The Art of Medicine Gala at the Orlando Museum of Art.

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First Green Bank and The Art of Medicine Foundation invited health care professionals and brain injury survivors to submit artwork to be auctioned for charity. This event is educates and inspires awareness about the impact that brain injuries and other neurological disorders can have on those affected. Proceeds from the event benefited the University of Florida Trauma, Concussion, and Sports Neuromedicine Program.

The gala is in honor of Dr. Cindy LaRoe, who sustained a traumatic brain injury during a competitive biking accident. The injury paused LaRoe’s career in medicine, but also led her down a path of discovering her artistic talents. During her recovery, LaRoe found painting therapeutic, and now, six years after her injury, she continues to paint. She paints in vibrant bold colors. Cindy is standing in front of her painting of clown fish in my sketch. 

In a video presentation Cindy remembered the day of her accident at a bike race.  There were incentives with each lap which incited racers to sprint. She was in a group of racers heading up a hill.  Some of the girls started to sprint to pass and Cindy let them. They crossed the lines which is against the rules.  There was a big crash in front of Cindy.  She recalled a flash of bodies going down in front of her.  After the accident, she couldn’t see for a while, there was twitching in her right eye and blurred vision.   She couldn’t handle the over-stimulation of live music and crowds.  She always felt she was seeing movement to her right side.  Memories were gone.  She woke up and was a different person.  She doesn’t want anyone to ever have to experience that.  She likes to think that things happen for a reason.  Color was more intense and vibrant. Creating art gave her life a new meaning.  In some ways she feels she might be a better person that she was.   It doesn’t all suck.

Her recovery and her talent were the inspiration for she and her husband, Ken LaRoe, the founder of First Green Bank, to create the Art of Medicine Foundation. Ken took to the microphone.   He explained that after the accident, his wife developed a seizure disorder.  There were days where she had over 100 seizures.  She was put on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals but they had no effect.  One day one of Ken’s biggest clients said randomly that he smokes dope.  He smokes so that he can get to sleep at night and has done so since he was 15 years old.  He has a net worth of over 60 million, so clearly he isn’t just a stoner.  He invited Ken over to his Isleworth mansion to pick up a joint.   Ken reluctantly agreed and hid the joint in a baggie under his car seat.  A week later he told Cindy that she needed to try it.  She said, “No.”   He said, “Look, you are a doctor, this is a medical experiment.” He took a couple of tokes to cut the ice.  After she took her 4th toke off the joint, her seizures stopped.  They stopped all night and into the next day.  It worked day after day.  Her neurologist couldn’t explain it.  Over 6 months she got off the pharmaceuticals. In the interim, medical marijuana became legal.  Cindy finds a silver lining in every situation.  The gala is an example of that.  

Rasha Mubarak discusses her life after Pulse.

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On a sketch excursion to The GLBT Center, I watched Rasha Mubarack, Orlando’s regional coordinator for the Council for American /Islamic Relations, as she was interviewed on camera. The Center was holding an event in which a large group of people gathered to offer love and support for Manchester via a video message.

She explained in an oral history at the Orange County Regional History Center, that she was exposed to injustice as a child. Her uncle was a successful businessman who lived in Isleworth Florida. His home was invaded, probably because he was Islamic. Islamaphobia had become mainstream in America. When exposed to one injustice, you become aware of others. A sheik was at the site where hospitalized names were read from a list. If the name of your loved one wasn’t on the list, then it was a worst case scenario. Parents and loved ones were in despair. Some were banging their heads on the walls. This was a hard scene to re-live.

At the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts vigil, Rasha was one of the people on hand to read the names of the 49 victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre. Back stage, she was nervous about the idea of being a Muslim reading the names. Backstage, there was pain and comfort. Reading the names was shattering. Each name had the age next to it. Each of these people have stories. The Methodist Church across the street rang the bell for every name on the list. That moment seemed to last an eternity. Everyone assembled comforted each other. There is mercy in adversity. We are all in this together.

Right after the Pulse Nightclub massacre, Rasha felt personally affected. She went to her mosque as usual and realized that no one else knew what was going on. When she got home, she was hyperventilating and felt the full weight of the tragedy. She was soon called upon to do an interview outside Pulse. It all seemed unreal. How could someone really kill 49 people? This was clearly not a person of god, any god. That first week after Pulse, she was asked many times, “How are you?” Her stock response was, “I’m OK.” One man told her something that stuck with her, “God puts you where he wants you.” When he told her that, everything else seemed OK. She just needed to do the right thing, be on the right side, and keep going.

