De La Vega Restaurante Y Galeria

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Terry and I took a day trip up to De Leon Springs. On the drive home we stopped in downtown Deland which is one of the few places in Central Florida which still has an old town feel. Christmas lights decorated all the store front windows. The old City Hall had a wonderfully designed dome and the bells were ringing announcing the hour as we waked down the main street. I was surprised to see several portraits by Tracy Burke a talented Orlando artist in a quaint ice cream shop in the corner. We stopped in front of the Del La Vega restaurant (128.North Woodland Boulevard, Deland) and read the menu. We expected a Spanish menu but instead found a Mexican menu. It was ladies night with women offered buy one get one free margaritas and sangrias. Buy the time we placed our order the place had filled up to capacity.

Some guy was shooting video with a tiny hand held video camera. Terry waved. We were half finished with dinner when the musical performer for the night got up on stage. His name was Michael Petrovich and he played acoustic guitar with some sort of synthesizer as accompaniment. The music consisted of covers of popular music like Time After Time and Stairway too Heaven. The young woman in the brown leather jacket recorded his whole performance on her iPhone. I sketched in the musician at the very last moment having left a space open where I assumed he would eventually perform. There was a football game playing silently on the big screen TV above his head but I didn’t sketch in the players since the game didn’t interest me.

Terry and I ordered appetizers but they never arrived. The waitress apologized later and offered the appetizers for free. Terry said, “I don’t mind if they make a mistake as long as they make an effort to fix it.” The food was fabulous. With delicious artfully arranged portions on the plate. This was classic Mexican food not the sloppy Tex Mex we are used to being served in fast food joints. The appetizers were small light disks of fried dough with black beans and tomato salsa. This place was a real find and I wouldn’t mind making the drive back north to eat there again.

Chips and Salsa

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It was Cinco de Mayo at Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant, on 436 near 17/92. This was the first time my wife Terry decided to participate in a Brian Feldman performance. She had told me that Brian was a bad influence on me since at times I would sketch his performances very late at night. She changed her tune however after spending an hour eating chips and salsa with him. Brian spent the entire day in the restaurant while a new participant would sit opposite him every hour. There was a video camera set up and masking tape was on the floor marking the active staging area. I grabbed a chip every once in a while as I sketched. I didn’t pay close attention to their conversation but I know Terry was glad to have had the time to sit down and get to know Brian. In this age of virtual friendships it is rare for people to sit down and get to know each other face to face. Even when they do, too much time is spent staring at cell phones. The art of pleasant personal conversation seems all but lost. The restaurant was never very crowded. Terry put on a tiny plastic sombrero for kicks. Brian had hung decorative chili’s strung in the window behind the table. When the next person came in to sit opposite Brian, I ordered a chimichanga for lunch and continued adding watercolor washes to the sketch.

The Censor

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Hannah Miller invited a small group of her friends to a birthday dinner at Little Saigon. The dinner conversations were lively and animated. Then the conversation turned to an unexpected topic, namely art censorship in Orlando. Jessica Earley had a painting of hers on exhibit at Pom Poms Tea house as part of a group show called “The Happy Glitter Show.” It is believed that a costumer at the tea house took it upon themselves to censor Jessica’s painting by placing a round bright yellow sticker on the piece. The painting depicts a group of women and written across the chest of one was, “Do the dishes. Feed the cat. Don’t be a C*nt.” Ironically Jessica had already censored herself by placing an * in place of the vowel. The management of Pom Pom’s was very apologetic and they removed the sticker once it was discovered.

As an artist I find the willingness of people in our community to deface and censor artwork very disturbing. Jessica was soft spoken and sincere as she expressed her concerns, “Someone in the community put the sticker on my painting. And business owners are afraid of what the people in our community might think of provocative or questionable art, so they ask that you don’t hang it in their business. We as a community are censoring ourselves and keeping our minds closed.” Her work deals with and respects woman’s issues. “It really is interesting to me, because there are a lot of artists who will portray women in very objectified ways through their art (pin up style art, etc..), and people most often will find this to be OK, because it has sort of seeped into being the norm. But if I make a painting dealing with some real things that women go through, for example, menstruation, then my painting won’t get hung.”

The options for exhibiting artwork in this town are limited to say the least. Artists must face the risk of exhibiting in bustling, sometimes smoke filled restaurants and bars just to get their work seen. The chances of work being damaged escalates in these crowded insecure settings. Now it seems people feel the need to censor and deface art that they do not understand or appreciate. “This blows my mind because I find my work to be quite innocent and respectful to the female. It’s very frustrating, because the work I do is very personal to me, but I’m not trying to be purposefully shocking in any sort of way. I’ve had a few different instances where I’ve felt cheated or censored.” Jessica said.

