The acronym for the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives—FUCC—is pronounced exactly like the four-letter word it brings to mind. “FUCC facilitates opportunities for our members to have an outlet for their creative expression,” says mixed-media artist and member Sri Kodakalla, “Especially during times of uncertainty, it can be such an empowering thing to be a […]
For UVA music professor Fred Everrett Maus, there is much more to music than meets the ear. It presents listeners with the opportunity to understand gender, sexuality, memory, and more. “Music teaching sometimes makes music into an object, studied by examining external properties,” Maus says. “In all my research and teaching, I have wanted to […]
If you don’t have hope, what do you have? That’s the mindset Elizabeth Raymond recently adopted for NoBull, the vegetarian burger and brand she launched almost a decade ago with her mother, Crissanne, and her sister, Heather. Crissanne, a “wickedly talented” chef and caterer, raised her children to be cautious about what they were consuming, […]
When rising fourth-year and singer-songwriter Merritt Gibson heard the news that the University of Virginia would be moving classes online for the rest of the academic year, she was devastated. She missed her friends—an integral part of her UVA experience, Gibson says. Then she began to mourn the abrupt disappearance of her daily routine, the […]
On a Saturday morning, artist Nick Cave and his partner Bob Faust sit with a group of 25 University of Virginia students. “Who came straight from a club?” Cave jokingly asks as he surveys the group. Many are puffy-eyed and swigging coffee in an effort to wake up. “This is Charlottesville. There aren’t any clubs […]
Mixed-media artist Diana Hale remembers the first time she entered a voting booth. She had just learned how to drive, but wasn’t yet old enough to vote, and transported an elderly relative who’d voted in every election for the past 75 years to the polls. “There was a lot of effort involved in the trip,” […]
Sonia Nazario knew she wanted to be a journalist when she was a teenager. Growing up in Argentina in the 1970s, she witnessed the country’s “dirty war,” during which a terrorist military tortured and murdered 30,000 citizens. Nazario remembers asking her mother why the dead included reporters. “My mom said these reporters were trying to […]
Three years after starting her tenure as Second Street Gallery’s executive director and chief curator, Kristen Chiacchia says she feels at home. For the next month, when she enters the gallery, among the works greeting her are a watercolor and oil painting by celebrated mid-century abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell. The untitled works from 1957 form […]
Sometimes, when the windows are open and the weather is warm, Giselle Gautreau has special guests at her McGuffey studio. “Bees will come in and visit, so I have to escort the ladies out,” Gautreau says. “I used to be a beekeeper, so I’m obsessed with bees.” The winged visitors are drawn to the smell […]
Over the course of her six years teaching dance in UVA’s drama department, lecturer and faculty member Katie Schetlick has noticed a shift in her students. More and more, she’s seeing students connect with the influential work of choreographer Merce Cunningham. “A large body of his work is from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. But […]