Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden – Analog Artist Digital World

The second Sunday of each month is Free Family Day at the Mennello Museum of American Art, (900 East Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803). This was a rare day when it was cool enough to sketch outside. A wedding rehearsal was set up lakeside and people slowly gathered to run through the ceremony.

The
Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden had on display sculptures by Alice Aycock called Waltzing Matilda and Twin Vortexes. These were originally part of series of seven sculptures
in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan
entitled Park Avenue Paper Chase. Aycock, is one
of America’s most recognized and respected sculptors of her generation.

Grounds for Exhibition features
year-long large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned
American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando
audiences. It is possible to see the sculptures any time if you are running or riding the Orlando Urban Trail which runs from Meade Gardens to the north down through Lock Haven park, Lake Formosa and down to Magnolia Avenue. An extension is planned to bring the running and biking trail downtown.

Museum Founder Michael Mennello presented over 20 examples of early 20^th
Century painting and seminal works from his American Impressionist
Collection to the museum on May 1, 2018. These painting are is
valued at more than $8.75 million as appraised by Debra Force Fine Art,
LLC, New York. The masterpieces include work by renowned ashcan school artists: John Sloan, Robert Henri, George Lukes, and George Bellows. The ashcan school was named after a sketch done by George Bellows of two bums inspecting a morsel of food they had just lifted from a garbage can. The movement didn’t only show life in the gutters, but also featured the pleasures of art and culture that was booming at the time. The ashcan school of art includes some of my favorite artists who documented everyday life of people from all walks of life.

The next Free Family Fun Day at the Mennello is October 14, 2018 from Noon to 2:30pm. I definitely want to see these new paintings in person.

I went to the the Mennello Museum of American Art, (900 East Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803) to sketch the Free Family Day on the Second Sunday of the month. This just happened to line up with Mother’s Day. At the front desk, there was a free rose for every mother who came to the museum on that day. On display in the entry gallery were fairly large twisted metal sculptures along with the preparatory drawings on the walls. I decided to sit on a bench and sketch the sextant who greeted guests and handed out roses to the moms. Quite a few museum guests brought their mom along for a day at the museum.

On exhibit in the museum now is, “When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan“, who uses the power of paint’s materiality and immediacy in the Mennello Museum’s exhibition.
She brings form to the reality of our environmental and sociopolitical
problems. This exhibition debuts nine new works by the artist.

Heffernan’s work explores the imagery of the mind’s eye to create
complex environments. Her recent paintings create alternative habitats
in response to the environmental disaster and planetary excess. With
rising waters, she imagines worlds in trees or on rafts in which
undulating mattresses, tree boughs, and road signs guide the journey.
Construction cones interrupt the landscape signaling places to stop,
enter tiny interior worlds, and reflect on the human condition—its
hopeless activity, violence, failure, and redemption. Heffernan tends
these alternative environments to safeguard bounties we cannot live
without. In other moments, she names and points fingers to those people
and activities implicated in recent calamities of both the physical and
socio-political environment. Intricately wrought, Heffernan’s paintings
evoke the fantastical allegory of Hieronymus Bosch and the sublime of
Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt.

Also on exhibit in the Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden outside are two large sculptures, “Waltzing Matilda” and “Twin Vortexes” by American sculptor Alice Aycock. The Mennello Museum inaugurated the Grounds for Exhibitions with these beautiful works which
were originally part of series of seven sculptures
in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan
entitled Park Avenue Paper Chase. Grounds for Exhibition features
year-long large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned
American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando
audiences. The sculptures will be on display through September 2018.