An Evening of Eligance

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Lago is a beautiful restaurant on the shore of Lake Baldwin (4979 New Broad Street Baldwin Park). The Evening of Elegance promised a complimentary cup of wine and piano entertainment featuring songs of Frank Sinatra. How could I resist? Funds raised at this event benefited Fertile Dreams, an organization that embraced hope for couples seeking paths to parenthood. When I arrived the bar was nearly empty except for a business man eating dinner. Slowly as I sketched people arrived and I let them populate the empty chairs in my sketch. One woman showed up with a young girl perhaps five years old. I overheard that this child was born thanks to In Vitro fertalization. The little girl was often the center of attention, often being told how cute and beautiful she was.

The organizer of the evening announced that the piano player and singer both had a cold and would not be able to perform. I was thankful since I was perched on a tall stool next to the piano which was probably there for the singer. I stopped rushing and relaxed into the sketch. This is the first sketch in a new sketchbook. I received the book from the “Sketchbook Project“. Thousands of artists around the country are filling these sketchbooks and then mailing them back to the Brooklyn Museum of art where they will form a permanent sketchbook library. The collection will also travel the country allowing people to check out sketchbooks to view. As I was finishing up my sketch, the little girl waved at me and said, “Good bye.” I smiled and repeated, “Good bye” in a sing song voice. That was the longest conversation I had that night.

Phenomenal Conundrum

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Back in Orlando, I found I had time to kill between scheduled sketch assignments. I was coming from Baldwin Park where the opening of a French furnishings store turned out to be an uninspiring subject. I drove to College Park where Mona Washington was going to have a reading of one of her plays at the Kerouac House. I was early so I stopped at infusion tea and ordered an Italian Gelato. Sitting on a comfortable couch in the back of the room, I was reminded of a scene in “Eat Pray Love” where the main character sits quietly in a bustling Italian square savoring a Gelato and enjoying being alone taking in the scene around her. As I savored my Gelato, using the delicate little spoon, I noticed Rachel Kapitan sitting at a table near the door, looking a bit corporate yet very edgy, working on a laptop probably writing up a storm.

In the far corner, a guitarist got behind the mic and started strumming. His friend worked the knobs on a speaker and walked into the middle of the room to check the sound levels. When he was satisfied, he sat down and started playing the drum. They had a warm, mellow soothing sound and I moved closer. A group of women had just abandoned the front table, so I sat down and started sketching. I really had to rush the sketch since I only had an hour before the Kerouac house reading. One of the women returned and she jokingly raised an eye brow and pointed at me as she picked up her full cup of tea. I laughed as she quickly made her way to the door to catch up with her friends.

The musicians were Alexander Gunn and Raymond Hussmann and they called themselves “Phenomenal Conundrum.” They hail from Washington D.C. and they had been performing the Pirate Bars along Florida’s coast before sharing their music at Infusion Tea. They had some paintings from a friend leaning against the wall beside them. On the guitar a message was scrawled that said, “This machine kills Fascists.” As I got close to finishing the sketch, I saw Rachel walk past the plate glass windows. I knew she was looking forward to Mona’s play reading, so I knew I was out of time. The Kerouac house is only a few blocks from Infusion. The sketch was finished with a mad flurry of watercolor washes. I left in the middle of a song, fanning the sketchbook to try and dry the washes.

Shipyard Brewery

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Allison Stevens has been helping spearhead the creation of a Shipyard Brewery right in the heart of Winter Park (200 West Fairbanks Avenue, the former site of Strollo’s Cucino Due). Fred Forsley, president of Shipyard Brewing company of Portland Maine. Allison, the new brewery’s General Manager, has been doing the whole project of construction, retail, marketing, and menus on her own. When I first visited the Brewery, Allison told me that they had baked 300 pounds of bread the previous weekend. Much of it had been sold to the finest restaurants in town but there were racks of fresh bread lining the baking shelves. She threw large loaves and baguettes in a brown paper bag and insisted I take it. This was delicious European style bread without preservatives. Saturday November 20th, there will be a group of 40 home brewers going for a private beer and bread tasting.

