“I’ve been constantly going, going, going since high school. After graduation, I’ll only have my job to think about. That’s my next frontier — slowing down,” says Oquendo, a student in the experimental animation track of the ‘s emerging media program.

No one questions Oquendo’s pursuits, except maybe this idea of tapping the brakes. Landing the job with WBA is a microcosm of the personality we’re talking about. Oquendo texted a friend at the studio, then double texted and triple texted. The messages were to the point: Please give me a chance. You will not regret it.

“When I finally interviewed with the producer, she said she’d never seen someone so driven,” Oquendo says.

“When I finally interviewed with the producer, she said she’d never seen someone so driven.”

Oquendo’s entire college life is a story of drive, nearly 10 years in the making. It includes full-time jobs, more than a hundred scholarship applications, paying for household bills, and pushing forward — always pushing forward.

“My mom would say, ‘You have your head above the clouds with your feet on the ground,’ ” Oquendo says.

Oquendo could fill a motivational calendar with family quotes like that.

From Grandma: “Always look at yourself in the mirror and be happy with who you are.”

From the person in the mirror: “I can mourn failure and spend energy complaining or get up in the morning and use my energy to make things better.”

The quotes are rooted in life experiences for the Oquendos. Grandma and grandpa fled in Cuba and came to the U.S. in 1992. They arrived with no money, no jobs and four daughters to feed, including Lyn’s mother. For a long time, they lived with ten family members in a small apartment in Miami.

“They lost everything in Cuba,” Oquendo says. “My grandfather never learned to read or write. He and my grandmother had to figure out how to make it here. They never expected others to do it for them.”

Oquendo grew up with mom and grandma after grandpa passed away.

“Grandma always told me how important it is to fight for yourself and for your family,” Oquendo says.

She and mom would read to Oquendo, who became fascinated with stories and art while sitting in their laps. The book that kept Oquendo riveted more than any other? The Bible. Grandma and mom would read about Jonah and the whale, David and Goliath, David and Saul. Again and again.

“I could never get enough,” Oquendo says. “The artwork and the power of those stories amazed me. They interconnected to tell this bigger overall story, and they impacted history forever.”

As a teenager, Oquendo thought often about making a living with art and stories. But those thoughts were never voiced out loud. Instead, Oquendo would claim to have an interest in teaching. The family had worked so hard to re-establish their lives. What would they say about the practicality of an art career?

“Now I look back and know my mother would have said, ‘Sure, you can do it.’ But then she would have said, ‘You can also figure out how to do it,’ ” Oquendo says.

“Now I look back and know my mother would have said, ‘Sure, you can do it.’ But then she would have said, ‘You can also figure out how to do it.’ ”

After high school, Oquendo figured out how to get into an art college in Chicago. However, Oquendo could not figure out how to continue paying $34,000 per semester. After one fall in Chicago, Oquendo enrolled at Broward Community College as a pathway into �鶹ӳ����ý’s emerging media program. A year later, another obstacle came up when the design portion of Oquendo’s portfolio didn’t pass entry into the program. Some students would have changed course. Not Oquendo.

“It became a turning point in my life. I realized my own negative thoughts had been getting in the way,” Oquendo says. “That’s why I didn’t tell anyone about my interest in art. It’s probably why my grades weren’t so great in high school. I knew it was time to prove to everyone that I could do this. Most of all, I had to prove it to myself.”

Oquendo worked overtime on design skills and pushed the door open to �鶹ӳ����ý’s emerging media program. Mom couldn’t pay for college, so Oquendo applied for scholarships and worked full-time while taking a heavy course load. The resume includes making donuts at Universal Orlando, stocking inventory at Target, preparing takeout boxes at PF Chang’s and cleaning up at an animal shelter.

Figuring it out also meant paying for rent and monthly bills, buying a car, shopping for food, while growing as an artist and storyteller — and maintaining a 3.9 GPA. This became Oquendo’s own motivational quote: “I can either be a stick in the fire, or be the wind and grow the fire to warm myself up.”

