Paint the Trail after Pulse

Posted on by Thor

At heart Jeff Sonsken is an instigator. He creates art to ruffle feathers and make people think. He always loved painting and artwork growing up. It was something he always did on his own ever since he was a kid. He would get inspired and draw using colored pencils, he got into airbrushing. In college he was taking photography classes but he was doing airbrushing in his spare time.

After college he moved from Iowa to Orlando settling in Longwood. Painting the trail began sort of accidentally. During the 2008 housing bubble he was a carpenter working in million dollar homes building custom bookcases, offices, bars. Before the bubble bust everyone was living high on the hog. After the crash he started fixing kitchens. He painted a big sign on fence pickets and he was going to hang it on the trail where his parents lived to advertise his services. He decided against hanging it because he wanted time with his family. He felt disappointed since the sign was already painted but he kept driving. When he got home he picked up some pickets and battened them together base coated them and painted Einstein on them just so he had something to hang up. After Einstein he painted Yoda, and he put them up.

He thought people would be irritated but they weren’t. He was clearing out a spot for several panels and some guy on his bike stopped and asked if he was the guy that put the paintings up. He said, “Yea” expecting a possible argument. But the guy said, “I love it.” Soon a mom and daughter walked up and a small crowd gathered. The biker wanted him to paint Jack Lemon, the little girl asked him to paint Alfred Hitchcock. So when he left he had 5 more names for panels to be painted. He had a mission. He wasn’t getting paid, but he had something to do. When he finished the Jack Lemon piece the guy on the bike who requested it was riding by on the trail and he just rode past. He shouted out to him, “It’s Jack Lemon!” The jerk didn’t even stop. Every time he went out he would get more requests. After 6 months he started getting requests on the Paint the Trail Facebook page.

People wanted him to donate art to help cancer research or autism, he never said no. He found himself helping people who needed help. He realized he could have a positive impact even if it was just a drip in the bucket. He has done he would draw up someone’s family member and let them fill in the paint much as he did for Pulse families. That helped a lot of people. He has gone through a bit of a metamorphosis himself. He is going to do what he is doing for as long as he can.

Though many of the trail paintings are pop cultural references there will once in a while be a memorial portrait in the mix. On the third fence he was painting, there was a woman who lost her 15 year old to leukemia and he painted the portrait. He went to meet the. Out on the trail one day, and they were already waiting. They were maybe 100 years down the trail and he walked down the trail towards them. There were two little girls and the dad, and the mom. Dad was holding flowers. So he flipped the painting around when he was about 60 feet from her and the mom just dropped. He has done many painting like that where that is what he was left with. He knows he is doing something good for them but it felt like he was inflicting pain on them. When he gets them to do the painting themselves, he is left with a more uplifting feeling about the experience. They might cry while doing the painting but when they get back to him they relate that it was an amazing experience.

 After Pulse he knew he needed to do something but he didn’t want to do something right away. Though it has been close to 2 years since the shooting it feet like yesterday while in other respects it felt like 10 years ago. The memories aren’t fresh but he remembered wrestling with it. He had a hard time with it. It happened like 18 miles from his home while he was sleeping. The rainbows don’t sink in anymore. Those were his neighbors. We all share the same community, they were brothers and sons. He spent a couple of weeks just pissed off. This happens all the time. You can’t even feel safe in your own town. It doesn’t matter where you go this could happen anywhere, a shopping mall a movie theater. We lost our mind as a civilization.

He did paint the skyline of Orlando in reference to Pulse. On Facebook he came across a video of people dancing. It didn’t make him feel happy. It tore him up. After that video he felt compelled to paint every face. He wanted people to see all their faces in one shot. As he completed each portrait he shared them on his Facebook page and families would share thoughts on his page. Once it was finished he took it to the Dr Phillips Center Memorial. Now any time there is another mass shooting people ask him to paint the number of people. No artist can keep up with those demands. He needs to think about his kids, and himself. At any moment you could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Life was never like this before. It is crazy now. Middle school kids an high school kids are used to this new reality. Who knows what the answer is.

The trail is basically paint on wood so it can not last forever. He was doing some repairs and realized he can’t keep up with it. The more he creates the more maintenance there is. It is impossible to add up all the money he has invested. It is an expensive hobby. At some point people will have to swap out their fences when the wood rots. He creates a separate panel of fence and screws it right on to the back of an existing fence making it sturdier. When a hurricane blows through he has to think about taking sections down. Art might not last but it can help us anchor our thoughts and memories.

