Hagia Sophia

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Hagia Sophia  was the first Christian Cathedral build by the Roman Empire in the Byzantine era. It has served as a Greek Orthodox cathedral, a Roman Catholic cathedral, and an Ottoman mosque over the course of its long history. It was once called the Church of Hagia Sophia and later, in 1943, Great Mosque of Ayasofya. In 1934 a presidential decree converted the building into a museum.  For 85 years it was a museum. That court ruling that granted the museum status was annulled on July 10, 2020 and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the conversion of the city’s historic Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.

Hagia Sophia became UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985. UNESCO released a statement expressing that it “deeply regrets the decision of the Turkish authorities, made without prior discussion, and calls for the universal value of World Heritage to be preserved.” Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture, said in the statement, “It is important to avoid any implementing measure, without prior discussion with UNESCO, that would affect physical access to the site, the structure of the buildings, the site’s moveable property, or the site’s management.”

The site will now be managed by the country’s Presidency of Religious Affairs, rather than the Ministry of Culture, CNN reported. “Since its status as a museum is changed, we are canceling the entrance fees,” said Erdogan in a speech on July 10, 2020 according to the Anadolu news agency. “Like all our mosques, its doors will be open to everyone — Muslim or non-Muslim. As the world’s common heritage, Hagia Sophia with its new status will keep on embracing everyone in a more sincere way.”

What will happen to the artifacts and art within it? Artifacts include, includes medieval mosaics depicting the Holy Family and images of Christian imperial emperors, which Muslims who make use of the building as a mosque are expected to cover up using curtains or lasers. It is not clear how the lasers would work. The Christian icons would be uncovered and be open to all visitors at other times.

Hagia Sophia will officially begin regular worship services beginning July 24, according to CNN.

My sketch done in 2015 is of the Tulip Festival that takes place in front of Hagia Sophia. The festival took place this year in April. In April, it was confirmed that COVID-19 had spread all over Turkey. On April 14, 2020, the head of the Turkish Ministry of Health, Fahrettin Koca announced that the spread of the virus in Turkey has reached its peak in the fourth week.

Dreamland

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Donald Trump has decided to hit the campaign trail again with a rally in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 19, 2020 which happens to be Juneteenth or Emancipation Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the reading of the General Orders, No. 3, which officially informed slaves that they were free after the civil war. Tulsa was the site of one of the most vicious acts of racial violence in American history when, in 1921, a mob of white people attacked a section of the city known as Greenwood or “Black Wall Street” and murdered hundreds of African Americans. For a president who asserted that “both sides” were to blame for white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 this seems like a strange choice of venue.

This will be Trumps first time at a rally since March 2, 2020. He has desperately missed the rally’s, and fondly remembered the good old days. In a CNN national poll released earlier this week, 88% of black voters said they disapproved of the job Trump is doing in office. Ninety one percent disapproved of how he is handling race relations. And 88% said they would vote for Biden over Trump in a hypothetical general election match up. Trumps heavy handed actions on the issue police violence and racism speak far louder than any words he could at a rally.

Nation wide protests are bringing about change. Confederate statues are being topples and even NASCAR has decided to ban confederate flags, a symbol of hate from future race events. The Navy on Tuesday June 9, 2020 announced it would prohibit the Confederate battle flag from all its military installations, following the lead of the Marine Corps which last week began implementing a ban on its troops displaying the flag in any form. Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, filed an amendment to the annual defense bill last week to rename all bases named for Confederate generals. Anthony Brown, a retired Army Reserve colonel, said in a statement that scrubbing the names of Confederate leaders who took up arms against the United States would help ensure “an honest accounting of our history.” Trump has decided to reject this idea.

Registration for the event requires would-be attendees to acknowledge “that an inherent risk of exposure to Covid-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending the Rally, any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc liable for any illness or injury.” In other words, going to this crowded venue may result in death.Anyone who goes to this rally shouldl get tested for Covid-19 immediately afterwards to try and avoid infecting friends and family.

Tulsa has been under shelter-in-place orders since March 29th. One republican argued the case for going to the rally saying that protestors have been going to crowded demonstrations for some time. Tulsa has 986 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 44 dead. Oklahoma state had about 7,626 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 357 dead.