Oquendo carved out time to apply for more than 100 jobs and internships with companies that had any vague connection to emerging media — from local t-shirt shops to Pixar. A spreadsheet of notes from those applications fed the fire, and still does:

“Unread.” “No.” “No response.” “Ghosted.”

They warmed up Oquendo until a better opportunity than anyone could imagine arose — an internship with WBA to work on productions like Teen Titans Go!, Harley Quinn, and Bugs Bunny Builders. The internship led to connections that led to the texts that led to a pre-graduation career start.

“This field is not an easy one. But because of that, everyone who’s in it wants to be in it.”

“This field is not an easy one,” Oquendo says. “But because of that, everyone who’s in it wants to be in it. I’m working with a person who’s passionate about designing movie credits. Think about that — movie credits. I also met a guy who had always dreamed of making cartoon movie trailers. We’re like-minded. Something drives each of us to do this.”

Two of Oquendo’s driving forces will be present at commencement. Mom will watch from a seat in Addition Financial Arena. The other will be on Oquendo’s graduation cap: “Para ti, Abuela. Siempre para ti.”

For you, Grandma. Always for you.

“I knew I had to counter my incarceration with something positive. Education would be the ticket to get my life back on track.”
— Jason Fronczek ’16

“A straight line isn’t true to life,” says Jason Fronczek ’16. “Make scribbles. Give them time. They’ll eventually look beautiful and real.”

Fronczek’s students have names. But if you saw their clothes and where class is being held, you wouldn’t ask for their names. You’d just call them prisoners. The teacher has a different perspective, though.

“I’ve been in your shoes,” he tells the students incarcerated at the Central Florida Reception Center in Orlando run by the Florida Department of Corrections.

He has their attention.

“And I’m about to finish my master’s degree at �鶹ӳ����ý.”

And with that, their eyes are open wide — just as eyes should be.

Fronczek is still trying to process this himself. He was released from prison 10 years ago but is still releasing himself from the trap of his own story. Photography has freed him to see the world in a whole different way. And teaching art through the Florida Prison Education Project (FPEP) is his way of giving others hope while they’re still incarcerated.

“Jason is an amazing person,” says Keri Watson, associate professor of art history at �鶹ӳ����ý and director of FPEP. “I don’t see him as a ‘former felon.’ He’s a father, a student, an artist. To see what he’s gone through — he’s an illustration of success.”

Fronczek tells his students to keep those eyes open wide. Because if he can see himself in their shoes, maybe they can also see themselves in his.

Finding a Positive Perspective

Fronczek doesn’t avoid the uncomfortable truth. “I was convicted, imprisoned.” Just get it out of the way so the talk can go from small to very large. “I want people to realize that my mistakes are not my identity. I’ve moved forward. We should all move forward.”

“A straight line isn’t true to life. Make scribbles. Give them time. They’ll eventually look beautiful and real.”

To do that, he’ll first give the details you’re wondering about. He went to jail in August 2006 for burglarizing a neighbor’s home. Sentenced to five years, he ended up serving four years and three months.

Fronczek could easily have chosen to become bitter or jaded. He chose instead to read — one or two books every day. The longer books, like etymological dictionaries, took three days. By the time he got out in 2010, he’d consumed about 2,000 books.

“I knew I had to counter my incarceration with something positive,” says Fronczek. “Education would be the ticket to get my life back on track.”

The Bible made such an impact that he first thought about going to seminary school. But shortly after his release, the mother of a friend gave Fronczek a used camera. It brought back memories — good memories. He wanted to learn more.

So less than a year after leaving prison, Fronczek enrolled at Valencia College and through the earned bachelor’s degrees in visual arts and emerging media management and studio art. The two majors piqued his interest in the power of art, so in 2016 he applied to the emerging media MFA program. A year later he reapplied and was accepted.

Fronczek absorbed concepts and applied them to his own photography. He took a few of Watson’s courses because something at the core of her teaching connected with him, he says. She also told him the hard truth about his thesis.

“It was too general, too focused on research,” she says. “For art to be universally understood, you need to start with your own story.”

Although Fronczek is willing to share his story in casual conversation, he also knows how hard it is to understand. It takes perspective.

