St. Augustine at 450: A Crealdé Documentary Project

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Hannibal Square Heritage Center, (642 West New England Avenue, Winter Park, FL) held an opening for Crealdé‘s newest photo documentary project, which  celebrates the oldest city in the United States, Saint Augustine, on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of its founding.

Ten photographers captured the city’s past, its preservation efforts and its place as a tourist destination, college town and home to a diverse population.The photos showcased the city’s historic sights. Had this been an exhibition of pie in air paintings and or sketches it would have been a different story. The historic city of Saint Augustine has a law on the books which makes the creation of art in the city’s most historic areas illegal. Artists found guilty of painting or sketching are subject to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.

The city of Winter Park decided to copy this insane ordinance which is being contested in the supreme court for being unconstitutional. It is non illegal to create art in Winter Park’s Park Avenue, New England Avenue and Heritage Square. Largely drafted to prohibit performance art, visual art’s are included in the law. If I were to return to Heritage Square Center, where this sketch was done and I tried to sketch the building exterior, I could face jail time today. The ordinance went into effect on December 14, 2015.

The Musical group in this sketch is Ka Malinalli which performed traditional Mexican tunes and original music. The violinist is 16 year old Ariah Deason.  Kattya Graham, who founded the group has since decided to perform solo. Kattya gave me a CD and I enjoy the music in my car on long drives. A large Day of the Dead skull and a small sculpture of a face breaking free of a mask pointed back to the mystical Mexican roots behind the music. 

Would I return to Hannibal Square to sketch now that Winter Park considers my actions criminal? Only time will tell.  But Winter Park has certainly taken a step back to the dark ages by limiting and criminalizing freedom of expression.  Were Ka Malinalli to perform outside the Heritage Center today they too could face jail time.

Cigarz on the Avenue attracts regulars.

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Cigarz on the Avenue, 333 S Park Ave, Winter Park, FL, seems to always have customers outside smoking a thick one. Sometimes I go to Winter Park just to enjoy a stroll down Park Avenue. Terry might crinkle her nose and complain any time we walk near smokers. I on the other hand seem to have lost all of my sense of smell. Anytime I return from a vacation, I notice a smell of mold when I get to Orlando. I’m likely allergic to Orlando. Having lost the sense of smell however can be a blessing however since it allowed me to relax outside the Cigar Store and sketch the regular patrons who likely relax every afternoon at this spot. I can say this because a woman stopped to admire my drawing and she named the two gentlemen and told me they could be found at this spot everyday.

The Cigar store wooden Indian seemed to have lost the spear or stogie he once held. He must search for it every night, but his feet are strapped to a dolly which might inhibit his movement. Then again he might get around better by kneeling down and using his hands to roll himself around the shop. I thought that a wooden Indian wasn’t exactly a politically correct way to attract customers. But what do I know, 

Because of the general illiteracy of the populace, early store owners used descriptive emblems or figures to advertise their shops’ wares; for example, barber poles advertise barber shops. American Indians and tobacco had always been associated because American Indians introduced tobacco to Europeans, and the depiction of native people on smoke-shop signs was almost
inevitable. As early as the 17th century, European tobacconists used
figures of American Indians to advertise their shops.

Because European carvers had never seen a Native American, these
early cigar-store “Indians” looked more like black slaves with feathered
headdresses and other fanciful, exotic features. These carvings were
called “Black Boys” or “Virginians” in the trade. Eventually, the
European cigar-store figure began to take on a more “authentic” yet
highly stylized native visage, and by the time the smoke-shop figure
arrived in the Americas in the late 18th century, it had become thoroughly “Indian.” People within the Native American community often view such likenesses as a caricature or as depictions that perpetuate stereotypes, drawing an analogy to the African-American lawn jockey, which I’ve heard is quite popular in Winter Park as well.

A whale rolled into Orlando.

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Poncili Creacion presented Ballenarca at the Winter Park Public Library. I believe Ballenarca is derived from baleen, which whales use to strain and eat krill,and ark, as in a large sea vessel. They had just come from Miami’s Art Basel where a Whale Arc seemed quite in order. The whale was constructed on a boat trailer.  Car jacks held up the whales massive jaw. Large metal ribs were covered with fiberglass. There was a wide cast of foam characters in the show. Orlando has a strong puppetry community thanks to Heather Henson’s Ibex puppetry.  Hannah Miller and Jack Fields were there. I would say that half the audience were puppeteers and the other half were excited children. There isn’t much of a difference between the two.

The show was colorful and surreal. There was a four legged dog fish, a red character that looked like a cross between a tooth and a heart, and an eight foot high centipede. When the centipede interacted with the kids, the squealed with delight. Kids easily accept the characters and can quickly imagine the world they inhabit. This was no longer a parking lot, but a magical under sea world. Kids don’t react the same way when high tech movies force feed every digital detail.