The brewery will feature a 28 gallon brewing system. A hole had just been knocked into the western wall to accommodate the system. When I arrived a cement truck was being used to drop fresh cement into an outdoor shelf on which the equipment will rest. Two workers dragged a 2 by 4 over the wet cement to flatten the surface. Inside a loud metallic screeching noise shattered the relative calm. At the front door Allison was handling business on her cell phone. She high fived me and I walked inside. In the kitchen workers were using a large saw to cut a hole in the foundation. One worker handled the saw while the other slurped up the slurry with a wet vac. They were trying to uncover hot and cold water lines under the building. Once the thick foundation was cut into sections, they then lifted out the chunks and dropped them in a wheel barrel. The saw operator shouted out, “You think I’m making enough NOISE!” I shouted back, “You are getting there.” I considered stuffing two erasers in my ears, but I chose to remain stoic.
I was told that a new counter area would be built in this area. Originally they thought they might have to plumb the new waterline up to the ceiling and over but the owner insisted the new sink be plumbed directly to the main water line below the building. Once the cement was lifted clear, they shoveled out the dirt and found the PVC pipes a few inches down.

The water was turned off for the entire building. I noticed this since I couldn’t refill my watercolor brushes. The new lines were branched off and glued in place with bright yellow PVC cement. While this work was being done below the foundation, an electrician was busy high up on a ladder snaking in new electrical lines.

I told Allison that I was going to get some lunch and come back. She said I could have a hot dog with the crew, so I stayed, continuing on my second sketch. The workers had a BBQ grill set up outside. I ate my lunch like a hungry wolf listening while one worker told a dirty joke that I will not repeat here.

Once completely set up, the brewery will be run by accomplished local brewer Ron Raike. He will brew small batches of seasonal and unique beers based on his inherent creativity and seasonal ingredient availability. Allison told me local home brewers will be invited to share their experiences and findings, making the brewery a creative place of experimentation and discovery.

The Big Wheel Provisions Marketplace will feature a regularly revolving selection of deli items, local produce and eggs, cheeses, hard-to-find specialty food products, cookbooks, food-focused periodicals, and kitchen tools. Alfresco dining, cooking classes, catering, and local delivery service will also be offered. Located right next to Rollins College, I can already imagine this place crowded every evening, becoming a creative social hub.

Zombie March

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At the last minute I was told by Paula Large that there was going to be a zombie march in broad daylight on International Drive. The starting spot was at Uno’s pizza right across from Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Driving down International Drive the sudden appearance of hundreds of zombies wandering around the Uno’s parking lot was unsettling. I drove around the block making my way back to the mayhem. My pulse quickened. I parked at the Indian restaurant next to Uno’s.

As soon as I walked into the crowd, I was surrounded by pale, lifeless, brain eating zombies. A stage was set up at one end of the parking lot for a band that I assumed would be playing later. I was immediately drawn to this Hurst parked in the corner of the lot nearest the street. I stood on a small island covered with dried out dead vegetation. Little Red Riding Hood seemed out of place until I saw that she had slit her wrists. A young woman in a tight black leather dress had a cross tattooed between her shoulder blades she walked with a limp. With her nose ring and studs, I suspect she wasn’t really in costume. She must live Goth.

Loud music blasted from the two speakers strapped to the roof of the Hearst. A guy in a black leather vest got on the roof of the Hearst and shouted into the megaphone, “Do you want to see some blood?!” He fired up a chainsaw and the crowd of zombies went wild. one zombie never broke character, he just swayed side to side with his eyes rolled back in his head. A foam manikin was thrown on the roof of the Hearst and he started cutting off limbs to the roar from the crowd. When he thrust the chainsaw blade into her chest blood began to fly and spill everywhere. A pizza was delivered from the restaurant . He began attacking the pizza with the chainsaw with shards of crust and tomato sauce raining down on all the zombies. He threw large chunks of pizza into the crowd where I assume they were devoured.

0n the sidelines citizens with signs protested the march, demanding that the undead return to the graves they came from. When the march began I stayed behind frantically throwing blood red washes onto my drawing. The Goth girls limp must have been real since she remained behind as well, seated in one of the two wooden chairs near the Hearst. A female zombie asked to see my sketch. Her eyes had a strange metallic blue shine. She complimented me and thanked me for sharing with a sweet voice that seemed very out of place since her skin had decomposed rather horrifically. I am sure the party would continue late into the night, but I had to get to class back in the world of reality.

