Creative Clash

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As part of UCF Celebrates the Arts, UCF students and alumni raced against the clock to create  large-format artworks. The twist was that the theme was revealed just seconds before the competition began. Contestants worked in black marker and half way through the one hour competition they were each assigned one color that could be used in their compositions.

The competitors closest to where I was seated were the first to have bold black lines on their panel. Large umbrellas held back the darkness above while the two figures had blue flames rising from their heads. Since I am a fan of flaming figures, I was rooting for them the whole time.

It was blazing hot in Seneff Square in front of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (419 South Orange Avenue Orlando Florida). When I arrived the announcer had someone from the audience singing karaoke. She had a gorgeous voice and knew every lyric, so I was impressed. No one else from the audience was as daring as her. The announcer had a challenging time since watching artists sketch for an hour is about as interesting as watching grass grow unless of course you are an artist sketching yourself. I had one eye clamped closed the entire time I sketched to shut out the brilliance of direct sunlight in that eye. On occasion I had to wipe a tear away from my closed eye because of the bright light. The contestants must have experienced the same blinding light which would inspire them to darken the large panel as fast as they could before they went blind. Then for a glorious moment the sun disappeared behind a cloud. I worked quickly with both eyes wide open.

One aspect of the theme had to do with Exquisite Corpse which is a collaborative game where players take turns contributing to a drawing without seeing what the others have contributed. The game originated with the Surrealist movement and is meant to encourage creativity and surprise. After the one hour competition was over, the contestants had to drop their markers and step aside to allow the audience gathered to step forward and view their work. The judges voted for panel 2 which had two dark red figures facing one another. This panel was created by Luis Paruchio and Nathalia Trepanier. The winner of the audience choice award which was decided by the loudest clapping was panel 1 with the blue flaming heads created by Hal Smith and Katherine Pericas G.

Lucia Di Lammermoor

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I attended a final dress rehearsal for Donizetti’s bel canto masterpiece Lucia Di Lammermoor in the Steinmetz Theater in the Dr. Phillips Center for the Preforming Arts. (445 S. Magnolia Avenue
Orlando, FL). Presented by Opera Orlando, this was an impressive production.

Music is by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto by Salvadore Cammarano. The opera is Sung in Italian with English and Spanish super-titles. Since I was sketching I didn’t have time to read the super-titles.

What is particularly interesting about the show is that they styled it to resemble Game of Thrones. It is a tale of love, betrayal, and madness, Lucia is torn between allegiance to her family and her love for Edgardo–her brother Enrico’s sworn enemy. A forced marriage leads to tragic ends for all involved in this gorgeous operatic treatment of Sir Walter Scott’s gothic romance The Bride of Lammermoor.

Particularly impressive were the large celebrations with crowds of guests in gothic attire. At one such celebration the partners turned and gasped when they saw Lucia stumble down the steps in a white dress holding knife covered in blood. Her disruption took center stage as she sang her sorrowful aria. Again I didn’t read the translation, but read the meaning in every guests reaction of horror and bewilderment.

I started a second sketch towards the end of the production. Time was short, this was the final moments of the opera. Singers stood around a funeral pyre.

I was among several dozen people who were in the second tier of the theater. The rest of the theater was empty. In the pit were members of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. choreographer Mila Makarova, had dancers from the Orlando Ballet performing some sinister dance moves around Lucia as she went mad.

Next time I sketch a production from so far away, I plan to bring opera glasses. I used them in the courtroom for the Pulse Nightclub shooting case, but realize now I need them when seeing a theater production from afar.

Performances are on Friday | April 19 at 7:30 p.m. and  Sunday | April 21 at 2 p.m. Tickets start at $29.

Phantasmagoria presents: A Christmas Carol & The Canterville Ghost

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If you are looking to kick off the Holiday season with a taste for the macabre, then join Phantasmagoria as they present  “Ghost Stories” this Christmas season. They will bring to life and the bitter sweet taste of death to not one but TWO whimsical classics. The well-loved A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, followed by Oscar Wilde’s rollicking The Canterville Ghost.

I sat in on a dress rehearsal for the show at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The set felt like an abandoned attic with carousel horses flanking the stage. Projections on a large screen behind the set changed the settings with ease. I fell in love with the faint flickering candle light that illuminated the various corners of the stage.  That meant I needed to keep the scene dark so the candles could shine.