After the performance, kids were invited inside the whale’s open mouth. The puppeteers needed to drive the whale to Heather Henson’s warehouse where it would stay for the night. They would be on the road the next day to their next open air stage. I was invited to have dinner with the cast at Loving Hut and I jumped at the chance. On the drive to the restaurant I ended up driving right behind the whale. The tale had to be removed for the drive, but the whale still grinned at me. You don’t see a whale in traffic very often. At Loving Hut, one member of the cast was fascinated by one of my brush pens. He did a drawing of a mysterious dark haired girl with straight bangs, in the back of my sketchbook. He signed it Poncili.

Winter Park Art in Chambers is to feature the daily sketches of Thor.

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The City Park Public Art Advisory Board invites you to attend a free artist reception for the sketches of Thomas (Thor) Thorspecken from analogartistdigitalworld.com. Refreshments will be provided. Mark your Calendar! The opening reception is Wednesday May 6th from 5:30pm to 7pm at the Commission Chambers and Chapman Room in Winter Park City Hall 401 South Park Avenue Winter Park, FL 32789 second floor. Stop on out and say hi. The show will hang through August 1st.

For anyone who wants to keep the Art Party going, I will be going to the British Invasion Body Painting Show right afterwards to sketch. That event is at the Majestic Event Center, 801 North John Young Parkway, Orlando, FL. Doors officially open at 8pm. Watch talented body painters transform models into living works of art right before your eyes while getting a chance to interact with the artists and the “art.” Some of Orlando’s top entertainers will also be performing on stage throughout the evening. Enjoy the bar specials and browse the artists vending tables.
Entry is $10 presale or $15 at the door.
Get your tickets at www.BASEOrlando.com

The Winter Park boat tour allows you to peak into the backyards of the rich.

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My very distant cousin, Cornelia Thorspecken and her daughter Nini Thorspecken. They are related through my great, great great grandfather, Dr Augustus Thorspecken who sailed to America back in 1854. One of his brothers stayed in Germany and that is who Cornelia and Nini are descendants of. Besides visiting theme parks, Terry and I wanted to suggest a few outings that would give them a taste of real Florida. I joined my cousins on a boat tour of the Winter Park chain of lakes.

Our pontoon boat captain was quite a character. He wore bright yellow suspenders that looked like tape measures. He had stayed in Germany for quite a while after the war and he quizzed my cousins to see if Germany was still the same. His on going monologue was well rehearsed but, I wasn’t that interested in which basketball star owned which lake front mansion. Passing between lakes the boat would glide under small bridges and we all had to duck our heads down.

We met Terry on Park Avenue and strolled along, window shopping. Nini recognized a perfume from the Provence region of France. She wanted to go to a Taco Bell for lunch so her tastes were varied and we were glad to comply. My entire family had rented out a four bedroom timeshare north of Disney and only a short ride from our house, so every night we went there for diner and wine. It was a fun filled week long family reunion.

On another excursion, Terry and I took our German cousins to a wildlife preserve north of Wekiva Springs. On the hike we spotted plenty of birds and I was happy that I got to point out several alligators in the water right off the trail. Cornelia said that she was glad to get a  chance to experience Florida the way it was a hundred years ago.

The Kentucky Derby Galloped Onto Winter Park

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On May 3rd “Derby on Park” was held at the Winter Park Country Club (761 Old England Avenue Winter Park FL.) Event organizer, Anthony Dinova, invited me out to sketch the event. This was on the same day as the Kentucky Derby so women came out with their finest wide brimmed hats. I decided to sketch the well heeled crowd waiting outside for food. Several golfers were using the putting green when I started blocking in the sketch but they left when it started drizzling. Inside there was live music, wine and of course the Kentucky Derby was on TV.

The exciting ambiance of the well-renowned annual Kentucky Derby was
brought to Winter Park. This themed event boasted unlimited
craft beer and wine along with samplings of delicious food and desserts
from various local vendors for all in attendance. Guests were encouraged
to dress in their finest Derby attire with prizes for best-dressed in
several categories. With a complimentary private-labeled bottle of wine
for each guest, live broadcast of the Kentucky Derby, Fashion show and
live entertainment, the prestige and energy of this coveted signature
event provided guests with the most sophisticated and stylish
afternoon outside of Churchill Downs.