100,000 Shoes

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I am writing this on Memorial Day. The death toll for Covid-19 is about to surpass 100,000 and Donald Trump was seen golfing on Saturday May 23, and Sunday May 24, at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia in the midst of the pandemic. According to CNN, Trump visited Trump-owned golf courses 92 times between becoming president in January 2017 and January 3, 2018. Trump’s last golf outing was on March 8, 2020 when he visited the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. He wouldn’t dare golf there now, since Palm Beach has been a hot spot for the Covid-19 virus. As of Memorial day there were 16,522 cases of the virus in Miami Dade County with 614 death. By comparison Laudon County Virginia has 1195 cases of Covid-19 and 30 deaths, which is a far safer bet for the president who refuses to wear a face mask.

I began to wonder, how do you visualize 100000 lives lost? 100,000 people with dreams and aspirations. The New York Times listed 1000 obits of people lost to the virus on it’s front page. It is a sobering reminder of loss that the president would rather we did not remember as he rushes to get the economy back up and running at any cost.

If one shoe were added to a pile on a golf course for every American lost, how big would that mountain of shoes become? I remembered seeing a mountain of shoes of victims of the holocaust at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. In the Holocaust about 11 million lives were lost to man’s inhumanity to man. Today lives are being lost to indifference and incompetence. Besides golfing, Trump also fired off angry and hateful tweets. I have stopped paying attention to those rants.

Researchers at Columbia University this week estimated about 36,000 lives in the United States could have been saved from the Covid-19 had social distancing and other restrictions been put in place earlier in March. The researchers determined that if the measures had begun two weeks earlier, then 82.7% of deaths and 84% of infections — or about 53,990 deaths and 960,937 cases, could have been prevented nationwide. The study has not yet undergone the typical scientific peer review process, and all models are merely estimates, subject to change with new information.

The former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Rick Bright said, “If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities …Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.”

According to CNN, a leading infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota estimates that there could be as many as 800,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States over the next 18 months. To date only about 3% of the population has been tested for the virus. Meaning the economy is being opened up blindly. Anyone you meet could be asymptomatic and spread the disease.

It amazes me that so many seem to be rushing out to gather in large groups this holiday weekend because Trump said the worst is behind us. As an artist I can not keep up with so many cases of absolute stupidity.

April is the Cruelist Month

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CNN News Anchor Chris Cuomo has been diagnosed with Covid-19 and he continues to broadcast from home. He has been very open about his fevers, chills and shortness of breath as well a phantasmagorical visions. In one of his broadcasts he said doctors are referring to the virus as “The Beast” and he said that April will be the Cruelest month. Indeed the hospitals in New York City are being overrun with patients infected with the virus. Refrigeration trucks are being set up outside hospitals to be used as temporary morgues since the morgues are already over run.

Cuomo’s reference to the Covid-19 virus at “The Beast” reminded me of a painting I studied as an art student by Rubens called “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.” I imagined those lions representing the virus as they pace in the cramped hospital room. I have seen so may picture of doctors exhausted emotionally and physically to the point that they just collapse on the floor or under a table. A photo of a nurse whose face was scarred by her surgical mask went viral.

Healthcare workers at Mount Sinai Hospital held photos
of sick colleagues at a protest demanding more personal protective equipment (PPE) in New York on April
3, 2020. Hospital staff were not able to get tests even after a nurse contracted the virus and died. The death of Kious Jordan Kelly, 48, was confirmed by Mount Sinai
Hospital. It comes amid an escalating crisis in New York in which
hospitals are faced with surging numbers of Covid-19 patients and
shortages of crucial medical equipment and protective gear for staffers. Senior Vice President Vicki R.
LoPachin announced that starting on Tuesday, April 7, Mount Sinai staff who develop symptoms consistent with Covid-19, will be tested for this viral infection within a few days of the onset of symptoms. 

On March 13, 2020 one nurse developed symptoms after treating a patient. Symptoms included shortness of breath, fever, and an unrelenting, dry cough. She was told to manager her symptoms at home because she could not be tested. She instead turned to her primary care physician who told her to call the Covid hotline. She waited two hours online and eventually was sent to another hospital to get tested. She tested positive. After seven days of managing symptoms at home and not improving, a
primary care doctor prescribed new treatment medication:
hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc.

Doctors and nurses are referring to the hospitals as war zones. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Hospital staff said nurses were told to reuse gowns, ration N-95 masks, and
wear surgical masks, which do not offer the same level of protection
against the virus. Some nurses in England have had to resort to wearing garbage bags since there is such a shortage of scrubs. Nursing staff are pulling together and doing what they can to rise above this  disaster. One of the horrible aspects of this virus is that it forces patients to suffer alone.


