Run for the Trees

Posted on April 24, 2023April 22, 2023 by Thor

I am beginning to be hired to cover some events again. I rolled out of bed at 5:30am to get to this 5K run in Winter Park. Sketching in public in Winter Park is illegal according to a city ordinance, but I managed to pull it off on this sunny morning. I knew event organizers wanted a view of the start of the race, so I didn’t have to think twice about what was the best option for a sketch to document the event. There were an assortment of merchant tents set up to my left but I kept my focus on the starting line.

I sketched the setting and then slowly people filled in behind the line for the start at 7:30am. Some folks stood in front of the starting line for selfies and for a moment I considered sketching the guy who held an American flag for the Star Spangled Banner. I decided he was blocking the forward progression and I replaced him with a woman who was doing some sprints before the starting horn blew.

After the crowd of runners sprinted off, I focused on adding water color for another hour. It was a pleasant morning. The usual suspects, photographers, and videographers had to get a shot of the artist at work. As is fitting, the tree is the star of my sketch. Every runner would get a tree sapling to plant after the run.

New Winter Park Bandshell

Posted on October 1, 2022September 27, 2022 by Thor

I met a new Urban Sketching student at Central Park in Winter Park. It turns out that the band shell is getting a facelift. I set up in the center of the field and started sketching. My student found a shady spot off to the side.

In June of 2022 the old 1980s structure was demolished. The original structure had one upgrade due to hurricane damage in 2004. I was sketching the new band shell which looks pretty much like the old band shell. The chain link fence will remain around the construction site through September of 2022.

The new band shell is supposed to “complement the charming architecture of the nearby Winter Park Train Station.” A grand opening event to celebrate the new stage will be scheduled in late September 2022. The fabric roof has however been replaced by plywood. Compared to the band shell in New York City’s Central Park, this looks like a few two by fours thrown together.

Casa Feliz

Posted on August 9, 2021August 6, 2021 by Thor

On May 13, 2021 the CDC had announced that fully vaccinated people can participate in many of the activities that they did before the pandemic.

I still refused to hold Crealde School of Art classes indoors choosing instead to take my students to outdoor sites to sketch. On this weekend we went to Casa Feliz in Winter Park.

My first lesson was to make sure you are always in the shade because the Florida sun can be hellish. Most of my students scattered to shady shops under trees but this student decided to sit on the stone wall around the back patio. Within 15 minuted she was baking in the sun.

No one wore masks outside but I wore my mask any time I approached a student. I approached this student and suggested she back up into the shade since the basic outlines of her sketch were established. Adding color to a sketch needn’t always be done in the exact spot where the sketch was started.

I had to do this sketch super fast since I spent most of my time visiting each student and offering feedback and suggestions. The backs of most of my sketches in this sketchbook have the rough sketches I did for each student to advise them on how to set up compositions.

On July 18, 2021 it was reported, that the latest Covid-19 hospital patients are unvaccinated and increasingly younger. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported 1,008 daily coronavirus cases with just one week to go before the start of the Olympics.

Casa Feliz

Posted on March 28, 2021March 23, 2021 by Thor

I took my Urban Sketching students from Crealde School of Art to Casa Feliz in Winter Park to demonstrate using perspective to sketch a building on location. This sketch was done to show which visual clues to look for when trying to decide where a vanishing point would be on the sketch.

Casa Feliz was designed by James Gamble Rogers. The building was constructed in 1933 and has become known as Winter Park’s parlor. Prior to the pandemic, the music series hosted weekend concerts in the ground floor living room behind the blue bay windows in my sketch.

My intrepid students kept their masks on as they sketched, but driving down Park Avenue in Winter Park, very few residents wore masks.

On November 15, 2020 the United States had surpassed 10.8 million cases and 245,000 deaths, as states continued to break daily records. Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine told CNN coronavirus “fatigue” was a serious problem. Dr. James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University Hospital, said he was “terrified” about the imminent holiday season. “We’re going to see an unprecedented surge of cases following Thanksgiving this year, and if people don’t learn from Thanksgiving, we’re going to see it after Christmas as well,” Phillips said.