Another Year Passes at the Orange County Regional History Center

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I sketched the final day of the exhibit install for,
Another Year Passes: Orlando After the Pulse Nightclub Massacre. The Exhibit will be on display from June 2, 2018 through October 14, 2018. Last year’s exhibit honoring the victims of the
Pulse Nightclub shooting was only up for one week because a
wedding was booked in the exhibit hall. This year the exhibit will be up
for four months in a different space.

I was on hand to sketch the install of a huge piece of art created by Jeff Sonksen of

Paint the Trail fame. He paints
on wooden fencing and has created a long stretch of art along the biking
trail in Longwood, Florida. After the Pulse Nightclub massacre he
painted 49 portraits of the victims of the shooting.
The portraits surround a large fence panel that has the Orlando skyline
along with several tourist attractions in silhouette. The museum staff
had to remove the heavy and cumbersome wooden supports he used when he
left the panels freestanding at the Dr. Phillips
memorial in 2016. They devised a method of disassembling the panels so
it could be brought into the museum and installed for the exhibit that
is opening just two years after the fateful shooting on June 12, 2016.

Assembling and hanging the piece was a herculean task. The staff looked like the soldiers who raised the flag at

Iwo Jima in the famous WWII
photo and sculpture. The sign, along with a set of 49 beautiful
hand-painted tiles, however will not be present for a few days to the
public and will have to be taken down intermittently throughout
the exhibition to allow for weddings happening in the same space. If
isn’t up when you come, I recommend you come back another time to see
them. 

I walked through the exhibit and it is incredible, with so much
information about how this community continues to try and heal after the
tragedy. It wraps around the second floor hall bringing the walls close
for an intimate view. Over 1,800 images of quilts
from the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild were miniaturized and then
exhibited en mass together on one wall. The shear volume of colorful
quilts is staggering. A few of my sketches from oral histories are
scattered throughout the exhibit.


The museum staff have to be commended for again crafting an incredible exhibition.
The Orange County Regional History Center has received five significant national awards from the
American Alliance of Museums,
the American Association for State and Local History, and
the Southeastern Museum Conference for their work on the One Orlando
Collection in the last two years related to the impact and legacy of the
mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016. It is hard to
see their hard work needing to be compromised
against a funding initiative. It would be a great day when the museum
was well enough funded by the community so it no longer needed
income from weddings.

Pulse victim families paint portraits.

Posted on by Thor

The Orlando Traveling Mural organized by Colleen Ardaman at the Orlando Police Department (1250 West South Street, Orlando Fl). Artist Jeff Sonskin (Paint the Trail) offered advice to paint portraits of their loved ones lost. He had prepared panels that essentially allowed family members to paint by number.

Painting at this session were a Venezuelan family consisting of Aileen Caleos Carillo, the sister of Simon Adrian Carillo Fernandez who died at the age of 31. Along Aileen was her sister Ariani, her mom and her boyfriend in the red shirt. With her back to me was Emily Addison the partner of Dionka Draton. The woman with the curly hair is Daphnie Josaphat, the aunt of Jason Benjamin Josaphat who died at the age of 49. Daphne encouraged Mina Justice, the mother of Eddie Justice  who died at the age of 30, to come out and paint. Zack Osborne was the videographer and he helped supervise. Three Orlando Police swat team members entered and were introduce to the families. Jeff Sonskin was always mixing paint and offering advice.

A reporter sat down and interviewed Mina. She talked lovingly about her son Eddie who was a prankster. He was a real mama’s boy. After her son died, she was unable to leave her home. For months she avoided contact with everyone. Daphnie had dragged her out to paint. She admitted that working on the portrait made her happy. She has been feeling endless pain and loss but the simple act of putting paint on the panel occupied her mind and honored her son’s memory. She wanted to get it right.

Across the room several long tables were pushed up together and canvases were covered with hand prints. The ,”We, Are a Hand print” campaign encourages families, survivors, first responders and politicians to add their hand print to the mosaic. 71 police officers added their hand prints to the project and to date 11 politicians. The painting sessions continued the next day and Jeff is also taking portraits to families homes to be sure every family member can add their talent to the process.

College Park’s Arts Scene.

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Frankie Messina organized an arts collaboration where artists could exhibit their work at a business in College Park each month. I placed the event on my sketch opportunity calendar and then set it to repeat each month. Many months went by and I wasn’t able to get out to sketch. Finally I made it out to do a sketch but I didn’t find any artists. I decided to just sketch the flamingo mural that was on the side of a bike store. I like the architecture of the stores on this corner.
It turned out that the art event I was hoping to sketch had long since run its course and died away due to lack of interest. This seems true of most arts events in town, a spark becomes a flame and then dies out in isolated venues around Central Florida and then fades away. The trick for me is to sketch these events while they burn bright.I missed the sketch opportunity this time around, but got to enjoy sketching as the sun set behind the Edgewater Drive retail stores to the west.

