Maitland Art Center presents 'A Bright Light From the Embers,' documenting the legendary partnership of two Orlando creatives

A tribute to the colorful lives and work of Qurentia Throm and Cicero Greathouse is on display at the Maitland Art Center. Theirs is a story of art, of artists, of the Maitland Art Center itself, and of Central Florida. They're both gone now, and this show is a chance for you to get to know them a little bit, too.

While our times seem dominated by bombast and spectacle, these two artists worked quietly to transform everything they touched and saw, which was a lot. Seeking neither limelight nor headlines, both Throm and Greathouse quietly lived, loved and created with a large moving crowd of friends, artists and admirers in a kind of natural cyclone of creative energy.

Greathouse and Throm managed an exuberance that was large, but wasn't filled with spit or braggadocio. Being in Que and Cicero's circle meant you had to be ready to travel fast and far. Close friends of theirs shared a little bit of the energy the couple both had. "I can't remember if I went to Mexico with them two times or three,'" laughed Jane Oatway, one of Que's close friends. "I think three." She went on to recall art scouting with them for the Acquisition Trust, home construction visits, and a particularly wild escape from a midnight pool party. Back in Orlando, a free, salon-like atmosphere pervaded the couple's home, with Que's famous wind chimes keeping time.

Audio tracks of the chimes' music echo in the Maitland Art Center gallery, their joy interlacing with their story. Timelines, starting with their school photos, are interspersed with iridescent robes and exotic jewelry from their collections. Que's art selected for this show seems to glow with life and spirit, while Greathouse's large abstract paintings shimmer with purples and oranges.

Perhaps the best way to remember the couple is a portrait by artist Barbara Tiffany in the last gallery. Que's eyes shine as they did in real life, while Cicero's dark pupils look out at the viewer with a kind of impish intensity. "They were both really busy and sat separately, or I never could have finished them," recalled Tiffany. "Que was particular about her eyes, and Cicero, well, he said to do whatever I wanted."

That portrait overlooks a display of their travel photos and a vignette with some of their collections of furniture and textiles. On a table are fascinating travel journals — intense, hand-drawn stories in their own right. Gorgeous sketches and watercolors are interspersed with random entries such as: "April 8: Quit smoking." Leafing through the journals gives one a deeper sense of who the artists were and what each saw when looking at the world.

Que and Cicero married in 1999. Nancy Jay, who taught at Valencia with Que Throm before she retired, gave them art as a wedding present. It hangs on the gallery wall, a deliciously hot pink, yellow and red geometric painting inscribed with "To Que and Cicero on the Creation of Their Marriage." Jay shared that Cicero was one of her first students, teaching at Valencia College (then Valencia Community College) way back in 1970. "He enrolled in a drawing class I taught," she recalled. "Campus [yes, there was only one] was small back then — about a thousand students." She remained friends with him after the class and throughout his career.

One of their bases of operations was their residence in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. At first living in a house that they purchased, they proceeded to move to another house that they renovated. Finally, using that house as their staging area, Cicero designed a third house and the couple built it across a year or two of extended visits, with many friends and artists coming and going during construction. Cicero died before the house was completed, and Que used it once or twice afterward, but the fire had gone out of Mexico without him.

The Research Studio at the Maitland Art Center was another of the couple's bases of operation, with parties that started there and went elsewhere, or that started at their home and ended up there. Both artists were astonishingly strong advocates of the Art Center, teaching and volunteering their time, and they bequeathed an endowment large enough to build a new wing.

The Art Center gave Cicero an artist-in-residency fellowship in 2014, and he proceeded to make phenomenal experiments using cardboard boxes. Some of this work, and a bolder, more abstract continuation of these early experiments, make up his part of Bright Light From the Embers .

Their story is also the story of Central Florida's creative community and its peculiar ties to Walt Disney World. Cicero, who worked as an Imagineer, was art director for many projects including Animal Kingdom, one of his proudest achievements. Steve Grant, fellow Imagineer alumnus, recalls, "We worked so hard together side by side for several years on that project, and he was always delightful and upbeat. We remained close friends long after we both left."

The Cicero and Que era was one of unity: Their world was one, encompassing Disney and the Art Center and Mexico and Orlando, and it was a big one full of people they loved and cared about. The galleries in this exhibit vibrate with their energy in a way that somehow harmonizes with the Art Center's architecture, and the soft chimes give the galleries a kind of mischievous, ethereal calm. If the rich story of Central Florida's art scene ever gets properly told, Que and Cicero will have a chapter or two all by themselves.