And that’s just it. Art is perspective, right?

“Bringing personal experiences into my thesis makes all the difference,” he says, “because I want a way to influence attitudes and behaviors.”

Personal perspective is especially true with his photography, which can be traced back to the point-and-shoot camera he bought for $10 as a kid, the Nikon he got from his brother in a sweet trade, and the gift from his friend’s mother after his incarceration. Perspective allows him to marvel through his lenses at things the rest of us might ignore. Chaos in leaves. Empty bicycle racks at Walmart. The construction on I-4, of all places.

“I look at the juxtaposition of the pylons and the angles of unfinished bridges,” he says. “It all has something interesting to offer.”

Sharing His Story

Even with his bachelor’s degrees and a master’s nearly in hand, Fronczek finds it challenging to find a place to rent or to score job interviews. It’s the box he has to check on the applications. Ever been convicted of a felony?

“Art has a way of showing the potential you never realized you had. Look at me.”

But even the box has opened up a something marvelous. There were things Watson and Fronczek didn’t know about each other through their first few semesters together at �鶹ӳ����ý. He didn’t know she’d taught art to prisoners in Alabama and in 2018 launched the FPEP. She didn’t know where he’d been, either.

“I could sense there was something special Jason had to offer,” she says, “but I didn’t know he’d been incarcerated until I saw the box he had to check when applying for our master’s program. That’s when I asked him to teach in the FPEP program.”

Fronczek is more likely to say he spends three hours a day “encouraging” incarcerated students rather than teaching.

“Art has a way of showing the potential you never realized you had,” he says. “Look at me.”

He says he still hasn’t grasped the gravity of this: Jason Fronczek, MFA. But that isn’t his identity, either. His life is a bunch of scribbles, like the world around us. That’s the message of his story: When he started to find beauty in a world of scribbles, it found beauty in him, too.

That’s the premise of graduate student Jason Gregory’s TV pilot Waking Up White. Gregory’s story follows a black family that wakes up one day to find they are now white. They then have 30 days to decide if they would rather return to their cultural roots or stick with the skin that they are in now.

“It’s a show based on cultural identity and what is at risk of being lost. We deal a lot with gentrification [in the show] and the issue of gentrification also deals with the loss of cultural identity,” Gregory says.

Gregory started developing the idea in 2016 as his thesis film for the Master of Fine Arts in emerging media program. Several professors suggested he turn the idea into a TV show instead and after three days of dedicated work he delivered the script for the pilot.

When the time came to start filming, Gregory put out a crew call and was surprised that so many people were interested in being a part of the project. Ultimately, 40 �鶹ӳ����ý students offered their time and assistance to take the story from a script to filming a full production in Eatonville, a historic black community, within a week.

“I was really humbled and honored by the amount of people that came out,” Gregory says. “A lot of people said we couldn’t film a pilot in seven days, but we got it done.”

“It’s a show based on cultural identity and what is at risk of being lost.” – Jason Gregory, �鶹ӳ����ý student

The first screening for the pilot will air during the 30th annual Zora! Festival on Jan. 28 at the Eatonville Town Hall (307 East Kennedy Blvd.) Three showings will be 11 a.m. to noon; 12:45 to 1:45 p.m.; and 2:15 to 3:15 p.m.

This year’s festival is the 30^thanniversary of the multi-day, multi-disciplinary event held to celebrate the life and work of author and former Eatonville resident Zora Neale Hurston. It will be held Jan. 26 to Feb. 3 and include public talks, museum exhibitions, theatrical productions and more.

Here, Gregory shares more about Waking Up White:

How did you come up with the idea for Waking Up White?
I was watching TV one night and an African-American woman was on TV and she was responding to a news reporter’s question about an African-American who had just recently been shot and killed, and she said: “This wouldn’t have happened if we were white.” And I just started thinking about that and realized there’s a lot of power in that word “If.” From there I just started creating the outline for this story.

