For fine artist Caroline Nelson, a person’s face speaks volumes. “The smallest details, the wrinkles and the pores, are very telling,” she says. “There are people who I see and I immediately want to paint them. It can be their eyes or their skin tone, but there’s always something that I’m drawn to.” Her large-scale […]
Every sunny morning during the summertime, I wake up and stare at the light-soaked leaves outside my window and feel a rush of joy. At a time when most of us could stand a bit of brightness, the sun showers us with one of the happiest forces on earth. Nature’s hot-weather celebration is the subject […]
For Charlottesville-based author Stefan Bechtel, mystery is the essence of life. “I grew up in Chicago, in the white-bread suburbs where every lawn was perfect. But way out on the edge of town there was a swamp. Lincoln Swamp,” Bechtel says. “We would ride our bikes all the way out to Lincoln Swamp, and we […]
Local artist Suzanne Stryk has always been fascinated by nests. “When I was 8, I loved to page through a Little Golden book, The Wonder Book of Birds. And then in fourth grade, my grandmother gave me Wonders in Your Own Backyard for Christmas,” writes Stryk in her artist’s statement. “I never outgrew the ideas […]
There’s something a bit off about The Realistic Joneses. “Maybe it’s me,” you think at first. You’re sitting so close to the middle-aged couple you’re practically on top of them. She’s talking about the beauty of the night air and the owl she can hear in the distance. He’s staring down at hands twisted together, […]
At Juilliard, up-and-coming opera singers learn the art of method acting: channeling their personal experience into the emotions they express on stage. But for mezzo-soprano Brenda Patterson, the acting never stopped. “As a gay person, that’s sort of what you feel like you are doing a lot of the time in real life. You are […]
It’s a busy, blustery Tuesday on Grounds. Outside The Fralin Museum of Art, UVA students rush by in droves, pulling overcoats tight against the wind. Inside, I stand in darkness staring at craters on the moon. The air is hot and loud, filled by the whir and clank of unsteady projectors shining on gallery walls. […]
As consumers, we’re inundated by success. Hit records, blockbuster movies, the latest app. Creators, on the other hand, are surrounded by failures. They churn out ideas—some brilliant, some bad—and create until something sticks. How do they find the guts to fail their way to success? Three accomplished local artists are opening up in The Art […]
Hollywood tells us that romance unfolds in a montage, in sparkling date nights and lazy Sunday mornings and in the inescapable gravity of consistent, insistent closeness. But as a veteran of long-distance relationships (I’m talking 10,000-mile commutes), I can attest that sometimes love grows in our absence from each other. The space that separates two […]
Last year was exhausting, right? No wonder people pushed themselves to have the merriest holiday of their lives in 2016. Online sales hit the highest mark ever during Black Friday weekend. Consumers wanted, more than ever, to escape real life and celebrate in tinsel wonderlands. Now that you’ve digested plenty of fa-la-las and other family […]