2009 Sketchbooks on Display!

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The Analog Artist Digital World blog was started January 1st of 2009 by artist Thomas Thorspecken with the commitment to post a sketch a day documenting Orlando culture. Assembled for the first time are all the sketchbooks from that year long journey. As the blog rolls into another year, we look back at the events, people and places that defined Orlando in 2009. People start to wander in around 8PM often after attending First Thursday at the Orlando Museum of Art. Dandelion offers a fun after party.
At the opening there is going to be a band and there are two other shows going on in the back rooms. One show features records painted with musicians portraits by Rebecca Rose. The other room features photography. Come on down. It will be a great way to kick off the New Year!

No Strings Attached

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The Gallery at Avalon Island hosted an opening reception for No Strings Attached. This show which kicks off the 2009 Orlando Puppet Festival, features work from puppetry artists from around the nation. I particularly like the work of Tamara Marke – Lares. Her work used found objects which were elegantly incorporated into puppets. For instance a crab claw suddenly became a puppets head. Bones, wood, wire and a wide assortment of materials became a character walking across dead leaves. Expect the whimsical and unexpected when you go to see this show. Many of the works have a European maturity about them. These are not the generic puppets I grew up watching.
As I stood in the corner of the gallery sketching, a group of school children gathered at the store front window I was standing near. They were hopping up and down trying to see what I was working on. They started tapping on the glass and I decided to show then the unfinished sketch. Jeff Wirth walked up to me and before I recognized him he said, “I am sorry sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave, there is no sketching in this gallery.” My stomach tightened before I realized it was Jeff and then I started to laugh. Later as I was finishing the sketch I bumped into costume designer Kelly – Ann Salazar who told me I had to check out the puppet show going on upstairs. I am glad she did because the shadow puppet show was delightful to watch and I got to sit right next to the puppeteers as they worked. I had to run off to another event so unfortunately I didn’t get a sketch, but I might return.
With my sketchbooks tucked away, I finally decided to get some cheese and crackers which was to be my dinner for the night. Here I ran into Heather Henson who had just returned from months of wandering the country going from one puppet festival to another. She told me about the Burning Man event held in the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno Nevada. It is hard to describe burning man but it is the ultimate in large scale creative expression. Going to this event is one of the things on my list of places I must go to before I die.
The Avalon Gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday 11AM to 4PM. There are also some very cool shows coming up like Macabre Vignettes and “The Bride of Wildenstein” the musical on October 29th-31st ,10:30pm at the Cameo Theater, 1013 East Colonial Drive. Tickets are $10.

Avalon Art Opening – Dresses

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On Thursday I went downtown to see the opening for an art show titled “Dresses” as Avalon Gallery on Magnolia. This show produced by Donna Dowless featured paintings sculptures and mixed media from a number of contemporary women artists. I arrived early and wandered the exhibit in a relaxed setting prior to the crush of the crowds. The exhibit had paintings of dresses, welded metal sculptures of dresses, and of course actual dresses. I like one piece that had a shadow box with a crumpled napkin inside, and on the glass surface of the box a dress was drawn inspired by the abstraction of the napkin.
I was pleased to find work from Dina Mack and artist whose work I have come to admire from sketches I did of “A Confluence” and her magical journaling workshop. Her work had tiny 2 by 3 inch panels with butterfly wings glazed into them. Cellophane and other materials were also layered into the pieces.
I picked out a comfortable chair at the back of the gallery and started to sketch out the perspective of the space. I was right in front of a false wall that art work was hanging off of. As the gallery started to fill up, members of Voci dance showed up and went into the women’s room to change into their costumes for the night.They came out and dances elegantly around the space until the room became to crowded to move around in.
This sketch was a major challenge. I found I would barley have time to see a person then they would disappear behind someone crossing in the foreground, never to be seen again. Several artists and friends I had sketched introduced themselves to me. A waitress from the Social Chameleon introduced herself to me and after a second I recognized her since I had sketched her a few nights ago when I sat alone at the Chameleon taking in the ambiance. My attention was constantly being fractured and re focused. People must truly think I am rude as I keep sketching even when in a conversation. Halfway through, I almost gave up , but a fellow artist who sat in the chair next to mine asked to see the sketch book and she pointed out the aspects of the sketch that were working. When she handed the book back, I decided to keep forging ahead despite the constant flow of humanity. I am glad I stuck it out. This is rougher than I usually work and the evident struggle adds I think to the sketches character.
When I finally finished this sketch, I picked up shop and went to watch a harpist and guitar player in the next room. It was past 9 PM when the event was officially supposed to end, but I decided to sit down and do another. This sketch came effortlessly. Then I put the sketchbooks away and talked to friends who stopped over to say hello. I’ve never enjoyed an opening more.

The Research Studio in the 21st Century

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Friday evening I went to the Maitland Art Center to see the opening of RS21. I knew one of the exhibiting artists namely Kelledy Francis having met her at the Kerouac House. Kelledy exhibited some of her couture dresses from her Four Seasons series. She had planned to hire models and have them standing in a small man made pond out in the Maitland Arts Center court yard. However heavy rains were predicted so she decided on a more fine arts approach to exhibit her dresses. The three dresses seen in this sketch are hung from the ceiling by thin wire. The seasons represented are Spring, Fall and Summer. A woman in a gold dress expressed an excited interest in the dresses and I hope she and Kelledy had a chance to talk.
The three people sitting at the table were there for quite some time. It turns out that the woman typing was transcribing everything the young couple was saying. They were actually part of the exhibit put together by Kim Walz. Kim explained that the transcriptions were being fed wirelessly to a large screen in the exhibition room as were live texts messages. She apparently also had speech recognition software which would then print gallery goers conversations in real time.
The cutting edge exhibit and installations were created in the spirit of the work started at “The Research Studio,” founded by André Smith in the 1930’s. The show runs through July 13th 2009.