Fourteen white tents have been set up in Central Park to handle the overflow of patients from the hospitals. The 68-bed facility is run by Mt. Sinai Hospital, which is located
directly across the street from the tents in Central Park. Other locations hosting medical pop-ups include the Javits Convention Center and the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. The USNS Comfort Hospital Ship docked at pier 19 to assist in the pandemic. AS of April 4, 2020 the ship accepted “less than five” patients who were infected. Initial screenings prior to patients boarding the ship did not reveal that they had contracted the virus. The CDC screenings consist only of a temperature check and “a series of
questions addressing member’s recent health and contact history.” A ship can be a highly deadly breading ground for a deadly virus. The Comfort, which can hold up to 1,000 hospital beds, has treated fewer than 30 patients since arriving in New York on Monday March 30, 2020.

Smallest Gallery in Orlando

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Trevor Fraser, an entertainment reporter for the Orlando Sentinel put out a call for artists on Facebook for what he called the Smallest Gallery in Orlando. The gallery consisted of a small strip of wall between two doors. I decided to incorporate my 12th Night Orlando Shakespeare Theater sketch to fill the space and my submission was approved.

Trevor and his wife Lindsay Fraser decided to host a party where guests could paint in the sketch. I arrived about an hour early and projected my sketch on the wall and then painted in the dark line work. I Did a bit of painting on the central Shakespearean actor and then relaxed along with Pam and watched as people finished the painting. f course everyone had their own style so the disparate areas didn’t entirely tie in together but that is part of the charm.

All the food served was part of a “Beet Off” between he and Lauren Delgato. Everything had beets in it, Beet hummus, beet salad, beet cupcakes. It is amazing the variety of tastes you can get from a humble beet. It was a fun afternoon.

This little mural wasn’t quite finished by the end of the party, so I am not sure if it ever was completed. There was some talk of using this sketch in the Orlando Sentinel for an article about the gallery, but there was no budget so I saved it for this site. The Noor Salman trial was just beginning and unfortunately the Sentinel also didn’t buy any of the 70 or so courtroom sketches I did for that trial. Only CNN, Channel 9 and Channel 6 and the Orlando Weekly used some of those sketches. March was a crazy month.

Waiting for the Verdict in the Noor Salan Trial.

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The prosecution and defense had finished their closing statements in the Noor Salman trial before lunch. Judge Paul G. Byron send the jury to deliberate when everyone got back from lunch. I wrote an article at my apartment figuring it was safe to be away from the court house for a while. All afternoon the jury discussed the case and the media waited in the designated media room. Since the courtrooms were closed up, I had to wait in the media room as well. This was my first time in the room since I  hadn’t really needed to use it during the trial. When I had wanted to write an article, I simply walked back to my downtown apartment. Now however I couldn’t leave. The jury could reach a verdict at any time. Several times the jury asked to see more evidence. When that would happen, the media would rush to the courtroom and Judge Byron would provide what her could to the jury. When I returned from my apartment, I got through the security for one of these evidence requests, I was just about to sit down and it was over. I hadn’t gotten my belt or shoes back on yet from the security check. The jury went back to deliberate.

Walking to the media room I ran into a reporter from CNN who wanted to buy some of my courtroom sketches for broadcast.  On the very first day of the trail, at 7:30 a.m., I stood at the entrance of the courthouse with Dan, a CNN reporter waiting for the doors to open. We discussed the case and I told him of my trials and tribulations of not being able to get into courtroom 4B. I suspect he put in a good word for me. My work apparently is to expensive to be used by Orlando news stations, but CNN knew they were getting what they paid for. These would be my only sales during the course of this month long trial. Otherwise, I was a volunteer citizen reporter with a sketchbook.

Sequestered away in the media room, we all wondered if the jury would be able  to reach a verdict on this first afternoon of deliberations. With over 64 bits of evidence and testimony to consider, that seemed unlikely to me. Reporters leaned into their laptops typing their copy for the day. I stood and drew them at work for the first time. Some reporters were in the hallway recording audio for broadcast. An intern was helping a radio reporter by reading some of the report into a microphone. He didn’t finish every task on point, but she was grateful for the help. Some reporters had been here since the beginning, following every nuance of the trial. Other reporters had been sent her at the last minute to be on hand to report the verdict only. I identified with certain reporters from Channel 9 News who felt a sense of ownership of the case, feeling it was best reported by locals who were most effected by the tragedy itself. Being in the media overflow courtroom with then each day I got to hear their opinions about how the trial was progressing.