A Christmas Carol is a well loved and very familiar classic. Phantasmagoria added its dark and vaudevillian steampunk styled flair to the story. John DiDonna as Scrooge lived in the old man’s skin. I have seen him perform this roll many times over the years. Daniel Cooksley as Marley, draped in chains did an amazing job filling the stage with his his twisted and agonized self. Of the three ghosts, the ghost of Christmas future was magnificently designed. Much larger that life, the dark draped figure gestured with gnarly black branches for hands.

The Canterville Ghost offered a much lighter tale full of light hearted dance. It was the yin to Dickens dark and foreboding Yang. There are two more performances December 3–4, 2022 at the Alexis & Jim Pugh Theater, in the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. Tickets are about $35.

After Pulse: Joe Saunders

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Joe Saunders is a former State Representative and a senior political director at Equality Florida and formerly staff at the Human Rights Campaign. He is an Orlando LGBT activist. Pulse opened while Joe was a student at UCF. The club anchored it’s outreach around college students. His roommate became a bartender at Pulse. His first apartment was just a few blocks from Pulse.

Joe was in North Carolina doing political response work. He had worked crazy hours like 15 hours a day. At 2AM his phone lit up with a text chat thread from a group of friends in Orlando. He was till working at 2AM. People were saying something is happening at Pulse. One friend was in an apartment within view of the club.  He kept hearing bangs which could be multiple gun shots.

The text thread search began, who was out and where they safe. After waking the next morning by 10AM he had to return home to Orlando. After a quick plane flight be got to the gay and lesbian center for a press conference held there. The Center is not a huge space. A huge bouncer was a the door directing people. The windows had fogged up. You had to carve your way through all the reporters and cameras that were packed into the room. The space was full to capacity. Equality Florida announced at the press conference that they wanted to do a vigil at Lake Eola.

Plans began for the vigil began right away. The city of Orlando was concerned about security. Could a copycat shooter show up at the vigil? The city ultimately decided the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts would be a safer option and easier for police to defend. Police snipers were on the roof of the Methodist Church and City hall just in case anything went down. Joe was the MC for the vigil. The vigil became one of the most important visual moments of the Orlando community response to Pulse and it came together in 6 hours.

Air Play

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Air Play presented by Orlando Health is set up in Senef Arts Plaza in front for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts through October 30, 2022. I went to sketch with my advanced Urban Sketching student and we found that everything was deflated on Sunday afternoon. It was like a large lawn of sad deflated Santas and snowmen that people have on their front lawns around Christmas time. We decided to sketch these large eyes of Sauron in the corner of the lawn since they were the only things that remained inflated.

Between the eyes is a large green generator. As we sketched a guy came out with a cart that had 10 to 15 gallons of gas to power the generator. When it roared to life all the structured on the lawn slowly began to inflate. The large structures were covered with brown tarps and those tarps had to be rolled back much like you might see at a baseball game after it rains.

Penis shaped mushrooms sprouted up behind one of the eyes along with a large red ant. Bright red and yellow flowers covered a hillside which was probably a kid’s slide. Someone then rolled the eyes away to the opposite side of the lawn. It turns out you can roll these eyeballs around and play a distorted game of eyeball soccer. Also on the lawn was a large 15 foot tall heart, lungs and what looked like human intestines. It was a bright, Gulliver sized recreation of Normandy beach on D-Day.

A young teen girl and her boyfriend rode by on those scooters they have downtown. She circled back and wanted to see our sketched. She didn’t know how to use the scooter, and when she stepped off, it did a wheelie and flipped over onto the lawn. They rode by a second time to check on our progress. As we sketched the theaters let out and a huge crowd pressed past us. I masked up as they all walked by talking about the shows.

As of March 7, 2022, The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts lifted for all indoor shows and events both public and private. I saw maybe 2 masks in the crowd of hundreds who walked by. Orlando is done with the pandemic but the pandemic is not done with Orlando. The Orlando Sentinel reported that there were 22,592 new coronavirus cases recorded over the past two weeks among Florida residents, bringing the cumulative total to 7,129,245. There were 522 more COVID-19 deaths, bringing Florida’s total to 81,661 dead. When the Pulse nightclub shooting happened, people rushed to give blood. Now people are happy to ignore s literally hundreds of people die every week from COVID in Florida. The death baseline has shifted.