Starry Variants

Posted on February 26, 2021February 26, 2021 by Thor

I am seeing signs that the arts in Central Florida are looking to make a come back. I have been invited to mount an exhibition in Winter Park at The University club at the end of next month. April Fools Day, April 1, 2021 is the opening date. Rather then having an in person opening reception, I plan to have a virtual tour of the exhibition online.

Van Gogh Alive, was an exhibition that was mounted at the Dali museum in Tampa during the pandemic. The exhibition features more than 3,000 Van Gogh images at enormous scale, viewed through high-definition projectors and synchronized to a powerful classical score. The exhibit remains pen through April 11, 2021.

Snap Orlando now has an exhibit called the The Van Gogh Affect. Photographers Lynn Johnson and Patricia Lanza followed Van Gogh’s footsteps through the places he lived, studied, and paid tribute to what they see as his “most enduring muse, the sun.”

As the country races to vaccinate as many Americans as possible against COVID-19, both New York and California are reporting new virus variants that might be more contagious than the original strain. Florida is still leading the country in coronavirus variants, with more than 400 cases have been reported to the CDC, far surpassing any other state.

Pre-Pandemic: Hotto Potto

Posted on May 15, 2020February 7, 2022 by Thor

Hotto Potto (3090 Aloma Ave. Winter Park, FL 407-951-8028) is a Chinese eatery and dim sum spot specializing in hot pots served table side with house made sauces. You get a soup stock base and add any ingredients you want to your soup and then you cook it at your table. On top of that a cart is rolled up to the table offering jars and jars of delicious sauces to add to the dim sum, Pam and I tried everything. Yummm.

Stock Base

per person: choose from:

Meat Stock

$3.50

mild, med or numb Spice

Vegetarian

$3.50

mild, med or numb Spicy

Tom Yum, Miso Soup, or Tofo Tomato Soup

$4.50

$3.50

Marble Pork

Market Price

Lamb Slices

Market Price

Wagyu

Market Price

$12.90

Blue Crab

Market Price

Fresh Oyster

Market Price

Fresh Clams

Market Price

Razor Clams

Market Price

Abalone

Market Price

Sea Cucumber

Market Price

Live Shrimp

Market Price

Live Lobster

Market Price

Noodles & Such

Fried Gluten

$2.95

Now during the pandemic Hotto Potto only offers take out.

41 Annual Christmas in the Park

Posted on December 11, 2019February 6, 2022 by Thor

Pam Schwartz and I met at Winter Park‘s Central Park (150 W Morse Blvd, Winter Park, FL) for the 41st Annual Christmas in the Park hosted by The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art and the City of Winter Park.

At 6:15 p.m. nine century-old Tiffany leaded-glass windows were lit. They were scattered across the lawn with two framing the chorus on stage. When I arrived I voted against muscling my way up to the stage, instead I was fascinated by the lines of people who would needed to shoot cell phone photos of the stained glass. I recognized the docent who was cheerfully talking to people about the history of the stained glass panel.

On the Central Park main stage the 160 voice Bach Festival Society Choir performed. I was seated behind a hedge and a secondary stage so I never actually saw anything that happened on stage. However the constant stream of people pressing close to the stained glass was just as entertaining for me.

Anyone who stopped to read the tombstone label was illuminated a ghostly green from below. This particular Memorial Window created in 1909 was for a chapel for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged, Indigent Females which provided housing and pensions for poor elderly women. The ARRAIF was located at 891 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, N.Y which was founded in 1883 and closed down in 1974. In 1908, a Mrs. Sage gave the association a gift of $250,000, that was used to extend the building south to the corner of West 103
Street. The architect for the addition was Charles Rich. The addition
included the installation of Tiffany windows to the Chapel.

Tiffany wanted to return the art of glass making to the glory days of Medieval churches. Each piece of glass has a variety of color, tone and texture that became known as opalescent. The glass has imperfections, streaks, bubbles and folds that become a part of the beauty of the finished piece. The design was symmetrical yet elements within that design stepped outside of the symmetry creating some tension. I love any art that accepts imperfections as part of the process.

The crowd on the lawn came prepared for the occasion. Some had entire picnics with bottled of wine and Christmas lights to decorate the tableau and themselves. One of the songs was of course Jingle Bells and people knew to come to the concert with their own jingle bells that they jingled and jangled in time to the music.

