The Mills 50 District heralds the Mills 50 Community Market.

Posted on by Thor

Every Tuesday from 5:00 pm until 9:00pm the Mills 50 Community Market (between Will’s Pub and Track Shack) brings together a variety of artisans and local vendors to share food, ideas and community resources. Our vision is to foster weekly community engagement and to provide support for local businesses in the Mills 50 District and all of Central Florida. By providing this open platform, we hope to empower local residents with a more resilient, sustainable and healthy place to live.

I went right after work one night to sketch. On the side wall of Will’s Pub was the controversial mural by Dolla Short. It depicts a drunk satyr floating in a noxious cloud. The detail that a few local residents have an issue with is that the cloud is implied to have come from a fart symbolized by a word balloon and a skull and cross bones. Because of this, the city is trying to come up with a way to censor future murals. They want to create an ordinance that re-defines murals as signage which suffer strict jurisdiction. Murals keep popping up in the neighborhood like mushrooms.

The Market is a small affair with local goods. The closest vendor had meat on a stick and I was offered a sample which was pretty good. Doughn’t Be Cruel was directly across from me. Senior Baker and Artist David McWhertor was at the helm. He pointed out that we had exhibited our work together at the Falcon Bar‘s “Porn” show. David’s painting was of a nude man with a unique way of hanging his jacket. For that show, I did a sketch of 2 actors in an intimate embrace. At the opening, I sketched a guy hitting on a girl for several hours in front of my sketch. David offered me a sample of one of his doughnuts, placing it in a paper bag. The bag sat on my kitchen counter for the night and in the morning it had been engulfed in a grease stain. I couldn’t bring myself to open the bag. Perhaps if bacon was packaged in paper bags, I could give that up as well.

PORN Art Exhibit at the Falcon

Posted on by Thor

For the month of February, local artists are exhibiting PORN Art at the Falcon,(819 E Washington St
Orlando, FL). This exhibit will be up for the entire month of February. I couldn’t resist doing a sketch that ties in with the shows theme. From the event page on Facebook I found a dancer who was interested in posing for the sketch. He put out feelers to see if a female dancer was also willing to pose. The week before the show, I had the dancers pose naked on a futon in the studio. They posed in an sensual embrace and I sketched them feverishly. The sketch worked well. We had time to spare, so we tried a second pose where they embraced sitting up with her in his lap. Unfortunately his leg turned blue and fell asleep. The second pose was a bit too adventurous to hold. I didn’t mind since the first sketch was acceptable.

The opening for PORN was incredibly crowded.  People spilled out into the street. Tr3 Harris told me he was jealous because he knew the models who posed for my sketch. I don’t know how he found out their names, news travels fast in a small town. My sketch is being exhibited in the front room. An odd sculpted bull with a vagina for a head is above my piece. There was a woman wearing a Wonder Woman dress. I cursed myself for not having the room to fit her in the sketch I had started. Wendy Claitor helped me find a decent German beer to sip while I sketched. Morgan Wilson did a whole series of brightly colored slick oil paintings of women in porn. Two bright green women with magenta hair kissed, a purple woman was in a red blind fold, a middle finger was thrust up near a woman’s panties, a purple woman lay recumbent, her breasts thrust up as if she were pulling her nipples. Karen Russell showed a rather tame woman’s portrait that showed some bare shoulders. There was a magnifying glass to allow people to study a small golden sculpture. A man stood with a huge towel hiding his genitals. 3D glasses were available although I didn’t try them out to see if any body parts might thrust out of any canvases. Bernie Martin joined me at my table and he worked on a sketch of a ballerina using watercolor.

Safe porn themed Hollywood movies, like “Boogie Nights“, were being projected. At one point the guy in my sketch stood up and took off his jacket. He shouted, “Porn!” and started unbuttoning his shirt while shaking his hips Elvis style. He stopped after unfastening two buttons and sat back down. In many ways the show seems to have unbuttoned only part of the way. I was hoping to be shocked that Orlando had an undercurrent of lust and impropriety. I’m as guilty as any artist of keeping things PG in this theme park town. At least the show is a bold first step towards pushing the envelope.