Lake Eola Sunset

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I just moved to the North shore of Lake Eola in Eola Heights, Orlando Florida. Each day I take a walk to the lake and often do a sketch. I started with watercolor sketches but now I am doing oil paintings which take about 3 sessions to complete.

This watercolor sketch was done before all the swans were removed from Lake Eola. I managed to sketch one swan swimming across my field of view. The sun  was setting quickly so I tried to capture the light before everything went dark. The fountain lights turned on and the streams billowed up a blood red. It is an effect I am sure I will capture better using oil paint.

There was a crowd of people gathered on the deck that juts out over the water. They were taking pictures and talking. I wonder if they are there every night or if this was a tourist group. Being able to walk to the north shore of Lake Eola any day, morning or night is a thrill and my plan right now is to do 49 paintings all around the circumference of the lake. I have done 5 of those oil paintings so far.

There will also be plenty of small sketches like there. I want to break away from watercolor and start using gouache which can be applied opaque with layers of color overlapping. With the lake as a backdrop subject every day I hope to start experimenting more and taking chances.

Making mistakes and making some honestly ugly paintings is all part of the process.

Fringe: Flashlight Cabaret

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The Orlando Fringe from Orlando Florida presented Flashlight Cabaret at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. This was a variety show where Fringe artists presented unique songs and skits never seen before. Each act was lit only by the flashlights held by every member of the audience. This was a challenge to draw but a fun night to say the least.

Waiting to enter the show it seemed like the performers gathered and came up with their bits moments before the doors opened. It was fun and exuberant chaos. Since I was sketching, my flashlight helped illuminate the sketch while I worked. I am usually concerned that my lighting up the sketch might be distracting for other audience members around me but in this case, everyone had a flashlight, so all bets were off. With so many performers doing so many different bits, it was hard to decide what to sketch. No single moment would suffice.

There were some songs performed which was expected, but there was also burlesque, some truly Shakespearean monologues and at one point as I sketched, I was blinded when toilet paper which was blown in my face with a leaf blower.

Being in a dark room where every person in the audience projects their light center stage is truly a magical experience.

Fringe: Against Her Wishes

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So What? Who Cares? Productions from Orlando Florida presented Against Her Wishes at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. Emily Fontano the writer, director and star of the one woman show welcomed the audience to her mother Janet’s funeral. Janet had specifically stipulated in her will that there should not be a funeral but instead a dinner with friends. Family had other plans and now the packed audience were welcome to the funeral.

A slideshow of Janet’s life was projected on a screen but I was one of the last to enter and I could not see the screen from my angle. The whole show was a eulogy.  Emily spoke fondly of her mother but did not present her as a perfect angel. She outlines the highlights of her mother’s life with affection and honestly not every moment was perfect. Because of her flaws and exuberance for life, I fell in love with the woman we were all there to celebrate. The funeral wasn’t a sober affair. There was dancing and music, some of the songs had been picked by the deceased. Emily presented us all with humor and sadness.

I really liked the premise for the show. At a funeral you often learn more about a person than you ever do with a casual meeting. Art is often created to celebrate lives lost. This show was filled with laughter and joy as well as a feeling of loss. After hearing Emily talk about her mom in detail, I felt I began to know them both a little better.

I absolutely loved the show. It made me reflect on all I could say about those that I miss deeply.

Against Her Wishes won Patron Pick in the Brown Venue and had an extended run. The show won an award for Solo Show — Comedy.

Fringe: The One Who Calls

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Midnight Stories from Orlando Florida presented The One Who Calls at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. On a public access broadcast called Sightings, Shawn (Bre Wells), a ufologist fielded calls late into the night from believers. She was jaded having heard everything before but firmly believed that UFOs do exist. For her the evidence was overwhelming.

She was used to getting calls from quacks who claimed to see something, but it was easily explained away. Many members of the audience were actually callers. When they called into the show, they would stand up. This was a fun way to make the audience feel like they were also part of the rural community of callers.

One frantic call stood out from the others and that sighting lead to a series of sightings that grew closer to the broadcasting site. A hysteria set in. It of course reminded me of the hysteria that resulted when Orson Wells broadcast The War of the Worlds on the eve of Halloween just before WWII in 1938.

One very creepy call had static and heavy breathing. Could this be ET himself? Shawns research into UFOs was highly researched but the scientific community ignored her findings. This evening might finally offer validation. Lights flickered and for a moment the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

After a rural hick confessed that he made the sighting up, a female caller who had never called in before offered reassurances. She then drove to the station to speak with Shawn in person. Believing in UFOs has a lot to do with wanting to believe we are not alone in the universe. The female visitor strongly believed in Shawn’s talent and findings. In the end what we all need is human connection and a feeling of being part of a community. Weather that community is interstellar or a tiny rural town, we all want to feel connected.

