Of all the changes COVID has brought to the arts world, one of the most significant has been to big-screen entertainment. Charlottesville theaters and moviemakers have done their best to adapt, whether it’s drive-in film festivals or rent-a-theater evenings, but the pandemic has undeniably sped up the trend of people consuming entertainment alone and on […]
With the one-year anniversary of hunkering down in our houses approaching, it’s easy to forget about the beauty of the natural world that we still have access to. Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil are here to remind us. Poets Gay and Nezhukumatathi will discuss their essay collections—The Book of Delights and World of Wonders, respectively—during […]
On the cover of Mala Leche’s inaugural issue, the name of the zine is tiny, hardly visible. The focus is much more on the “bad milk” itself—a cut-out image of a baby bottle, emblazoned with a black skull and crossbones and resting in an equally inky puddle. It’s an eye-catching design, one intended to draw […]
Years before COVID-19 became a worldwide reality, Aja Gabel had pandemics on the mind. In 2011, Gabel—a fiction writer who earned her MFA at UVA two years prior—wrote and published “Little Fish,” a devastating short story that tracks a couple’s deterioration as both partners become afflicted with a mysterious, memory-destroying contagion. The story was an […]
Two decades ago, Terésa Dowell-Vest embarked on a research project. After attending grad school in California, the actor and playwright set out to collect the oral histories of family and community members in her hometown of Charlottesville. The product of this research was 1999’s Vinegar Hill, a play named after the town’s once-thriving Black neighborhood. […]
For many, an IV drip connotes extreme sickness. The treatment is primarily associated with hospitals, and the image of fluids being fed directly into someone’s veins often implies a serious health issue. At the very least, IVs tend to make people squeamish. Megan Kingdon hopes to change these perceptions. In June, she opened Well Room, […]
A few months ago, James Yates awoke from a nightmare. He was hosting “Let There Be Light”—the same luminesce-focused art exhibit he has helmed for the past 13 years at Piedmont Virginia Community College—but there was a problem. “Nobody was wearing masks, and everybody was crowding together,” he says. “I woke up in a panic […]
Like many kids of his generation, Davon Okoro spent a lot of time in front of the TV. But while his peers were watching cartoons, Okoro was finding himself in the groundbreaking styles and fashions of MTV. “I grew up in Nigeria and we didn’t have much money,” he explains. “My mom would go to […]
Anyone who’s visited McIntire Plaza is familiar with its eclecticism. The businesses include Circa—in itself, a testament to variety—a Brazilian jiu-jitsu center, a tiny black-box theater company, and a furniture showroom enigmatically named Poem. Even those who frequent the plaza, though, might not know about Diamondback Toolbelts. Tucked into the far end of Harris Street, […]
It’s not an exaggeration to say the graphic tee revolutionized the fashion world. Its unique pairing of text and image allowed for an unprecedented level of self-expression, and gave birth to a slew of immediately recognizable designs—from I ♥ NY to Frankie Says Relax to D.A.R.E. (the latter being as ironic as it is iconic). […]