Seed Alliance Show

The Seed Orlando Art Alliance sponsored a group show. Ten Analog Artist Digital World sketchbooks are now on display at the downtown Orlando Public Library (101 East Central Boulevard). The books are framed in black shadow box style frames. I transported the work to the library using an old shopping cart. It wasn’t an elegant solution but it worked. The exhibit is on the ground floor right next to where the security officer sits. After I leaned the sketchbooks up against a wall, I settled back to watch and sketch as the exhibit was hung. Karie Brown was super organized with her laptop showing how she planned to hang the exhibit. As a matter of fact Karie was moving around so much that I ended up placing her in the sketch twice. Stephanie Matos was busy organizing all the items in the cart. Bonnie Sprung was there, but somehow I managed not to sketch her. I hope she was kidding when she said she was ticked about my oversight. Marcile Powers showed me her work which was done in the computer and involved intertwining repetitive patterns.If was a fun afternoon getting to meet some local Orlando artists I hadn’t met before.

The opening was January 15th starting at 4 pm and closing the library down at 6pm. After 6 pm the party moved to Blank Space right across the street. Odin’s Den was setting up it’s sound system and Karie arranged for a bottle of champagne. The sound check for Odin’s Den took forever and even after they started performing they had to stop and re-adjust the sound. Terry and I had to rush off to the opening of a new club downtown called Heat, so we slipped out.The Seed Alliance Art Show at the Library will be hanging through February 28th so stop down and take a look.

Visual Fringe

This is the second year I have exhibited work in Visual Fringe. There was a $20 entry fee that I had forgotten about, but I gladly paid to be part of this amazing event. Anna McCambridge and Jeremy Seghers were behind the table to take my work and welcome me to Fringe. A year ago I started sketching at the Fringe and I felt like a bit of an outsider. This year, attending Fringe feels like going home and every day brings fun reunions with people I have sketched and admired over the year. Just as I did last year. I settled back and did a sketch of the Visual Fringe reception table as art work filtered in. I picked up my Fringe button and Fringe lanyard and was told by Anna to return for the Fringe Gala in a few days. This year since I am a performer in the “Creative Mind Experiment“, I find I can go into any show at any time so long as it isn’t sold out. It looks like I will be doing twice as many sketches of actual shows this year. Fringe this year should be a wild non-stop sketch marathon, so strap in and enjoy the ride!

The first show I had to get a ticket for was Brian Feldman’s “Fringe of Nature.” Sultana Fatima Ali had set up a camping chair in the box office and planned to sit from 4PM when the box office opened till 11PM when Brian planned to sell the first of the $10 tickets. I decided to sit with Sultana with my camping chair and we joked around and watched as the Fringe Festival swirled and accelerated to a fevered pitch. Large lines of people would gather at the theaters and then go in leaving the space quiet again. I wandered off and did a sketch and saw my first show which was “Goblin Party Interactive” put on by Heather Henson and her crew at IBEX Puppetry. “Goblin Party Interactive” was a really fun interactive show and I plan to return to sketch. When I joined Sultana again at about quarter to eleven, she was still the only person in line for “Fringe of Nature.” I joked that she might be in the wrong line and that Brian probably wouldn’t have people stand in a traditional line. There was a large group of people standing in a circle and I rationalized that Brian might expect people to stand in a circular line. Any time I spotted a person with hiking boots or any item of clothing that gave a hint of the great outdoors, I let Sultana know that they might be trying to cut in line. Brian finally did show up and sell the tickets, which were gorgeous, encased in lucite ticket holders, and nice enough to hang on a wall. I will be camping with Brian on my birthday, May 22nd; my wife Terry will be joining me.