As I worked on the sketch I heard the crowd inside start to cheer as the race started. The roar grew louder until the horses crossed the finish line. Terry was inside to catch all the action. There was a small retaining wall at the edge of the putting green and people used it as a bench to sit while sipping their mint juleps.  A women who came outside to get away from the claustrophobic crowd inside sat on the ledge and then unexpectedly fainted. Luckily she fell back onto the soft grass rather than forward onto the brick patio. She was revived by her friends and event organizers called the fire department and EMTs to check her vitals. She hadn’t been drinking so she couldn’t figure out why she fainted.

With the sketch done I went inside to spend time with Terry and to grab a bite to eat. A new batch of pasta was being warmed up and I waited for a bit. The crowd thinned out fast after the race but Terry and I stayed to see who won the best bonnet award. One woman had a huge bouquet of flowers on her bonnet and I was surprised that she didn’t win. Perhaps connections are more important than flourish.

Shin Sushi

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On Friday February 28th, I went to meet Julie Anderson at Shin Sushi (803 N. Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL) to discuss the Orlando Sentinel‘s new “HypeOrlando Blogs.” This can be found on the Sentinel website on the “Home” tab at the top of the page. Several months ago, Terry and I bumped into Julie and her husband Lars at an outdoor cafe in Winter Park. Over drinks, Julie first described the “Hype” concept. A newspaper in Chicago first developed the idea where a large group of bloggers all contribute to the same blog site. None of the contributors is paid, so the newspaper online site gets plenty of creative content for free.

In return, “Hype” contributors would get, a daily newsletter from an experienced blogger
on how to build audience (Search engine optimization, optimizing
Facebook, writing headlines that make people click, etc.)

Offline blogger community meetups. 

Free platform and technical setup.

Ongoing technical support.

Monthly incentives and contests for writing and audience-building.

I got to the Sushi restaurant a bit early since I had just done an interview with Seth Kubersky a few blocks away for a write up in the Orlando Weekly. The head waiter at Shin Sushi told me I would have to wait an hour before I could get inside. I had hoped to sketch the interior and fill the sketch with patrons as they arrived for the lunch hour. Oh, well, it was a nice day outside, so I sat across the street and sketched the barren exterior. As I was finishing my sketch, I saw Julie approach the restaurant and go inside. I packed up the supplies and rushed across the street. The restaurant was bustling now. I ordered some sushi combo which turned out to be much more food than expected.

HypeOrlando in it’s first weeks had about 30 contributors. Julie hopes to push those numbers up into the hundreds. My impression is that “Hype” is a great opportunity for beginning bloggers. All the layouts for the blogs are identical making it hard to tell one blog from another. The one established “Hype” blogger that I recognized was  Kristen Manieri who runs Great Dates Orlando. Over lunch, Julie pushed for the idea of having me channel all my future content over to the “HypeOrlando” site. This seemed like an extreme notion which would likely result in my loosing many readers in the transition. I can’t imagine giving up a site that I’ve built up over 5 years. Kristen still maintains her original site while occasionally contributing to “Hype”. The fact that I post creative content every day means that I would have to write a new article any time I wanted to contribute to “Hype.” I would have to add an 8th day to my work week! I asked about just posting an article on “Hype” that already ran or simultaneously ran on Analog Artist Digital World. Julie said that the Google search engine would label any re-purposed article as spam thus all content would have to be new.

I fired of a long list of concerns. I didn’t like having to give up a large header on the new site. Apparently the “Chicago Now”  site learned that letting contributors create their own headers resulted in some very bad and amateurish designs. The “Hype” site limits each contributor to a one inch square avatar. It results in trying to create a recognizable brand on the size of a postage stamp. I was also concerned that there is no right click copyright protections making it easy for Sentinel Surfers to copy any sketches I post to the site. This is an ongoing concern since even the Downtown Arts District and the City of Winter Park do not realize that it is wrong to copy and republish work without permission. The Internet is a lawless Wild West for theft and ripping. The fact that City organizations have no clue about copyright makes it appear that Orlando is a second rate city. Terry seems to feel there is no advantage to posting on “Hype”. Even the name seems to imply vacuous content with little substance. I’m still weighing the options. I might even cut back submissions to Analog Artist Digital World to 6 days a week and submit one article a week to “Hype”. I’ve been making adjustments to try and allow for more family time and contributing free content to “Hype” could be a step backwards. I was surprised and pleased that Julie paid for lunch.

Let me know what you think. Should I stay the course and keep AADW a daily, or should I also contribute to the “Hype”? Leave me a message below. One last note. Something I ate at Shin Sushi didn’t agree with me and I had the runs all afternoon. Not a good sign.

