Demonstrating blind contour

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At the Rocket Thrower statue outside the Rep Theater, I decided to do one more demonstration bu doing a sketch using blind contour. Blind contour is actually anything but blind. It is more of a state of constant starting and attention to detail. This sketch was done without ever looking at the page until I felt the sketch might be done. There is a faint sketch underneath this demonstration where I was laying out the composition for a sketch of a modern red sculpture outside OMA. My student finished his sketch of the same subject so fast that I had not time to add detail to that sketch. I therefor left it and drew right on top of it.

This is also a good demo since it show that a sketch doesn’t have to be accurate to be interesting. This could easily be pushed to a finish by adding details in the head and adding a few watercolor washes to tie it all together. Having done several sketches of the statue however, my student wanted to move on and find another subject.

I noticed a grandmother walking with her grandchild as I finished this sketch. She looked at me with what looked to me like disapproval, probably because I was wearing an N-95 mask. Then again she might just have not liked my shirt or this sketch. Getting past the mass delusion and amnesia of the return to normal has been my goal ever since I started my pandemic series back in March of 2020.

Urban Sketching Class Notes

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This page is an example of the types of notes I jot down for students on our sketching excursions on location. We met at the Rep Theater and the first sketch opportunity was a large modern red statue outside OMA. My student works pretty fast, so I just offered a quick thumbnail sketch to give him ideas on how to think about the composition.

Next we sketched the Rocket Thrower sculpture which can be intimidating for a beginner. The last time I sketched the Rocket Thrower, he was wearing a Fringe Tee shirt. I used the sculpture for several different lessons. The small thumbnail sketch shows sweeping gesture lines with no detail. I then showed how to block in the three body masses, the head, rib cage and hips as three simple shapes. Then we did a separate exercise where we just looked at the negative shapes around the sculpture which I colored blue. The negative shape exercise allows the student to get away from the distractions of anatomy and just think about puzzle piece shapes.

I always fell the urge to want to cover the page with watercolor washes as well, but there isn’t always time. Honestly blocking things in extra quick like this for a student is good for me because it reminds me to avoid distracting detail at first and think about the big picture. I also find that being able to verbalize my thoughts help cement them in my own mind.

Winter Party Festival Covid-19 Infections

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The Winter Party Festival took place in Miami Beach March 4 – 10, 2020. More than 10,000 men gathered to party for the week despite the Center for Disease Control’s recommendation at that time that gatherings should be limited to no more than 250 people. Now, two people have died, and at least 38 others have
tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. Once the party was over, people
flew home to all corners of the country, possibly spreading the virus far and
wide. Some people chose not to attend the event although event
organizers were not offering them refunds. Precautions at the Winter Party included “educational posters”
that were posted at venues and 10,000 bottles of hand sanitizer placed throughout.

On March 1, 2020, Florida became the third state in the United States with a documented Covid-19 case.
On March 9, 2020, Donald Trump tweeted that the Fake News Media and the
Democratic Party were inflaming the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond
what the facts would
warrant.  Governor Ron DeSantis was dragging his feet about closing Florida beaches as spring breakers descended on the state. The Mayor of Miami had already contracted the virus. A week after the festival was over, Miami Beach announced they were finally closing the beaches.

On March 15, a Boston doctor who had attended the Winter Party tested positive for the virus after returning home. Thousands of e-mails were sent out to attendees to let people know of the spread of the virus. It is impossible to prove that the people infected caught the virus at the festival. With the long incubation period, they might have caught it on the plane or elsewhere, but were most certainly contagious carriers at party time.

Israel Carrera, a 40 year old from North Miami, was the first to die of the virus after attending the Winter Party. The second was Ron Rich, a 65 year old volunteer who did not attend the main party which counted 3,000 in attendance.

Davie Police Chief, Dale Engle, was placed on administrative leave
after officers at his Florida station filed a union complaint alleging
that he dismissed their concerns about Covid-19 protection measures
and that he blamed the Covid-19 fatality of a Broward County Deputy Sheriff, Shannon Bennett, on his sexuality. He claimed that Bennett died because he was a “homosexual who attended homosexual events.” The National Fraternal Order of Police tweeted that, if Engle’s “disgusting” alleged remarks are true, he should be fired.

