Darlyn had a surprise for me. "I want you to meet my artist," she said. "Bring your camera."
As one of the leading ladies in the Florida poetry scene, it is becoming increasingly common for Darlyn to be paired with an artist, or two, for collaborations guaranteed to amaze. We were on our way to the Orlando studio of Cheryl Bogdanowitsch, a sculptor known for her fantastic wood sprites and spirits carved from gnarled and knotted limbs she strips of bark and stacks like so much, well, cordwood, around her studio on Lake Formosa - a stone's throw away from the community center where Gram Parsons played with his band "Legends," and where bands like The Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, and the Outlaws, hit the small stage before making it to the big one -- a youth club so hot that older teens would get fake IDs so they could appear "young" enough to get in. But that's a story for another day -- one already written by local pop historian and WESH TV reporter Bob Kealing, for Orlando Magazine back in 2007.
The poets and artists in these collaborations have a quaint possessive way of referring to each other as "my poet" and "my artist." Darlyn had been to the studio at the beginning of the process, and was going to pick up a sculpture inspired by her poetry. Under the rules of engagement, she would have to study the piece, as Bogdanowitsch had studied her work, and write an original poem, inspired by the reflection. That poem, in turn, will be given to a painter, who will create something original inspired by Darlyn's ekphrastic phrases.
But Darlyn had an ulterior motive for inviting me along last night. "This place reminds me of the inside of your head - at least the way you've described it to me." She was not wrong. Over the next few days I'll be presenting some of the photographs I took inside Bogdanowitsch's wonderful studio.
The good stuff:
The REAL Orlando
Circus train - just passing through.
Creamy Jif, from a spoon!
Getting by with a little help from my friends
Living in a state where our politicians actually spend time, and taxpayer money, debating whether a long-dead rockstar, who is buried in Paris, did, or didn't expose his hoo-ha at a concert 40 years ago, and whether he should be pardoned - really. How's that budget coming?
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