The blessing and curse of a vibrant arts community like Charlottesville is that, with revolutionaries of theater, film, music and art springing up and moving out sometimes quicker than you can say “Encore!” it can be difficult to keep up with every provocative performance or local exhibit. Curtain Calls is here to track these developments for you. Action.
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“Tracking” is exactly what we did this past week with Greg Kelly, a founder of the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. Kelly agreed, on a “feels like 106 degrees” day, to take Curtain Calls to a hidden art exhibit buried in the Charlottesville woods. We’d tell you the location, of course, but then we’d have to kill you. Instead, here’s the scoop:
Not for sale: A mural created by Tibetan artist Pema Rinzin and a handful of locals remains under wraps in a secret location in the city.
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In early May, the Bridge brought Tibetan artist Pema Rinzin to town for a lecture about tangka painting, a traditionally sacred art form in which a Buddha is depicted and revered as highly as the spiritual being itself. The day following his lecture, Rinzin and a few friends of the Bridge, including local Max Fenton (currently studying with Rinzin in New York City) and graffiti artists David Ellis and Kiku Yamaguchi, traveled to a hidden city location and, in six hours, raised a mural of a whipping, churning worm—more than 10′ on the wall, and bright orange.
Rinzin is, according to Kelly, a “beer drinking, cigarette smoking, cell phone-having kinda guy,” and has moved this revered, religious art form to the secular modern world of galleries and glitz. So why are we in the woods?
“This engages something more process-based. There are limitations in the art world based on the commercial,” says Kelly as, shaded by trees, hidden from view, the temperature drops. “This is kinda sacred.”
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We all want to see the bright lights, but some lights—say, those at The Paramount Theater—are brighter than others. Typically, the bill for a performance at the Paramount puts the venue beyond the reach of local performers’ wallets.
Peter Ryan of the Jefferson Youth Theater confirms the venue’s price tag. However, thanks to the Paramount’s new Community Performance Access Fund, Ryan and JYT will bring a local kids’ production of Beauty and the Beast to the Paramount on July 13.
While he won’t specify the price of renting the venue (can you put a price on stardom?), Ryan says that “the fund basically cut the price in half.”
A cast of roughly 50 kids, including 12 young ’uns from the Boys and Girls Club, will perform Ryan’s adaptation of Beauty (from the French fairy tale rather than the Disney film, which means fewer singing tea cups). “We cast everyone,” says Ryan. “The younger guys tend to be birds or monkeys…Belle is played at four different ages…” The show starts at 7pm, and tickets run from $6 to $12.
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Two local filmmakers trained at Light House Studio, Ross Bollinger and Brandon Dudley, recently returned from the L.A. Film Festival, where they screened a cartoon (“Pencilmation”) and a music video (“You’ll Never Know Me”) twice, respectively. Bollinger’s cartoon is visible at www.pencilmation.com.
Bollinger and Dudley add to the list of Light House’s notable achievements this year. Four producers received a Peabody Award for a documentary about UVA student Sahar Adish’s move to Charlottesville from Kabul. And Listen Up!, a network for supporting young producers, recently awarded Light House for a documentary titled “Sew What?” The film examines 16-year-old Quintin Franklyn, a would-be fashion designer from Westhaven.
And, scene.
Got any arts news to share? E-mail us at curtain@c-ville.com.