On March 4, 2020, I was at a press event at the Rep Theater about the future onePULSE Memorial and Museum. It wasn’t an overly crowded event, but I was still going to theaters and sketching. On March 10, 2020, I was sketching at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s sold-out 12th Annual John R. Hamilton Mock Trial. I therefore can confirm that public events were still being staged in the Sunshine State. Though concerned, I felt it was impotent to keep documenting the arts. Information about the virus and circumstances were changing rapidly by the hour at the time. Hindsight might make it easy to judge, but I was still sketching in crowds despite concerns and the conflicting information from officials.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Trump used a prime-time oval office address to announce a ban on travel for non-Americans from most of Europe. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finally instated stricter social distancing on March 12, 2020, which was two days after the Winter Party Festival was over.

It is unknown exactly how many people might have contracted the Covid-19 virus at the Winter Party Festival. Rea Carey, the Executive Director of the LGBT Task Force, which organized the Festival said on Instagram, “I am deeply saddened by the death of Israel Carrera. I
extend my care and condolences to his loved ones, his friends and
family. He was so clearly loved by many. The particular cruelty of this
virus, this pandemic, is our inability to be together in grief, to hold
each other and to care for each other. We hold Israel and everyone being
affected by COVID-19 in our hearts.”

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article241133076.html#storylink=cpy

The First onePULSE Foundation Town Hall Meeting.

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The onePULSE Foundation‘s first Town Hall meeting was held at the Rep Theater (1001 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32803). 400 people reserved tickets to attend. The meeting was a panel discussion exploring why and how we create memorials and museums, and what is involved in the process. Experts from around the country came to share their experiences. Barbara Poma, the Pulse Nightclub owner and onePULSE Foundation executive director, said, “Building a permanent memorial and museum at the site is the most powerful way to pay respect for the lives taken, and to all those affected on that awful night.” The moderator for the night, was journalist Indira Lakshmanan.

Kari Watkins, the Executive Director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial was the first panelist on the left. The event was being held just one week after the mass murder in Las Vegas. She explained that the community memorials had already begun. An empty lot was acquired from the city and 58 trees were planted, one tree for each victim. At the Oklahoma City Bombing site one tree had survived and saplings were being handed out. 168 people died. Initially, the Chamber of Commerce was not on board with the plans for a museum and memorial, they didn’t want their city to be known as the city that had been bombed. The site is now the most visited tourist attraction in the state.



Ed Linenthal is a PhD and author of several books such as Sacred Ground, Preserving Memory, and The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory. He explained that the process of deciding what to put on a site is incredibly difficult because you are dealing with an open wound. We need to get rid of psycho babble words like “closure”. People in Orlando will be living along side of the Pulse tragedy for a very long time and that is OK. There is a new “normal”. The process involves many, many people who are very personally involved. Everything is a razor’s edge issue. Should there be 49 hearts, trees, or points of light here?… on and on and on. How could it not be agonizing? Memorials are a protest of the anonymity of mass murder in our times.

Jan Ramirez, is the Executive Vice President of Collections and the Chief Curator of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum in NYC. She explained that the NYC site is an unplanned cemetery. 40% of the close to 3,000 people who died when the towers fell, have no remains. The families never had the comfort of a burial. Our work is never done. Only since the museum opened have many victim’s families decided to share their stories and artifacts.

Anthony Gardner is the Senior Vice President of Government and Community Affairs at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. He became involved after his brother Harvey died in the tower collapse. The process of building a memorial is going to be painful. It needs to be. The reaction to people visiting the 9/11 memorial is universal, they pause and say to themselves, “I am there.” They know it is a tragic story, they know it is painful, but they leave inspired, because this is a story in which the best of humanity responded to the worst of humanity.

Anthony’s brother Harvey loved history. The night before he was killed, he was watching a documentary on WWII. He became a part of the history he cherished just several hours later. Harvey is one of the 40% who were never identified after the towers fell. The family didn’t have anything of his that was recovered. He found himself trapped in that office. The one call that got through to Harvey allowed the family to overhear him comforting his colleagues, who were starting to panic. He was directing people and he was calm and brave in those acts, so the family holds on to that. Anthony values the authenticity of place and setting. He feels some authentic fabric of Pulse should be left behind. Authenticity of place helps people connect that didn’t have that direct experience.

