Enter: a lively dinner party. Lots of crosstalk. Women in a startling array of historical costumes. There’s Isabella Bird, a 19th-century globe-trotter and well-educated author. There’s Joan the Pope, a ninth-century intellectual who lived as a man and briefly became the pope. There’s Dull Gret, a sword-wielding peasant and army leader lifted from the Bruegel […]
When painter and muralist Chicho Lorenzo saw the 7′ tall retaining wall along Barracks Road near the 250 bypass, he knew exactly what he wanted to paint. “Maybe two years ago, I was commissioned to paint a mural for a military school,” Lorenzo says. “I had an idea for an image of two teachers standing […]
As the events of August 11 and 12 unfolded across Charlottesville, photojournalist Sarah Cramer Shields watched it happen on the news. “I was putting two small children down for naps when it happened,” Shields says in an interview with C-VILLE. “I wanted to be on the front lines telling the stories of what was happening, […]
Whether you fell in love with the leg lamp, the pink bunny suit or the double-dog-dare to lick a frozen flagpole, you can’t help but wait in excited anticipation for A Christmas Story to hit the holiday airwaves. The story of Ralphie, an eager schoolboy on a desperate quest to get the most magical Christmas […]
I’ll be honest: I’m not really an opera person. Until this weekend, I assumed opera consisted of people in fancy outfits belting overwrought, angst-ridden songs in foreign languages before dying on stage. And while I’m terribly impressed by the skill and talent required to fine-tune the operatic “instrument,” I am not the most qualified person […]
‘‘My book came out last year a week before the presidential elections,” says Madeline Iva, author of the fantasy romance Wicked Apprentice. “What I came away with, standing in the blasted devastation of our liberal democratic psyche, was that I’d just written a book about a woman who ends up holding all the power—and people […]
Peter Benedetti never planned to make a deck of tarot cards. Instead, you might argue, the cards found him. “It’s not something I would normally do,” says the Brooklyn-based artist, who points to the abstract expressionist influence on the style of his inventive drawings and paintings. But a few years ago, during his daily research […]
Even though she lives in the nation’s capital now, Lisa Parker Hyatt can’t leave Miami behind. “I spent most of my life in Miami,” explains the artist, whose richly colored paintings are included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the archives of the National Museum of Women in the Arts […]
After 17 years with McGuffey Art Center, artist and filmmaker Russell Richards is moving on. Blame it on the windows. “The city renovated McGuffey and fixed the windows, so we had to be out for a certain period of time,” he says. “I couldn’t access my studio for a while, so I used that as […]
Following last month’s local violence by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups, many people are speaking and acting out against racism for the first time. But becoming an effective activist and ally to people of color requires humility, curiosity and ongoing education—which is why locals are lucky that a small building, perched on a […]