Pat Greene is Bungalower Media’s first sponsored Resident Reporter. Greene has joined our team as our Arts and Culture Correspondent for the next quarter, supported by the efforts of Interstruct Design + Build, an award-winning Orlando-based design and build firm.
In the early 1960s, John Johansen (Website) designed the downtown Orange County Library building on Central between Magnolia and Rosalind, replacing the Albertson Public Library building that opened in 1923. The massive brutalist structure is my favorite building in Orlando, but Brutalism has never gained widespread appeal, and the building seems to have become a love-it-or-hate-it topic.
Thankfully, across the street on the northeast corner of Rosalind and Central is a work of art with a bit more mass appeal. It was done by Peterson Guerrier, and his business partner/friend Chris Jones (Instagram). It is called Achromatic Aria Fresco- An Ode to Harmony.
Now, the combination of both the mural and the library building across the street has made that corner my favorite local art and design corner downtown. It spans an entire six-story building and features Peterson’s own young daughter masking her eyes.
This corner is the first place I take people who are visiting, who have an interest in art and design.
Like most of Peterson’s work, it is a portrait. His work is the perfect blend of abstract and figurative. The subjects usually look to be floating in a dreamy field of color. There is a feeling that we don’t know the whole story, but we want to know.
Peterson himself is an affable and humble guy. He is one of my favorite people to run into. He’s always involved in a project, and planning the next one. He grew up in Miami. His mother is from Haiti, and his father is French-Canadian.
Peterson graduated from the Design and Architecture Senior High School in Miami Florida. After high school, he went to FIU where he started out as a pre-med student but thankfully he ended up in CCS, College for Creative Studies in Detroit where he started out in animation, and switched to studio art.
He left the school shortly thereafter because he didn’t enjoy the cold weather, but at that point, he was already an artist for life. He moved to Orlando in 2006. A year or so later he connected with what is now known as the B-Side Art Collective (Instagram), a group that counts some of the most well known and talented local artists.
He ended up showing at the Redefine Gallery (Website) and that was the beginning of his Orlando artist career.
Peterson can often be seen at the Red Tape Studio (Website), on the south side of the historic Rogers-Kiene building, also home to CityArts. The Queen Anne-style building is the oldest in Orlando and was built in 1886. Most of the building is used by CityArts, where, full disclosure, I served as the gallery director and curator for a number of years.
The Downtown Arts District (Website) recently hosted a pop-up mural festival at the recent Third Thursday event on Magnolia between Pine and Central. It featured 30 artists who were commissioned to paint on large masonite boards. The paintings will be auctioned off at a later date. Guerrier was the only artist who got a physical wall, which he painted with the help of his daughter. You can find it on the Magnolia side of the building where Papi Smash restaurant is located, kitty-corner from CityArts in downtown Orlando.
I urge you all to go check out Achromatic Aria Fresco- An Ode to Harmony, across from the library. I hope these murals and the mural festival are the beginning of more public art ventures in the city. In my ideal world, art would be everywhere, and Peterson would be one of the artists responsible.
I was dropping of some paintings Savannah and went into grand bohemian riverside. Saw a portrait with a red circle on the eye. Glad to see another local still grinding.
Beautiful article