Phantasmagoria Dress Rehearsal

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Phantasmagoria is presenting, Phantasmagoria XIII: Poe, Through the Tales Darkly at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. I went to sketch the final dress rehearsal. I unfortunately was running late but managed to get there for the final two scenes. The sketch therefor was a bit of a rush to complete since I usually pace myself to finish during the full run of a show. Regardless, I got something down.

Victorian Horror Troupe Phantasmagoria thunders onto the stage with the newest entry in their long running Halloween main stage series. They bring to life the tales and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe through their evocative storytelling, Phantastical dance, explosive stage combat, puppetry, projections, original music and MUCH more!

From the haunted stirrings of The Raven to the sheer terror of The Tell Tale Heart. . . and from the grim tolling of The Bells to the bittersweet grieving of Anabelle Lee along with a selection of other whimsical, macabre, and terrifying stories and poems, you are invited to celebrate an evening of Poe’s works. The perfect way to usher in the Halloween season!

The show runs October 6-8  at the Alexis and Pugh theater. Tickets are $35.

Romeo Y Julieta: Flamenco Smolders in Verona

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Flamenco del Sol presents Romeo Y Julieta at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (445 S Magnolia Ave, Orlando, FL 32801). A little girl in the row in front of us was dressed with a rose in her hair and a flowing flamenco dress. Later a woman who might have been her aunt also showed up in a customary flamenco gown. The show tells the story of Romeo and Juliet through dance. No words were spoken every story point and emotion was strictly delivered through dance. 

The star crossed couple met at an energetic dance party with everyone dancing as well as the children. Romeo spotted Juliet from across the crowded dance floor. They were instantly attracted not knowing at the time that they were from two families who were sworn enemies, the Montagues and the Capulets. In the next scene two gangs faced off, much like the gangs in West Side Story which is also based on the Romeo and Juliet saga. Instead of snapping fingers as they faced off they clapped and stomped threateningly. it was a highly effective was to show the animosity between the families.

Friar Lawrence (Carlos Rodriguez Gonzalez) offers to heal the rift between the families secretly married the couple. However tensions remained high and a push turned to a shove and Juliet’s cousin killed romeo’s friend. Romeo is beyond grief and instantly turns on Juliets cousin stabbing him. Romeo was banished. 

Nothing ends well in this sad tale, but the passionate flamenco dancing moved the action with amazing and ruthless sincerity. The story of Romeo and Juliet is well known by most theater goers so it was reassuring to rediscover this story just through dance and mime. The strong lighting and amazing dance numbers made very moment thrilling. The part of Julieta was performed by Tammy Weber De Millar who is the passionate director of Flamenco Del Sol. Gabriel Garcia the company drama coach clued me in about this amazing production.

Tonight February 9, 2020 at 7pm is the final performance. If you have never experienced Flamenco de Sol before you should get out and see this show. It is amazing. Tickets are $47.63. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities.

The Future of Arts and Culture in Orange County: Mayoral Candidate Forum

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I went to a Mayoral Candidate Forum at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts (445 South Magnolia Avenue Orlando, FL).

The Citizens for Cultural Vitality hosted the evening with the candidates for Orange County Mayor.

Arts leaders and those who care about the future of Central Florida’s arts and culture were invited to attend.

Conversation with the Candidates took  place in the Alexis and Jim Pugh Theater.

The Citizens for Cultural Vitality are an informal group of arts leaders and organizations who are committed to cultivating a thriving arts community in Orange County, the State of Florida, and beyond.

This forum was well organized because members of the arts community seated in the audience each had questions that had been carefully thought out before hand ready to ask each candidate. The candidates were Pete Clarke, Jerry Demings and Rob Panapinto.

I sketched candidate Jerry Demings who went on to become the Orange County Mayor. Since Jerry is our mayor I will print his responses to each question posed hoping that he stays true to his word.

Question: Will you support the creation of a public sector, ongoing dedicated funding stream for the arts that generates at minimum, an additional $5 million per year in funding for arts and culture beyond existing sources?