Travel Light & Sketch Often

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Travel Light and Sketch Often was a gouache painting demo by Michael Held. The Albin Polasek Museum holds an annual Winter Park Paint Out, and Michael was one of the rock star artists who helped raise money for the museum. Each year over twenty professionally acclaimed plein air artists paint at the Polasek Museum and at other locations throughout Winter Park and Orlando. Art lovers are invited to watch the artists at work and attend free painting demonstrations like the workshop I attended. The Paint Out happens in April before the worst of the Florida heat kicks in.

Artwork created during the Winter Park Paint Out is on display as soon as they are completed and dropped off at the museum’s wet room. These paintings are available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds going to support the Museum.

The description for Michael Held’s workshop lured me in, since it sounded very much like the light kit I carry when I travel. Michael uses gouache which is a medium I want to start working into my kit. I put down very light washes of watercolor on my sketches but at times, it would be nice to go back in and paint opaque paint on top to bring out highlights.

Michael is different than other painters at the Paint Out. Rather than depicting local landscapes, in all their detail, she prefers to paint close ups of birds in a loose and very vibrant style. She doesn’t try to catch wide vistas; she prefers close ups on avian subjects.The camera is not her enemy. She described some of the other artists at the paint out as illustrators and she considers herself more of a visual poet.

She showed her travel kit and I really liked the compact container she had to hold her gouache colors. She said that they never dry out when sealed. She also used a spritz bottle often to moisten the colors. I had a tiny spritz bottle but it didn’t seem to make it to the studio in the last move.

Michael painted one of Albin Polasek’s statues with all of the foliage behind it. It was a challenging subject made more challenging since she needed to keep talking about what she was thinking at each step of the process. I know that talking while at work cuts me off from the more spontaneous and creative side of my brain. Michael described that stages of a painting to great comic effect. Every painting had its ugly phase and every time the artist had to push past that phase.

I learned a whole lot from watching Michael paint, I also loved her story of going through a very difficult time in her life and then pushing ahead to quickly become a renowned painter. She travels often with her small gouache painting set up and she has inspired me to start painting in the medium myself.

Fringe: The Breakfast Reunion

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Grinning Cat Theater Company from Orlando Florida presented The Breakfast Reunion at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. The show revisits the cast of The Breakfast Club movie only now it is 25 years later and they meet the night before their High School reunion. One of the kids hit it big in the tech boom becoming a tech billionaire while others found local hometown jobs including becoming a teacher in the school where they were once held in detention.

Each character in turn unveiled their middle-aged angst. A marriage was on the rocks and jobs were not exactly gratifying. I kept trying to figure out who was Molly Ringwald all grown up. In general, I never married the older characters to who they were in high school. The show did keep me engaged. Like the movie, the characters were locked in the library for the duration. It is possible that the lock failing might have been intentional to force the former high school deviants to spend the time needed to rehash old times and show their new lives of normalcy.

Vulnerabilities from high school remained with each adult. The same fears and concerns just resurfaced in each new decade. Were friendships forged leading into the future? It seemed rather that these former students who exposed their weaknesses in detention 25 years prior were just ships passing in the night. When the doors locks were opened they each rushed out to the routines they had forged as adults.

I watched this show on my birthday which was a special treat. 1980s nostalgia drew me in. The years are passing for me so I felt it would be good to see how the high school princess, bad boy and weirdo had grown.

Fringe: Haunting Co. A Live Ghost Investigation

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the Crisis Collection from Orlando Florida presented Haunting Co. A Live Ghost Investigation. Ed and Liz (Andrew Sandoval and Lex Bentley) from a small local paranormal company introduced themselves with video promotional materials. They had built a name for themselves on a popular YouTube channel. The footage was shot around Lock Haven Park where the Fringe is located. At one

point they tentatively approached an electrical box which I recognized since it has appeared in some of my sketches. There was trepidation that the box might be haunted, it most certainly was a shock hazard.

In theaters there is a tradition of placing a single light center stage at night to ward off ghosts. The intrepid Haunting Co. investigators used some high-tech gear to contact any spirits in the room. The young investigators awakened two very pointy ghosts who were once performers on the stage.

Perhaps because I was so focused on sketching in the dark, I wasn’t too frightened by the apparitions. When the lights dimmed or when out, I was simply anxious that I was loosing precious sketching time. Sketching what I could in the dark, the audience appeared ghostly as a frantic wash of color. Detail could only be deciphered in small isolated spots.

I am a big fan of late-night ghost investigation TV shows. My hope is to catch a glimpse of some subtle figure as it appears briefly or causes some object to move. Subtlety and mystery is what I felt the ghosts in this investigation were missing. The makeup and costumes were spectacular, but the ghosts were very much flesh and blood and bound by gravity.

With so much horror appearing in the news cycle every day in America, I felt hard pressed to get worked up about several lost souls.