There was a backlash after Pulse, but it could have been a lot worse. Islamaphobia has increased 500% in Central Florida in the past year. What side of history do you want to be on? The Council for American /Islamic Relations is fighting for civil liberties for all Americans. At a Democratic partisan event, Rasha was pulled aside for appearing “suspicious.” She fights for marginalized people and found herself marginalized.

Orlando is a place where people come to get away. On June 12, a criminal tried to dismantle that. He forever changed the lives of 49 families. How do we react when our world is disturbed? Our hearts fall in and out of love with everything. Out hearts have memory. We need to remember the beauty that came out of it all. We need to understand the diversity and stand for civil liberties for everyone.

DRIP’s Wet Run

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It was late afternoon when paint can lids began to be hot glued to the central column. Jennifer Wagner stood on a tall ladder with the hot glue gun hard at work. For some reason one of the lids just refused to stick so that task was set aside.
After a cast lunch of delicious wraps and giant cookies, everyone was anxious to see if everything worked. Thomas was in charge of dumping a bucket of water on the stage floor to see how the drainage worked and to check for leaks. Sure enough leaks were found and silicone was applied along all the joints. Jennifer sealed all the seams of the vinyl curtains that surrounded the dancers stage. A big difference between the initial design and the final stage is that the paint and the tubing supplying the chandelier fountains all remained hidden under the stage and inside the central column. This streamlined the design.

With the sun setting in the west, the dancers came downstairs to rehearse. There was just enough time for one wet run. I did one last sketch of the performers inside the space. One of the stage techs told a dancer that the water was very warm, like 94 degrees. When the water showered down on her, she shrieked because it was freezing cold. As always the dancing was sensual, fun, and compelling. Within six short minutes the performance was over. Jessica Mariko wanted to get one run done with paint instead of water, but the dancers had to leave. Melissa Kasper, a long time “drippy” and the DRIP Assistant Workshop Manager, was asked if she would stand in for a dancer and she shouted, “Yes!” For her this was a dream come true and the remaining cast considered it “Epic!” I was asked to step inside as well but I didn’t have a change of clothes. Melissa changed into a pair of jeans which were ironically cleaner than the paint splattered jeans she had worn all day. She had lost weight and these jeans were getting too loose. She stood under the yellow chandelier and was covered head to toe with bright yellow paint. The paint splattered everywhere coating the vinyl screen. The hardest part of her job became cleaning the vinyl using a towel and then getting on her hands and knees to scoop the thin paint into the drains with her cupped hands. The dancers will have to clean up four times on performance night since the show is repeated for separate audiences.

Drip Paint Can Chandeleires

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I was invited to sketch a stage construction and rehearsal by the DRIP Dance Company. They were setting up in the Isleworth Country Club as part of a Travistock Cup Golf Tournament gala evening. About a month ago I did a sketch of what the set could look like based on suggestions from Jessica Mariko as we sat in Starbucks. The sketch helped sell the performance to the venue.

When I arrived at Isleworth, I had to surrender my drivers license to the security guard at the entrance to the gated community. My license is pretty old. In the photo I still had a full head of hair. The license is updated periodically with a sticker on the back. In a typical case of security guard blindness he didn’t see the expiration date on the back. I had to point the 2013 expiration date to him.


I was asked to park in the cast parking lot which is way past the clubhouse. A golf cart shuttled me to the cast entrance of the clubhouse where I wandered through the bustling kitchen past the security office and down endless basement hallways until I found an elevator upstairs to the main floor. Everyone was rushing to get the place ready for the gala.

The dance staging area was set up in a central court area surrounded by arches. White curtains had been set up surrounding the stage to hide the work in progress. Melissa Kasper, Jennifer Wagner and Thomas Starr were busy painting paint can lids. These lids would later be used to decorate the central column of the stage. The theme for the performance was Pop Art. On a second floor balcony, huge Pop Art paintings were covered with black fabric waiting to be unveiled. I could just make out an Andy Warhol soup can image as it peaked out from within it’s curtain. Set construction went on all day long.