Wednesday Open Words

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Every Wednesday at Austin’s Coffee, (929 West Fairbanks Avenue in Winter Park FL) Curtis Meyer hosts an Open Mic called “Wednesday Open Words.” The evening starts at 8pm but I was in Winter Park and decided to go to Austin’s Coffee early to grab some diner. Students sat on the makeshift stage immersed in their laptops. The young woman seated across from me lounged on the couch intently reading a real paper bound book. I watched her expression as the read and at times she was visibly upset. Something horrible was going on in those pages. I imagined she might be reading “The Catcher in the Rye.” As I recall it had a red cover. When she got up to leave she noticed my sketch. I had to ask her what she was reading. It turned out that “The Hunger Games” was required reading for one of her classes.

Curtis arrived and gradually he cleared the stage and set up a microphone. The theme for the evening was Disney Animated Films. Having worked at Feature Animation, I had to be a bit of an expert on the decade of films I worked on. Curtis was very stoked about the film “Saving Mr. Banks” which stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. He insisted I go see it. To warm up the crowd, Curtis had everyone repeat, “Pink pajamas, penguins on the bottom.” It is a tongue twister which is rather fun to repeat again and again in succession. There were trivia questions between readers and I managed to guess the name of the dog in Disney Pixar’s “Up.” The dogs name was Dug. I won an odd green feathery pin with a yellow skull from “The Princess and the Frog.” It is now partially stained with black ink from one of my pens.

One particularly fun poem used all of the Disney made up words. It turns out that besides Supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus, there are many others that are just as strange. Curtis wanted to find one word that defines each Disney film plot. For instance Rapunzel, the word is Tangled. For Snow Queen the word is Frozen. For Little Mermaid the word might be pants. For Beauty and the Beast the word would be Stockholmed. This might make a good drinking game to whittle each film down to one word. One line from someones poem stuck with me, “The beauty of the world makes demands on us.

Curtis was great about being sure the audience respected how brave all the speakers were. Public speaking is a universal fear. Snapping fingers were encouraged when the poems were profound. Seda Gay spoke about four grown women who returned to the Disney theme parks together. Two of those women were now divorced but they all stepped back to their childhood relationships discovering where they left off. One poet was accompanied by a guitar player. He said most of his creative ideas were formed by the age of 11. He imagined flying being an everyday occurrence to get through our heavy Earth bound days. He was of course speaking as Peter Pan. Curtis chimed in, “All you got to do is believe.”

Fa La La La La Park Avenue Window Walk

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On December 10, I Luv Winter Park organized a stroll down Park Avenue in Winter Park. People gathered in the Hidden Garden Courtyard from 5 to 6, taking advantage of Happy Hour libations at The Bistro. Then, around 6-ish, everyone walked  down the east side of Park Avenue, then back up. It was a chance for friends  to get into a  holiday mood and have some fun while checking out the  windows up and down Park Avenue!

I couldn’t get to the bistro at 5, so instead I simply found a spot on Park Avenue to sketch. I chose to sketch Be On Park jewelry store (152 S Park Ave, Winter Park, FL) simply because I didn’t have a parked car blocking the view. Large orbs of light were hung in the trees all along Park Avenue. It was quite a display. Eventually the strollers did run across me.  Clyde took pictures of my sketch in progress.

A mom and her daughter, dressed in an elegant Cinderella gown stopped to meet every one. The little girl proudly showed off her glass slippers rotating her foot on point. After everyone left and I was getting close to finishing the sketch, a rather disheveled man stood in front of me and angrily asked, “Are you an artist?” It is the one question I can’t stand. I looked around wondering if my wife put him up to it. I made some polite reply. He wanted money for new shoes, but his shoes looked fine to me. When your sitting still you are an easy mark. It started to rain as I made my way back to my car. Why can’t they afford snow?

Sketching in the Attic

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I used to attend sketch sessions in the Attic of the Martin’s home in Winter Park. Mary Martin was always there to supervise, but Bernie Martin was never there. I guess he prefers to work from models alone. In these sessions the models were nude with shorter one minute sketches in the beginning and longer sketches later in the evening. I always enjoyed these sessions but there is usually some event going on the same evening so overtime, I stopped going, preferring to sketch the chaos of everyday life.

On one occasion I bumped into Bernie Martin while I was sketching in Falcon Bar. He decided to sketch as well. I found out that models cost about $12 per hour. I’m considering the notion of hiring models to start producing more finished paintings. Sketching on location is rewarding, but any event seldom goes on for more than two hours. Some painters can work on a painting for months. It would be nice to give myself the luxury of models and more time. Perhaps that should be my goal moving into the New Year.

On New Year’s Day, Terry and I are hosting an all day black and white themed party celebrating Analog Artist Digital World’s 5 year anniversary.  We supply the beers, bagels, lox and cream
cheese and food. Kelly DeWayne Richards will be performing on the piano.
The party starts at 1pm and goes to 11pm. Consider this post an invitation. Please call 407 810-4189 to RSVP and come on out.