This year I am one of 25 artists participating in the Winter Park Paint Out. Each artist is assigned one morning or afternoon session in which they have to do a painting on the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens property. I was assigned to paint on Thursday afternoon. I stop by every afternoon anyway to drop off the previous day’s painting for the gallery wall. My wall by the way is right next to the bathrooms in case you go and want to find my work. I have been told that is a good spot to have your work hang since everyone has to go to the bathroom at some time.
I wandered the property checking out each artist’s work in progress. There is always so much to learn just seeing how different artists block in their paintings. My second priority was o find a shady spot to park myself to do a painting. My baseball hat was left behind on the Frontier plane I took back to Orlando last week. I know the hat was on the plane since I used it to hold all my belongings going through security. After all the passengers were off I went back on the plane to go to my seat to see where it fell. I was damn near tackled by a male stewardess who shouted at me “GET OFF THE PLANE repeatedly. I understood him the first time and backed off. He called back on an intercom for someone to look at seat 30A and immediately announced that the hat wasn’t there. Did they even take the time to look? Another passenger had worn his expensive headphones on the plane and he hoped to get them back since they must have fallen off while he slept. His was a lost cause as well. Clearly these items were pocketed. That is what you get for flying a low budget airline. As I walked away one of the airport cleanup crew said “I apologize for his behavior.” That can’t make up for Frontier crew treating customers like crap. I plan to get a new hat at some point and I will pay to have “Never Fly Frontier” embroidered onto it.
This statue by Albin Polasek is titled “Maiden of the Roman Campagna.” In stark silhouette, she looks like she is wearing headphones and dancing to music. The house next to the Polasek Museum was playing a Bob Seger song called “They Love to Watch Her Strut.” “They do respect her butt, they love to watch her strut.” I imagined that was the music she was listening to as I sketched. She is actually holding a long strand of braided hair, but I preferred to leave her listening to headphones. That song played on a loop for the next two hours or so. I don’t know why someone would ever want to hear the same some over and over again for. I started to wonder if I should let someone know that the person on the property next door had died while listening to the song and the music would repeat for eternity until someone found the body.
Multiple patrons stopped to see my sketch in progress. A little boy was curious about my brush which holds water in it’s handle. He felt this as like having a James Bond water gun with you anywhere you went. He desperately wanted one so he could squirt his friends by surprise.