Fringe: Once Upon a Traitor: Faithfully Ever After

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Sista Steph Productions from Orlando Florida presented Once Upon a Traitor: Faithfully Ever After at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s a traitor after all? Co-written by Derick Taylor-White and Danielle Ziss, this show featured classic Disney animated heroes and villains who competed against one another for a grand prize of pressed pennies.

Alexander Mrazek as the Magic Mirror, hosted the chaotic proceedings. Teams of “faithfuls” and “traitors” were assembled at a green cartoon castle. The Disney characters had to call out each other in a cut throat bid to win the prize. This is similar to a TV show called Traitors hosted by Alan Cumming. I have never seen that show so any inside jokes were lost on me.

The sage was constantly full of 12 or more characters, so individual performances had to be caricatured to stand out in the crowd. At one pint dark hooded monks held a somber séance. Danelle Ziss performed as Alice in Wonderland and Teresa Levin Smith made for a very evil queen. I was a little confused about how and why the two camps of characters were pitted against one another, but that might be because I never say the TV show. I thought Disney World was supposed to be the happiest place on earth, but it seems more like the land of discontent where a turkey leg would cost an arm and a leg.

All in all it was campy fun and the show held a long run of sold-out shows. I can vouch for the fact that the show was hard to get into. In one show I tried to see, there was only 1 seat left in the theater and I didn’t sprint fast enough to get to it.

Alexander Mrazek as the Magic Mirror Host won a Fringe Award for Individual Performance in Comedy for his role in Once Upon a Traitor: Faithfully Ever After. The Orlando weekly noted that he was, “by far the best reason to see” this “pixie-dusted spoof of both theme parks and reality television.”

I sometimes forget that I live in a theme park town, but so many of the actors I love to sketch have worked at the theme parks which helped inspire this fun parody.

Fringe: Heated Ribaldry: An Opera of Musical Proportions

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Opera Del Sol from Orlando Florida presented Heated Ribaldry: An Opera of Musical Proportions at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. The director of the show, Eric Pinder was seated in my row, so I got to see his reactions to the hilarious moments on stage. The opera was introduced by a playful video of Eric who introduced the premise as if he was enticing us all to an exotic vacation retreat.

Heated Rivalry is a TV show which was the inspiration for this opera. I haven’t seen the TV show, but I don’t think I missed many inside jokes. The opera stands well on it’s own. It was about a hockey team which had a new superstar player join it’s ranks. Two of the players became attracted to one another in a series of musical numbers. Heated Ribaldry also delivered with very strong vocals from all the performers who belted out the numbers with absolute clarity and class.

A musical dance number featured the hockey team dancing a finely tunes choreography with their hockey sticks. Jokes kept coming so fast it was hard to catch a breath between laughs. The two men who fell in love also had trophy girlfriends which would seem a necessity for the hockey club PR. Both girls knew that their men had unique passions. When the two player finally embraced and had a long passionate kiss at center stage, the theater audience went wild hooting and hollering. I love that a show that celebrates passion can be so warmly embraced in Orlando.

In short, I had a wonderful time. As Lauren Michaels said at the 2026 Tony Awards acceptance speech for Schmigadoon, “So another musical comedy, “Sometimes singing, dancing, a lot of jokes, and a happy ending is really all you need.”  Heated Ribaldry delivered everything Lauren was talking about and more. Ribaldry isn’t a show for the kids, with nudity, and plenty of sexual innuendo, but the message of following your heart is universal whether it is on the ice rink or on the stage. I give Heated Ribaldry 10 very stiff hockey sticks.

Fringe: Josephine

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Dynamic Lunchbox Entertainment from Orlando Florida presented Josephine at the Orlando International Fringe Festival. Powerhouse, Tymisha Harris starred as Josephine. This show is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

As a child, Josphine Baker discovered her love of dance when she entered a talent show. Performing in America however had its drawbacks since racism kept her from even entering some venues. These deep rooted American racist setbacks vanished when a talent scout invited Josephine to perform in Paris France. In France she was deeply beloved and became an international star.

Josephine is most famous for her dancing while wearing a banana skirt. Tamisha performed this sensual dance with abandon. She was tough to catch on the sketch page since she was in constant motion, and when she wasn’t she was hidden behind a stage screen doing a costume change.

Josephine lived with passion. Besides her skyrocketing career, she also told us about the many men in her life. Having a live band on stage helped the show feel like it was from the luscious vaudeville era. There was a moment where Josephine posed for artist Frida Kahlo. From the intimacy of the moment I wondered if Frida and Josephine might have been lovers.  Both women were celebrated, openly bisexual icons who fiercely defied the rigid cultural, racial, and sexual boundaries of the early 20th century.

I cursed myself for not choosing that moment to sketch Josephine, There was enough time in that still moment where I could have slowed down enough to produce a well observed sketch. Oh well, life moves on. Keep making bold choices and live without regrets. I am sure that is what Josephine would have told me if we were to meet in Paris before or during WWII.