“This is just a glorious space,” says the artist, his eyes drinking it all in. Many people would probably balk at that assessment. The place is roughed-in and decidedly unfinished—lots of raw wood with minimal concessions to human occupancy. There are lights and a number of electrical outlets and exposed ductwork for air and heat […]
Known around Hollywood as a hands-on art director, Jack Fisk is not a make-a-sketch-and-shop-for-swatches-and-direct-your-crew kind of guy. Instead, he’s a builder, and a collaborator, and a problem-solver on location.
Ann Gordon recognized that it was pretty sketchy downtown after hours. Her children later came to call it “wino safari-land.” She walked there with them sometimes during the 1970s. “There were strange derelict people,” she recalls, “and a men-only bar at The Brass Rail. There was a flop house, men living in single rooms renting […]
Preamble When I got the assignment a couple of months ago to write about Jefferson and his protégé William Short and their dialogue about race and slavery, the nine murdered worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston were still alive. We’ve lost far too many people to race-inflected violence and outrage in recent years, but […]
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Walking through the University grounds toward a meeting with English department professor and author Bruce Holsinger, I found myself thinking of the ways that a university is like a medieval town. First of all, the place is scaled for walking and almost everyone is on […]
Probably all of us have felt it at one point or another. For some, it comes in the form of an obsession with story—the drive to know what happens next, to revel in character and incident and situation, to follow a plot as it arcs and swoops and blossoms (or crashes and implodes). For some […]
“To me, this is the heart of Charlottesville right here.” I am standing at the intersection of Monticello Avenue and Sixth Street SE with Matthew Slaats, executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. We are talking on this wet, raw December day about community, growth, and the role that the arts can play to […]
It would be a very short list of film festival guests who have a stronger set of accomplishments and accolades than Barry Levinson. His recognition includes over a dozen Oscar nominations, and Oscar wins for Best Director and Best Picture for Rain Man. But maybe even more impressive than the awards is the sheer number […]
“I think that this film gains its emotional integrity from the fact that everybody is speaking the truth. It was very moving to watch it. The one thing I was hoping that they would get was for everyone to stop acting like Hollywood people, and just tell the truth—about the mistakes we’ve made, the struggle that […]
Poetry might be the least ostentatious of the arts. It’s a private affair conducted between a writer and a blank piece of paper. Michelangelo was said to seek out the hidden shape within the stone when he was creating a sculpture. What reserves of patience and focus do you need to find the hidden words […]