Pam Schwartz is the Chief Curator of the Orange County Regional History Center. “…Typically museums collect, “old stuff”. We  have historical perspective on that… When doing rapid response or contemporary collecting, you have to rely 50% on your training and education, and 50% on intuition, or what we think might be an important historical story…That can change very rapidly. It took 9 years for Orlando to get the title of the worst mass shooting after Virginia Tech. It took just 16 months to give that title to Las Vegas. The history of our event is already changing based on what is happening in Vegas. The question goes from, “How could this happen to us”, to “Is it ever going to stop?…”

Pam explained, a mass shooting is when four or more people, not including the
shooter, are “shot and/or killed” at “the same general time and
location.” This year there have been at least 276 mass shootings in America. That is close to one mass shooting a day. We can’t memorialize every single event, but each time there are people who lost their loved ones, there are emotional and mental scars. Everyone feels the most strongly about the event that affected them. You focus on the stories and try to make it a teachable moment. We are dealing with a lot of different demographics here in Orlando. Our event at Pulse is unique in that it speaks to a broader situation in our world today, in politics an in the fights we are still fighting.


She went on to say that the memorial items come from the community. They are outpourings from the heart. They are often items left because people don’t know what else to do. One thing they collected was a cooler from Pulse. If you went to the Pulse site, you would have seen the big white cooler left by the police. The church down the street kept filling it every day because it is HOT in Orlando. So this artifact was one of support. 

Pam and the History Center staff were out there collecting every single day and  drank some of that water. One day, they showed up and it was just covered in signatures. There were all these signed banners full of love and support, and then people were like,  “What else can we sign?” So they collected this cooler, it is sort of a living history of the memorials. 

The History Center staff also went into the club after the site was released back to Barbara Poma. Pam approached and asked if things could be collected from inside. That might seem a bit macabre, but think of it as Abraham Lincoln’s hat or the artifacts you might see at the 9/11 museum. These are very real artifacts that tell a story. Should they be displayed now or put them on exhibition, no, but in 200 years there will be people who were not here, did not experience it, and it is very real evidence that this event truly happened to people. The History Center also has items from Pulse before this event. Pulse has a very rich history before June 12, it was home to so many people.


In response to a question from the audience about ensuring the process is inclusive, Pam explained that this series of community conversations are the first link to inclusivity for everyone. Everyone should fill out the online Survey for the Memorial. The results of which will become the design brief that will go out to the potential designers for the memorial and museum. This is not a fast process. It takes time, so we have several years to figure this out together. This is at its heart a community event. It happened to us all in some way shape or form. It will be a community conversation and ultimately a community decision in how we move forward. That is why they are starting to have meetings with families of survivors and other community members. Talk to onePulse Foundation members. They want to know what everybody is thinking. They do not have all the right answers for what this can look like or what it should look like right now, but they are beginning the process and want everybody who feels attached to this to be involved.


In other Pulse related news, the City just approved a temporary memorial designed by Dix.Hite + Partners which will add landscaping to soften the area while replacing the fence with more aesthetically pleasing elements. A rainbow colored sidewalk crossing was also approved by the City and already painted into place.  I filled out the survey and it took no longer that 10 minutes. Be sure to fill out the survey as well. Your voice matters, your opinion matters. Help shape the future of the Pulse memorial site. Earl Crittenden offered a quote that pointed the way towards a solution, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Abe Lincoln

Serafina’s belly dance at Fringe.

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Although Phantasmagoria didn’t have a stage show, they were listed in the Fringe program as Bring Your Own Venue. On the first day of my Sketch Tour they seemed to be everywhere at once. While we were waiting in line for Grim and Fisher at the Rep Theater, Phantasmagoria swept into the lobby to entertain everyone waiting in line. For those who don’t know, (where have you been) Phantasmagoria is a Gothic Steampunk storytelling group that blends dance, aerial work, fire performance and combat into the mix as they weave their horrific tales.

Serafina Schiano began an exotic belly dance. I agonized about how much time I might need to catch the dance. The line started to inch forward and I kept adding watercolor washes to the sketch as we moved towards the entrance. When Serafina was done, I followed her with my eyes to try and catch details of her costume. This is why some sketches can seem rushed and unfinished, because life and performance rushes by. It is a challenge to catch the flash of a moment. That is what makes sketching on location fun, exciting and challenging. Even if unfinished in my mind, I have to accept what I can accomplish in the time that I have and move on. That is a fair analogy to life in general.