The project is filmed entirely in Eatonville. Why did you choose this location?
There are a couple great things about Eatonville. They are their own municipality. They have their own mayor, police force, they’re pretty much self-governed. And we were looking for a town to partner with. We loved the rich history and culture that they have. For the show, we actually created our own fictitious town called Wellsville, so we borrowed from some of Eatonville’s history. We named our town Wellsville because of Dr. [William Monroe] Wells, who was one of the first African-American doctors in Parramore (another historic African-American community.) And then we took the “ville” from Eatonville.

What was the most challenging part of creating this project?
Just trying to make sure that everyone had the time because everyone worked for free, from the crew to the cast. We just had to really work around people’s schedules to make sure we could get it done, and we did. A lot of people said that we couldn’t shoot a pilot in seven days and we got it done.

What are some of your biggest influences?
One of my biggest influences is Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. I eat, sleep and breathe that film, so there are a lot of influences from Spike Lee [in the show.] I joke around and tell people when I was a kid everyone would say, “I want to be like Mike,” because of the Gatorade commercials with Michael Jordan. I would say, “I want to be like Spike.”

I have also been majorly influenced by Reginald Hudlin, who directed Boomerangand Marshall, [as well as] Ava DuVernay and Martin Scorsese.

Do you have any tips for other students who are attempting similar projects?
Find a mentor very quickly. A mentor that has been through what you’re attempting to go through so they can show you not only the successes, but also the failures. Become a student not only of film, but also project management and planning so you can plan accordingly. I planned so much that I even studied weather patterns over the past years on the dates we were filming just to be prepared. I made sure that if we needed to, we could shift from an exterior scene to an interior scene in case it started raining.

What are you most proud of within this project?
My proudest moment was working with a team dedicated to making quality projects, who are also motivated in advancing the Central Florida film market. We have great crews and actors here and I was honored to have them working on Waking Up White. It was a true community project. From the crew and actors to �鶹ӳ����ý and Eatonville. I’m extremely proud of what we accomplished.

What does it mean to you that the public is going to finally see this?
It means a lot. I think everyone wants to leave some type of mark on society. We have a society that is built on the word “if.” ������I were this, maybe I would have that. We really wanted to see if the grass is really greener on the other side and are there really opportunities out there that we are excluded from. And I’m hoping that this project will create an opportunity for dialogue so that we can get to a point to where we can identify more of what we have in common than just our differences.

Joseph Barbour, Christina Fowinkle, Janae’ Fox, Nadia Jarquin, Donald Marks, and Nicole Walsh produced the short in just four months in Scott F. Hall’s spring 2010 Animation Workshop course. Scott Hall is an associate professor in the �鶹ӳ����ý School of Visual Arts and Design.

Red Stick International Animation Festival highlights the convergence of technology, art, entertainment, and exploration. A record-breaking 421 animations were submitted into the competition from 45 countries, while only 87 were selected for screening.

Preview Mocha Latte on .

The school combines traditional studio arts, design and art history with emerging media concepts that are the foundation of animation, game and interactive design. The new school will feature tracks that unite curricula from each school, such as emerging media and game design.

In addition to the previously existing and overlapping tracks, the school will feature two new degrees: a visual arts and emerging media management degree, and an architecture degree.

The visual arts and emerging media management program gives students a basic insight into the creation of art and media, but the focus will be more on preparing students for a work environment centered around emerging media and visual art, Lew said.

The architecture program will be a “two-plus-two-plus-two” program, in which students will complete an NAAB accredited architectural program. They will complete two years at Valencia Community College, earning their associate’s degree, then two years at �鶹ӳ����ý to earn their bachelor’s degrees. The program is offered at �鶹ӳ����ý at the Valencia West campus, located off of Kirkman Road in Orlando.

If architecture students choose to continue their education, they will complete another two years with the University of Florida, earning their master’s degree at the Center for Emerging Media location in Downtown Orlando.

“What we’re doing with this interactive education is reflective of what’s happening in the industry, where different disciplines within the arts as well as related fields of the arts work together,” Lew said.

For more information, visit the School of Visual Arts and Design website, .

Source: Central Florida Future, ,  by Anthony Syros,  contributing writer. Published: Sunday, June 6, 2010,  updated: Sunday, June 6, 2010.