medium. Another moving scene had two men literally bump into one another and fall in love. In the panic of the moment they forgot to ask each other’s names, but social media brought them together.

Other acts celebrated pets and friendships. The idea of finding the perfect mate can be the cause of so much stress. It is better to just enjoy each moment that we have together on this earth. The show celebrates supporting one another and honoring our differences. You will laugh, you will cry and you will feel the love. I give the show 5 hearts.

Love Crumbs is rated 13 and up. The run time is 60 minutes. Tickets are $15.

The remaining show times…

  • Tuesday May 21, 6:00pm
  • Wednesday May 22, 9:00pm
  • Saturday May 25, 1:30pm
  • Sunday May 26, 7:30pm

Mel’s Bad Girls Club Art Show

Posted on by Thor

I stopped by City Arts Factory to see the volunteer team effort involved in hanging new shows. There are four galleries as well as the long haII way in which to hang art. That is a whole lot of wall space. In May, when this sketch was done, they were hanging, Mel’s Bad Girls Club Art Show. Tamere Parsons was getting all the labels ready for the show. I don’t think most artists are aware of the amount of work that goes into hanging each show. One piece that really caught my eye was a black frame that had physical branches breaking up the inner dimensional space by artist Chelle Shannon. Maura Luchesse had one of her sensual recycled magazine mosaic pieces titled “Catch Me If You Can.” The price was $8000 which is reassuring since that implies that some people in Orlando are paying a reasonable market rates for art. Laura Williams “Gypsy Mermaid” on the other hand was marked down to the minimum wage, bargain basement price of $300.

On a black and white photo on the wall, a homeless woman holds up a sign that says help please. This is much like the common perception of “the starving artist.” Local artists bicker and fight over scraps rather than banding together and empowering each other. A weekend away in NYC reminded me of what a vibrant arts scene can be like. I met 18 like mine artists for a Sketch Crawl in Washington Square Park where we documented a huge police violence awareness rally and then sketched the huge variety of performance artists in the park. In Orlando performance art is outlawed or rather limited to a few blue box locations that are in isolated locations downtown. I’ve never actually seen an artist use one of the blue box busking stations. Instead, Lake Eola has a speaker system that pipes in Disney white bread music for the swans to listen to.  The Creative City Project livened up the streets of Downtown for one night, but then the silence returned.

Clink featured acrobatics behind bars at Fringe.

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Circus Arts and PB and J Theater Factory of Winter Park collaborated to bring Clink to this year’s Orlando International Theater Festival. The program described the show as”a captivating look behind the bars of a most exceptional and enthralling prison.

Brandon Roberts played one of the prison guards. Any time he is in a show, I know that there will be laughs. Acrobats were prisoners. The guards tried to keep chaos to a minimum, but any time they turned their backs the prisoners would express their inner freedom by performing acrobatics. After an impressive display of strength and grace by the acrobats, a prison guard tentatively climbed on a platform to keep a look out. The platform shook every time the guard moved, and it was hilarious how he struggled to stay balanced when prisoners could do somersaults, back flips and amazing aerial feats.

In one of the shows, a male acrobat tore a muscle. The next show had to be canceled. Two stage hands had to step in and perform safer acrobatic moves to fill in for the lost performer. They did an amazing job filling in because I didn’t notice that the show had been modified. In a scene where prison guards vaulted over a wall, Brandon flailed his limbs for a laugh as he hurled through space. Perhaps some of that wide eyed fear was legitimate.

Because of the canceled show a fundraiser was set up to help the injured performer’s medical expenses. I talked to someone who was in the audience the night of the injury. She said that it was clear that he was in pain but he kept right on performing. The show must go on.  The next morning he had to have surgery to repair a torn pectoral
ligament that had pulled from his humerus bone. He is looking at a
recovery time of 4-6 months.