The lobby of the Rep is always full of art by school children during Fringe. Most of the work is tight and struggling towards realism. None of the art seems rushed or hurried. This is the problem I have when painting digitally. Since it is all new to me I’m far to cautious and what results has too much polish. I’ve started carrying my tablet out on location with me but it is seldom used. In a dark theater, its glow would distract others and outside in the Florida sun the screen isn’t bright enough.  I wish the screen were larger but the market trend it towards smaller tablets. It is like carrying a hot brick.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson Hits the Orlando Fringe Hard

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By The Way Productions presented Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Orlando Fringe Festival. Based on a book by Alex Timbers and with music and Lyrics by Michael Friedman the show was a pop rock musical that showed the bloody history often overlooked by whitewashed history book in high school. The show was produced by Ashley Willsey and directed by Adam Graham. I went to the show because I bumped into Christie Miga on the lawn of fabulousness and discovered that she created the large flag that hangs on the set. This show got an award for the most aggressive and visual marketing campaign which was designed by Ashley. Live music was provided by Hey Angeline.

This was a huge show staged in the tiny Rep black box theater. I sat in the front row and several times had to pull back my crossed legged drawing stance to keep from tripping dancers. This was an edgy high energy production that portrayed Jackson (Ross Neil) as a rock star hungry for the adoration of the American public. The female cast worshiped Jackson’s populism like crazed Beatles fans. In contrast, the narrator was a nerdy woman in a wheelchair (Anitra Pritchard) with cat eyed glasses and a stuffed pug in her lap. She reminded me of the Dr. Scott from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

While Jackson ordered the slaughter of the Indians, his popularity grew. It is possible that this Indian purge resulted in more deaths than the Nazi concentration camps. Jackson’s wife (Jacqueline Torgas) didn’t want him to go into politics and yet he couldn’t resist the adoration of the American public. The campaign ripped his wife’s reputation to shreds and she died of a heart attack before he took office. She was married to another man when she met Jackson and that fact was used by his opponents in the presidential campaign. Ambition left him loveless yet popular. Two thumbs up for such an ambitious Fringe production.

Under the Rainbow

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Under the Rainbow written and composed by Alen Gerber was the one operatic performance at this year’s Fringe. The show began with a young mother holding her infant son in a rainbow colored blanket. Crystal Lizardo, who played the mother was surprisingly petite yet her voice filled the huge Rep Theater. She sang a beautiful song in which she imagined her son’s bright future.

Years later, her son is a grown man and he leads a human rights march for marriage equality. A church group lead by the minister of the mother’s church is out to appose the march.  When tempers flair, a member of the human rights group is shoved to the ground. Sarah Purser played Grace, the injured activist and when the minister, Ricardo Dominguez, offers to help her, they sing together about what message, or lack thereof, the bible offers on gay life.

The mother conducts a chorus in church and then laments her son’s sexuality. Being religious, she wants to protect her son from sure hell-fire, but she also wants to see her son to find happiness here on earth. Whereas most parents never accept a child’s homosexuality, she finds solace in a hymns verse, “Where there is charity and love, God is there.” In the end, she accepts her son as he is, and they embrace.

I went into the show with no preconceptions and was pleasantly surprised. The woodwind player unfortunately didn’t check his reeds and thus he kept missing notes. The music as a whole was beautiful but not particularly memorable.  The main musical theme of the show was the exact chromatic inversion of the melody of Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow“. The shows message of open minded acceptance transcended any technical issues. There was a well deserved standing ovation.

Pink Ribbon Project Rehearsal

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I went to the Orlando Shakes Black Box Theater expecting to find the Pink Ribbon project rehearsal. A group of teenage girls were tap dancing in a circle. Three of them had pink shirts on but the mood felt wrong. I checked my calender again, I was supposed to be at the Black Box Theater at the Rep. I slipped out and dashed across Lock Haven Park to the Rep. When I arrived, Matt McGrath was getting several brooms and a bicycle pump out of his car. I wondered how these props would tie in to the show.

In the first scene I sketched, Marty Stonerock and Mikki Scanlon sat on stage each bathed in a pool of light. They both spoke on cell phones. At first it seemed like they were speaking to each other but then it became clear they were speaking to their respective spouses. Mikki shifted her position in her chair, leaning forward and twisting, “Can you hear me now? I’m at the hospital. No I wasn’t in an accident! I’m fine, really I’m fine. Well, no, I’m not fine. I have breast cancer.” Marty was having a similar gut wrenching conversation trying to comprehend the impossible. “I have it, I have breast cancer… Are you there? Hello?”