Trivia – Hamburger Mary’s

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Terry and I went on a double date with Amanda Chadwick and Matt Simantov at Hamburger Mary’s. The small stage in the corner was already set up with a microphone and questions were being lobbed out to the crowded room. Sheets were handed out where answers could be filled in. The first order of business was to figure out a team name for everyone at the table. After much discussion, we decided our team would be called Cuntry Blimpkins. I had never heard the work blimpkin before, but Matt went on to explain it and I don’t think I should repeat it here. You are better off not knowing. Other team names of note included, Your Earwax Tastes Better Than My Dick, Eat Rim Love, and Grandmas little vibrator. You get the general idea and flavor.
Here are some of the questions presented in the “Gay, Gay, Gay” round.
Who designed Cher’s costumes?
EOCPHUANLIACRPSM This is two words and a magazine popular with lesbians.
Al Pacino played a homosexual in what film?
What homo is getting a talk show on the Opera Winfrey Network?
What was Julias’s son’s name on “Designing Women?”
What actor did Will marry on “Will and Grace?”
What “Facts of Life” star has a movie coming out in which she plays a fag hag?
Who wrote the book “La Cage Aux Folles?”
Our team did really good in the first round, coming in second place. We were shocked when the table next to us had copied our team name. They spelled ‘Country’ the traditional way, however. Our ranking slipped gradually in the subsequent rounds, but regardless of there we placed the evening was a blast.

Taco Truck Taste Test

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Mark Baratelli of thedailycity.com hosted the 5th Taco Truck Taste Test near Tacos Del Rio (9785 South Orange Blossom Trail). As Terry and I drove down OBT it started to pour. We had the usual difficulty in trying to see any numbers on the strip malls, dealerships and the bright riot of signage. We found one building number that was close and pulled into the parking lot. We then hop scotched up one parking lot at a time until we found a lot filled with a whole bunch of taco trucks. Thankfully the rain subsided. As we walked up to this truck we found a small crowd gathered and Mark was there holding a corrugated cardboard sign with The Daily City written in black Sharpe. Mark had asked a friend to work as an interpreter and the whole group started walking from truck to truck with the interpreter explaining the menu items.
I stayed behind at the first truck to finish my sketch. Several times Brian Feldman breezed by to fire a joke my way and then he was off again. Terry let me know that a group of people were going to go into the brick and mortar Tacos Del Rio so they could sit down. When I finished my sketch I went in to join them. Matt, Amanda, Terry and Mark were sitting in a booth at the back of the restaurant. There was an empty seat so I joined them. Terry was still finishing her meal. I tried to sneak a bite but she wouldn’t stand for it.
I decided to get a few tacos myself. The line was short but when I got to the counter to order the guy shouted that he had to go to another building. He disappeared out the back door. A group of us waited for like 20 minutes. I should have gone out to the taco truck but I had already committed so much time to this line. The food wasn’t that great. The meat was bland and they were running out of every topping. When I was eating Terry suggested I get some sour cream. When I got up to get it she snatched one of my tacos and tried to devour it. Amanda’s loud laughter gave Terry away and I caught her red handed.
Later Mark Baratelli started video taping Sultana describing the finer points of marketing an Improv Festival. Matt, who was sitting behind Sultana started flexing his biceps theatrically for the duration of the interview. Amanda who was sitting behind Matt was leaning forward in embarrassment, trying to hid her face as if she didn’t know Matt. Of course Sultana couldn’t see what was going on behind her, and Mark behind the camera didn’t notice. It wasn’t until he played back the video that he noticed the hilarious background action. I laughed harder than I have in a long time.
The proprietors of Del Rio must have thought we were having too much fun, because they turned on the flat screen TV above out heads and blasted the audio of the cheesy Spanish soap opera. We left soon after.

House Warming

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For the past month artist Doug Rhodehamel has been living in a cardboard box which he sets up in peoples homes so they might have a “Artist in Residence “. Six different Orlando residents opened their homes and allowed Doug to set up his makeshift home. Doug always wanted to build his own home and he finally did so on a somewhat small scale. What did this artist in residence do? He made art! He constructed little cardboard bewilderbeasts for the homes. He just needed a spot in the house to set up his 6′ x 3′ home. The home can be folded up and transported to the next residence in his car.
On July 21st Doug set up his home on the red stage at Stardust Video and Coffee. When I got to Stardust I found a seat at a table up near the stage and then wandered off to find a beer. Carl Knickerbocker, a painter of primitive folk art, was also looking for a beer. He was studying the many bottles and I chose to go for what was on tap. We discussed our tastes in beer and found some common ground.
The sketch was a challenge since the place people tended to congregate and stand was right in my line of sight. It took nerves of steel and much patience to sketch areas I could see when I was blocked. On the loudspeakers, piano music from the Charlie Brown cartoons was playing setting a playful mood. So many beautiful people kept walking in to see. Doug would offer guided tours to select VIPs and they would crawl inside. I never went inside up I did take a look to see how the walls were decorated. A black hairy spider was perched on the roof above the entry and horse photos were galloping above the door. Window boxes held paper flowers and a small donate box was stationed near the entry.