Shady Park

Posted on August 26, 2019February 7, 2022 by Thor

I went to Shady Park in Winter Park for what was supposed to be a community market. It was overcast and there was no one in the park when I arrived. It started to rain and I took cover under a gazebo and started to draw this dog made of balls. When the rain let up, a little girl climbed up on the sculpture to ride the dog while her mom shot some photos.

This area was recently gentrified converting this formerly black neighborhood into a posh area of restaurants bars and this park. This problem originated 100 years ago with the practice of geographically segregating populations by race. In recent years black residents have been pushed out of their
historic and family homes due to the rising cost of living, increased
property values, and the pressures of opportunist builders. The rich continue to march west displacing families who have lived there for generations.

Shady Park, (721 W New England Ave, Winter Park, FL 32789) is centrally located in historical Hannibal Square next to the
community center. It features park benches and a tranquil sidewalk pathway.
It is perfect for reading a book or hosting a special community event.
It also includes a “spray play” water feature.

Apollo 13

Posted on July 22, 2019February 7, 2022 by Thor

In June there was a free screening of Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks at Winter Park‘s Central Park. I saw the film when it first came out in 1995 on the big screen. It was about the third attempt to land men on the moon. The one thing I remember form that showing was that I was seated in a front row of the theater and the film gave me a huge headache. At the time I was working at Disney Feature Animation and we had a box lunch session in which producers of the film showed us how it was made. The film was directed by Ron Howard of The Andy Griffith Show fame. Some scenes in the film featured astronauts in weightlessness. Back then there was no Digital Effects to recreate that effect so they actually got permission to build a set inside a plane known as the Vomit Comet or KC-135 airplane. It got that illustrious name because it would fly extremely high and then nose dive towards the earth creating a momentary weightlessness inside the fuselage. The remaining scenes in the capsule were usually close ups and to get the effect of weightlessness in those shots the actors would be on sea saws which would gently rock them up and down. Watching the film again I couldn’t help but wonder which scenes featured those rocking horses or sea saws.

I sketched as people set up their blankets on the Central Park Lawn. As it grew darker I made my painting darker as well. Twice the film had to be stopped as an Amtrak Train roared by. I finished my sketch about half way through the film as Tom Hanks announced, “Houston we have a problem.” An on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA’s flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turned the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.
What followed were very exciting solutions to very difficult problems. Oxygen was being vented into space, and the astronauts had to move into the lunar landing vessel which acted as their life raft. With CO2 levels rising they realized that the filter could not keep up with the CO2 they were exhaling. The filter form the capsule they abandoned could not be used because it was round rather than square. On the ground engineers were tasked with finding a way to use the wrong shaped filter. It involved ripping the cover off a manual, some tape and tubing. When reconstructed with step by step instructions the astronauts held their breath hoping the filter would work and it did.

When the aborted mission returned to earth, the astronauts had to go back inside the capsule and jettison their life raft into space. When re entering the earths atmosphere they had to hope that the heat shield on the bottom of the capsule had not been damaged in the explosion which had been caused when they stirred the oxygen tanks. As the capsule was engulfed in flames as it dropped towards the earth everyone in the audience saw a shooting star streak above the movie screen. Apollo 13 was an amazing film about perseverance hope and steely eyes determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable life and death decisions. It was a nail biting ride from launch to splashdown. And watching it under a shooting star shower was and ethereal experience.

Rollins College

Posted on July 9, 2019February 7, 2022 by Thor

While walking back from an event I sketched in Winter Park, I heard activity over at Rollins College and I decided to cross over Fairbanks Avenue to see what was going on. The large football field was illuminated with stadium lighting. A soccer practice was under way and I had to stop to sketch. The chapel was illuminated a bright blue with spot lights and the upper bell tower windows glowed a golden yellow. A full moon helped lighten the scene as well.

I was sketching trough the chain link fencing for the sake of convenience. One of the players saw me sitting and taking in the scene and he asked me if I was a talent scout for a professional team. Another player had a better guess of what I was up to and I showed him the sketch in progress when he asked to see.

There were a few drills and shots at the net but the huddle in the middle of the field dominated the time I spent sketching. The practice was over and the players dissipated before my sketch was complete. I didn’t linger long since this was a simple landscape scene but the lighting of the field at night would make a good plein air study should I decide to return. The Knowles Memorial Chapel at night is an amazing sight.