Demings:  In committing to a dedicated funding source for the arts, I would assemble arts and cultural groups along with the business community to discuss the best return on investment strategy for taxpayers. It is important to note that this is not my sole decision and there would need to be broader conversation with the Orange County Board of Commissioners. However, I support the continuance of the current rate of 3% of the first 4 cents (2% of the total) revenues from Tourist Development Taxes (TDT) currently collected and I would commit to increasing funding for the arts by $5 million from other revenue sources within my discretion as mayor. 

Question: In past years,the county dedicated $1 per capita from the General Fund for arts and culture in Orange County. That has dwindled to nearly .50 per capita in the past decade. Would you support the reinstatement of the $1 per capita in 2019 from the General Fund for arts support?

Demings: Yes, I would commit to funding a total of $1 per capita from any combination of County revenue sources.

Question: Orange County has invested excess TDT funding to recruit and support sporting events. The fund was seeded with $5 million and will be funded annually with an additional $2 million. Would you support an equivalent fund for arts and culture events?

Demings: As you are aware, the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners appointed a Review Committee that will meet this summer during the Budget Work Sessions to make recommendations on a spending plan for excess fees collected through TDT. Monies will be eligible for capital projects. If collections continue to outpace budgeted projections, I would support equivalency funds for the Arts with the Sports Commission.

Demings said that if arts groups can raise money on
their own, then he feels they should get tourism dollars to go with it.
Demings wants to give the arts and cultural affairs $2 million more
tourism tax dollars on top of the $5.6 million it already gets. Demings
said $500,000 of it would go to a facility rental and event fund. In May of 2019 he earmarking $42 million for arts and cultural projects.

Paint the Trail after Pulse

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At heart Jeff Sonsken is an instigator. He creates art to ruffle feathers and make people think. He always loved painting and artwork growing up. It was something he always did on his own ever since he was a kid. He would get inspired and draw using colored pencils, he got into airbrushing. In college he was taking photography classes but he was doing airbrushing in his spare time.

After college he moved from Iowa to Orlando settling in Longwood. Painting the trail began sort of accidentally. During the 2008 housing bubble he was a carpenter working in million dollar homes building custom bookcases, offices, bars. Before the bubble bust everyone was living high on the hog. After the crash he started fixing kitchens. He painted a big sign on fence pickets and he was going to hang it on the trail where his parents lived to advertise his services. He decided against hanging it because he wanted time with his family. He felt disappointed since the sign was already painted but he kept driving. When he got home he picked up some pickets and battened them together base coated them and painted Einstein on them just so he had something to hang up. After Einstein he painted Yoda, and he put them up.

He thought people would be irritated but they weren’t. He was clearing out a spot for several panels and some guy on his bike stopped and asked if he was the guy that put the paintings up. He said, “Yea” expecting a possible argument. But the guy said, “I love it.” Soon a mom and daughter walked up and a small crowd gathered. The biker wanted him to paint Jack Lemon, the little girl asked him to paint Alfred Hitchcock. So when he left he had 5 more names for panels to be painted. He had a mission. He wasn’t getting paid, but he had something to do. When he finished the Jack Lemon piece the guy on the bike who requested it was riding by on the trail and he just rode past. He shouted out to him, “It’s Jack Lemon!” The jerk didn’t even stop. Every time he went out he would get more requests. After 6 months he started getting requests on the Paint the Trail Facebook page.

People wanted him to donate art to help cancer research or autism, he never said no. He found himself helping people who needed help. He realized he could have a positive impact even if it was just a drip in the bucket. He has done he would draw up someone’s family member and let them fill in the paint much as he did for Pulse families. That helped a lot of people. He has gone through a bit of a metamorphosis himself. He is going to do what he is doing for as long as he can.

Though many of the trail paintings are pop cultural references there will once in a while be a memorial portrait in the mix. On the third fence he was painting, there was a woman who lost her 15 year old to leukemia and he painted the portrait. He went to meet the. Out on the trail one day, and they were already waiting. They were maybe 100 years down the trail and he walked down the trail towards them. There were two little girls and the dad, and the mom. Dad was holding flowers. So he flipped the painting around when he was about 60 feet from her and the mom just dropped. He has done many painting like that where that is what he was left with. He knows he is doing something good for them but it felt like he was inflicting pain on them. When he gets them to do the painting themselves, he is left with a more uplifting feeling about the experience. They might cry while doing the painting but when they get back to him they relate that it was an amazing experience.