Large pink ribbons were hung from the rafters. They will be used in a dance number early in the show. Aradhana Tiwari was directing and the show carries her signature. Multiple stories overlap and bloom during the course of the production. There is brutal honesty as women confront their own mortality. The show’s mission is, “To raise awareness, educating people about the physical, mental, and emotional realities that dealing with breast cancer entails. The aim to offer a therapeutic and cathartic experience for women and their families who are in the midst of the fight, touching them in the unique way that only the arts can. Lastly, our vision is to bring hope, champion faith, and ignite inspiration that will empower women as they walk forward and continue to battle on.”

I was unexpectedly moved when a young boy excitedly tried to keep his mother engaged and entertained although she had breast cancer. He was a live wire running circles around her. He showed her card tricks, dance moves and offered her brownies. She was unable to eat after chemo. Dejected he looked at the pan of brownies in his hands and muttered to himself, “Your so stupid, you know she gets sick after chemo. I have to keep her going, I just have to keep her going.” I welled up, thinking of my own mom’s battle with breast cancer. At ten years old, I was to young to even know how sick she was. But something was wrong and I just wanted to see her laugh again. I couldn’t visit her in the hospital. I suppose they wanted to keep me safe from the reality of seeing her slip away.

Though I only saw the show in fits and starts at the rehearsal, I can tell it will be a multi layered and emotionally inspiring production. The Pink Ribbon Project will be run September 16-18th at the Orlando Repertory Theater, 1001 E. Princeton St., Orlando. Admission is $20 for general seating and $150 for a “giving seating” ticket. Purchasing a “giving seat” ticket will fund one mammogram for an uninsured woman. To purchase tickets, go to www.playthemoment.com or call 321-662-0611. Proceeds will benefit the Breast Cancer Fund at Florida Hospital Cancer Institute, which provides diagnostic testing and treatment for uninsured and under served women in Central Florida.

Music Video Shoot

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In the Rep Theater, actors John DiDonna and Jennifer Bonner arrived on the set. They were told which theater seats to sit in. Scott Wilkins, who wrote the Britt Daley music video script, stood in front of the actors and described the scene. Scott was boldly silhouetted against a fill light that illuminated a scrim. Both actors were to be preoccupied not paying attention to the audition. John was to be turned away talking on his cell phone while Bonnie fingered her cell phone surfing the web or checking Facebook.

The camera began to roll and the director called, “Action!” John started arguing with the person on his cell. “I’m not having this discussion with you now.” He repeated the point again several more times raising his voice till he was shouting into the phone. Jennifer stared vacantly at the screen of her cell phone. In the next shot Katie Peters sang the final note of her audition song. Jennifer glanced up from her phone and shouted, “Thank you!” with disdain and disinterest. Katie walked off screen, crushed.

The next shot was to come after Britt Daley had sung her song, “One and Only“. John and Jennifer were locked together in a passionate kiss. Of course when shooting for a quality production you never shoot a scene just once. John and Jennifer kissed again and again. Scott suddenly realized that they should still be holding their cell phones and he asked John to move his hand lower for the next shot. They kissed again and when Britt’s music ended they were startled back to reality. Jennifer struggled to straighten her disheveled hair.

Britt Daley Music Video

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Inside the Rep Theater there was an all day shooting marathon to complete Britt Daley’s “One and Only” music video. The camera crew set up the tiny digital camera so it was on stage at the Repertory Theater pointing out at the theater seats. They were setting up for a shot of the Director played by John Di Donna and his assistant played by Jennifer Bonner. Britt’s dad sat in the seats so the cameraman could frame the shot before the actors arrived. Fill lights and spots were adjusted to light the seats. The director kept checking how the shot was framed by looking at the laptop. Scott Wilkins looked through the script and storyboards so everyone was on the same page.

A small crate was set up Katie Peters to stand on. She is the female singer in the local band CIRCUS. She stood in front of the camera facing the theater seats. She was instructed to sing the final note of the song she was singing for the audition and then step out of frame. The song she was supposed to be singing was an old minstrel/vaudeville tune, “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home“. A funny choice since Britt Bailey and Britt Daley sound so similar.