There is an art gallery on Edgewater Drive that carries paintings by “Paint the Trail“. I’ve never gone inside the gallery, but I always notice the portrait of Salvador Dali with the quote “Mad About Art” as I drive by. Once a month or so, Terry and I bring Zorro to a parrot gathering at Albert Park in College Park hosted by Parrot Adventures. These outings are when I enjoy street dining with plenty of parrots.

The Maker Faire had a human powered snow cone machine.

Posted on by Thor

Outside the Orlando Science Center, during the Maker Faire, there was a constant line of children and adults waiting to use the human powered wheel. Ice Age is the company that created this technological wonder. It reminds me of a sketch Leonardo Da Vinci did in the renaissance of a human powered machine gun. Human-Powered Snow Cones are the brainchild of dreamer and inventor Joe Donoughe. To use the machine you would stand inside the barrel and walk or run. The motion would power a machine that would crush the ice which would then be dumped into a cup. The cup of ice would move down a small conveyor belt. Pulling a hammer would lower a flat metal hand which would pack the crushed ice down. Then the conveyor belt would move the cup to the flavor station where a pull on a leaver would add the bright colored flavor to the ice.

I would have to bet that standing in the sun and then exercising in the human hamster wheel would burn more calories than what could be gained from the cup of ice. As I was sketching the machine, the Maker Faire was drawing to a close. The line of kids waiting to get their human powered ice never diminished.  At some point the line must have been capped so that the inventors could pack up and go home.

I walked around outside to see what other vendors had to offer. There was a giant red inflatable robot with an M on his chest which clued passers by that the Faire was happening. Paint the Trail was busy painting wooden fencing with hip pop personalities and sayings. There were wind chimes and hand fashioned flutes. I spent two solid days at the Maker Faire and honestly don’t think that I saw everything that there was to see.

Paint the Trail

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A reader suggested I contact artist Jim Sonksen who has begun an ambitious public art project. On October 23rd, I drove to his Longwood home. I parked in front of his house, I saw him at work in his garage which doubles as an artists studio. Jim’s parents have a house that is right on the Seminole County Trail which is a long trail for bikers and joggers. Jim began painting his parent’s wooden fence that faces the trail. Fence panels are covered with celebrity faces and sayings. One intriguing section had an image of the Florida panther in relief. As you walk past the panels the image changes twice depending on which angle you are viewing the piece from.

Jim knew I was coming to visit his studio and he did his research to find out my story online. I was surprised to find out he planned to do a painting of me as I sketched him. The outlines were all in place and all that was needed was color to fill. He likes to dip the brush deep into the paint well beyond the bristles so that more paint can flow down and cover a larger area. Jim uses old house paint which he sometimes picks up for free from the dump. He worked quickly as I sketched. He explained that painting has become a compulsion. Not a day goes by where he isn’t working on this project.  His mom drove his daughter home from school that day which gave him a bit more time to paint.

He drove me to his parents home to show me the trail. His parents fence is completely covered with paintings and he has expanded the project, now painting neighbor’s fences. His dream is to cover a five mile section of the trail with art. On weekends, cyclists, joggers and walkers congregate at the painted panels. This art sparks conversation and brings people together. This is a labor of love for the artist all the expenses are out of his pocket. He has started recruiting people to paint the panels for him so the fence can expand faster. This is a paint by numbers project that then becomes public art. The trouble is that not everyone completes the panels he gives out.

The Doctor Who phone booth is build out in one section of the fence and a shark lunges up dimensionally in front of the fence. Perhaps a hundred yards of fence panels are now covered with art. Unfortunately not every neighbor is keen on having their fences covered with art so there are gaps. Perhaps in time they will change their mind. Jim painted a car for a friend, making it like the trail but on wheels. The guy drove it through a car wash and those huge brushes started tearing into the thick paint. It’s art dude, hand wash if from now on.

Some panels are done for charities like, Save the Florida Panther, Save the Sea Turtles, or Autism. Jim said that these panels were some of the most rewarding to do. As the project progresses, it has picked up steam, essentially taking on a life of it’s own. His website takes donations to help keep the project going. Jim humbly doesn’t consider himself an artist. He projects the images and uses color coded outlines to define color breaks. He is a carpenter by trade but work is scarce. Like myself, he is sort of between vocations because of hard times and he had to reinvent himself. This project keeps him busy to say the least. He claims anyone could do what he does, . But he most certainly has an artist’s drive and sensibilities..