Thomas Dean takes unusual pleasure in digging through crates of junky records. It’s partly the aroma of acidic paper inserts mingling with that of musty cardboard sleeves. It’s partly weirdo cover art, bonkers band names, and eyebrow-raising (or head-shaking) album titles. But mostly, it’s the music. Dean loves the thrill of sliding a random slab […]
Seventeen syllables. Seventeen syllables to say whatever you want, to say as much, or as little, as you’d like. Hell, you don’t even have to use all 17 syllables if you don’t need or want to, says poet and artist Raven Mack. That’s just the typical form of a Japanese haiku in the Western world: […]
Madeline Michel sits on one of the couches lining her classroom, balancing a sparkly gold laptop on her knees as she tells two students about being summoned to the Monticello High School principal’s office. Principal Rick Vrhovac called her in for a “meeting,” she says, her voice slightly sarcastic as she makes air quotes, “about […]
On view at McGuffey Art Center this month is “Women’s Work,” an exhibition featuring 18 artists who belong to the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives, or F.U.C.C. Sculptor Lily Erb and painter Sam Gray founded the group in 2017 with the “hope to create space and opportunities for female and gender-queer artists to share their […]
An all-black town. An all-black town? It was a stray mention in a book on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, but Jamelle Bouie was intrigued. An all-black town. “It got stuck in my craw,” says Bouie. He found a few local news articles, a mini documentary film, and a couple books on the subject—the dozens […]
Our ability to look at art—to see color, shape, texture—comes from light. We’ll spare you an in-depth science lesson, but most basically, light reflects off objects and into the eye. Cells in the retina (at the back of the eye) convert light into electrical impulses, which the optic nerve sends to the brain. The brain […]
The sound of spurred boots scuff-clicking across a creaky wooden floor is what did it for third-year UVA student Jess Miller. Sitting alone in front of his laptop, headphones on, ears alert, he’d sifted through a digital library of sound effects to find the right one, the noise that would let the listener of his […]
They appeared overnight the first Monday in December of 2018, long-necked robots on wheels, lurking in neat rows of three or four on street corners all over town. Within a few days, the motorized scooters, which don’t have designated docking stations, were everywhere, and wherever. Now, about five months in to the City of Charlottesville’s […]
The fandango in Veracruz felt familiar to Estela Diaz Knott. Under a tent, musicians strummed guitar-shaped instruments of different pitches—requintos, jaranas, and leonas. With their feet, they stomped and scuffed rhythms on tarimas, rectangular wooden platforms that serve as both stage and percussive instrument. They mixed centuries-old verses with ones they made up in the […]
Ros Casey gets deep at Chroma It was only toward the end of painting her latest body of work that Ros Casey understood what it was all about: rising water. The scenes in her series, “In Those Days There Was No River Here (A parable in 8 pictures),” on view at Chroma Projects gallery this […]