Five o’clock approached and we all thought the jury might pull in a last minute verdict. It was past most reporters deadlines for the day’s report on the evening news. We were told that the jury might want to stay and order in food to deliberate late into the evening. If a reporter left to get dinner, they wouldn’t be able to get back into the court house for security reasons. Most security officers would go home for the night.  I was told that if the jury had decided to stay late, then a verdict was very close, but if Judge Byron insisted they they continue to deliberate then they were not close. I am not sure which was the case. While some reporters were scrambling to make take out orders, a court officer  entered the media room again and said that the jury had changed it’s mind. They were going home for the day. The jury deliberation would continue starting at 9 a.m. the next morning.

Day 2 of the Noor Salman trial.

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Courtroom sketches are available to purchase for use by the media. No phones allowed in court. Text or call (407) four five zero – 0807. I will get in touch ASAP after court lets out. 

I woke up bright and early at 6 AM for day 2 of the Noor Slaman Trial. Walking towards the courthouse at 7 AM the rainbow band shell was illuminated a warm orange from the rising sun. I met a reporter from CNN at the front entrance since the courthouse wasn’t open yet. The reporter joked that folks in the courthouse thought he was best friends with Wolf Blitzer. He talked about the media circus for the O.J. Simpson trail and the Boston bombing trial. He seems to feel that this trial will not generate as much interest from national media. Since Noor is the wife of the Pulse Nightclub attacker who was shot and killed, that makes her a secondary character in their eyes. However, being from Orlando myself, this trial is very important.

On day 2 I had my press badge ready and figured I would sketch in courtroom 4B where Judge Paul G. Byron was presiding over jury selection. There are 12 seats reserved for media in that courtroom and one of those seats is reserved for a courtroom artist. I was slated to take that seat but at the last minute, I was replaced by a caricature artist who low balled the price on his sketches. I learned from the CNN guy that on day one the courtroom was fairly empty. There was plenty of seating besides the 12 press seats. I could probably just sit in as a member of the public. If the place got full, I would gladly step out to the press room.

There was a tech issue at the front entry, so getting into the courthouse would take some time. Since I was the second in line, I wasn’t too concerned. Taking off all metal was becoming routine. Right beyond the entry  there was a line of ladies at a table that seemed to be in charge of handing out temporary passes. I asked if I needed to stop there, and I was fine with the pass I already had. I decided however to ask about sketching in the main courtroom. I was told that there was only 1 seat reserved for an artist. I asked if I could just enter as a member of the public. She told me that if I entered the room with art supplies, I would have my press badge revoked and would be evicted from the court house. I don’t get this Machiavellian idea that only one artist can observe a trail. Her in Orlando, there can only be one cowboy at the rodeo. I have seen court cases where close to a dozen Courtroom Sketch Artists sat in a row sketching trials in the past. Oh well. I seem to be the only citizen in Orlando who is not permitted to observe the case from  inside the courtroom because I carry a pencil and paper. I feel a civic responsibility to document this moment in Orlando’s History.

I would have to observe the trail from the media overflow room for a second day. There was a solid hour and a half before the doors opened. I decided I would sketch the entrance to the court house since it would illustrate this article well as a secondary sketch. I was finished with the pencil composition and starting to ink in the sketch when a security guard stopped me. I was told I shouldn’t sketch outside any of the courtrooms. I apologized and put it away. At the security for the press overflow room I was asked to rip the sketch out of my book. I jokingly signed it for him. He had to run it up the chain of command. Later a US Marshall approached me and said the sketch would have to be confiscated. The problem was that I showed the security at the entrance. If someone wanted to, they could use that sketch to possibly find a weakness in the buildings security. I hadn’t though of that as I was happily sketching away. I hope they frame the sketch and keep it. It might be worth something someday. I took all this in good humor. The guard joked with me, “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘don’t treat it like a Federal Case?’ This is where that phrase come from.” I laughed.

I was the first person in the press room. The projection screen showed 3 views of the courtroom. One view was new. It was of the defense table. I was excited. When Noor Salman entered she would sit in the center seat. I immediately started sketching the rough layout of the furniture in pencil so I would be ready when she entered. She entered wearing a black jump suit and she smiled as she talked with her attorney Lisa Moreno. I  mentioned her outfit since it was the first thing that the reporters talked about when they entered the room I was excitedly sketching in. I sketched Noor quickly as she talked animatedly to Lisa. Sketching allows me to crawl inside her head. For the first time she came alive for me. From my comfy jury box seat, I could watch Noor’s every expression. Come Monday, I will continue to focus my attention strictly on her. She tends to spend a lot of time with her head down seeming to draw or take notes.