 After Pulse he knew he needed to do something but he didn’t want to do something right away. Though it has been close to 2 years since the shooting it feet like yesterday while in other respects it felt like 10 years ago. The memories aren’t fresh but he remembered wrestling with it. He had a hard time with it. It happened like 18 miles from his home while he was sleeping. The rainbows don’t sink in anymore. Those were his neighbors. We all share the same community, they were brothers and sons. He spent a couple of weeks just pissed off. This happens all the time. You can’t even feel safe in your own town. It doesn’t matter where you go this could happen anywhere, a shopping mall a movie theater. We lost our mind as a civilization.

He did paint the skyline of Orlando in reference to Pulse. On Facebook he came across a video of people dancing. It didn’t make him feel happy. It tore him up. After that video he felt compelled to paint every face. He wanted people to see all their faces in one shot. As he completed each portrait he shared them on his Facebook page and families would share thoughts on his page. Once it was finished he took it to the Dr Phillips Center Memorial. Now any time there is another mass shooting people ask him to paint the number of people. No artist can keep up with those demands. He needs to think about his kids, and himself. At any moment you could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Life was never like this before. It is crazy now. Middle school kids an high school kids are used to this new reality. Who knows what the answer is.

The trail is basically paint on wood so it can not last forever. He was doing some repairs and realized he can’t keep up with it. The more he creates the more maintenance there is. It is impossible to add up all the money he has invested. It is an expensive hobby. At some point people will have to swap out their fences when the wood rots. He creates a separate panel of fence and screws it right on to the back of an existing fence making it sturdier. When a hurricane blows through he has to think about taking sections down. Art might not last but it can help us anchor our thoughts and memories.

Jessica Domingo Going Away Party

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Jessica Domingo joined the Orange County Regional History Center in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting.She specifically joined the staff to help in cataloguing and preserving all of the memorial items collected from the Dr Phillips Center of the Performing Arts, Lake Eola and Pulse. This was a monumental task  since there were so many memorial items left and and the constant Florida rains, humidity and bugs made preserving the collection a challenge. She spent most of her time at the museum’s offsite storage facility which is in a huge warehouse.

When Hurricane Irma hit Orlando in 2017 as a category 2 storm, the warehouse roof was damaged when a rooftop access portal the size of a manhole cover was blown free and the heavy cover ripped holes in the flat roof. Unfortunate some Pulse memorial items were on the floor as they were being triaged for conservation and cataloging. Ceiling panels from the interior ceiling soaked up water leaking from the roof and fell to the floor exploding like wet bombs. Items on the floor got soaked. Pam Schwartz the museum head curator was on the scene shortly after the storm passed and assessed the damage. The staff was quickly called in to help clean up the damage. I was on site to help by making a pile of all the ceiling panels and debris  while leaving the artifacts for the museum staff to recover.

Water caused mold to build up inside the off site facilities walls and dehumidifiers were moved in and all the interior walls had to be replaced while protecting the collection with floor to ceiling plastic tarps. All of that is to say that Jessica’s job became all the more important after hurricane Irma. Conservation of memorial items did not include trying to flatten paper documents from water damage. The everyday Florida rains had already soaked and wrinkled any papers left at memorial sites. However mold could not be allowed to spread. Which reminds me I have a small pile of paintings and sketches which were also damaged by hurricane Irma. Water blew its way in through my downtown studio apartment windows soaking a small stack of art I had left near the window. I am sill debating if that work will end up in a landfill since it is damaged with black mold.

Jessica has family out west and her grandmother needed care so she decided she had to leave Orlando. A party was held at Pam Schwartz’s home. I sketched briefly between food and games. Whitney Broadaway‘s child had a game that everyone played, it involved a maze that kept moving making it a challenge for players to collect the items needed to win. I played a round after the sketch was put a side and it was a fun game.

After Hurricane Irma Jessica allowed Pam and myself to come over her place for a shower and a bit to eat.  It is when there is an emergency when true friend step up. Since moving Jessica had had a child herself. It is a shame that really good and talented friends keep getting pulled away from Orlando.