PICK: We Banjo 3

Pickin’ back up: Looks like we’ll need to celebrate another St. Paddy’s Day with a pint on the couch. But lucky for us, We Banjo 3 will be streaming live from Dublin, Ireland. Since 2012, the Irish quartet has been wowing critics and crowds with its innovative take on traditional Celtic, bluegrass, and American music, […]

Believing in ‘yes’

Attempting to sum up a person’s life in a few words is often an unreasonable, almost futile, effort. But James Yates has a word for his wife, artist Beryl Solla, who died February 19 after a 13-year battle against cancer: Yes. At some point during their 43-year marriage, Solla made a wooden folk-art inspired sculpture […]

Great loss

Capturing mental degeneration on screen is no easy task. Last year’s Relic did an excellent job of depicting the crushing effects of dementia on a family but, like so many films, it shied away from the interior life of the person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The Father takes a much closer look at both the […]

An abstract discourse

By Sarah Sargent Robert Reed’s “San Romano (Hip Strut)” explodes off the wall of the Jefferson School’s gallery. The bright colors and bold shapes are both abstract and representational—in one corner it’s all color and form, and in another corner there’s a chessboard, a gift from Reed’s son. Reed attended the Jefferson School as a […]

PICK: The Art in Life

Comic energy: When it comes to fine art, comic books have long been excluded, but anyone who’s curled up with a good one knows they can be creative masterpieces. With their virtual series The Art in Life, The Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection are on a quest to remove the […]

PICK: UNSUNG

Phoning in the overture: When Victory Hall Opera’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata was canceled, the cast turned to their iPhones—but not for pandemic-induced doom scrolling. Instead, they collaborated on filming UNSUNG, the first feature film made by and about opera singers. In it, the cast navigates the challenges of life during a pandemic, and […]

PICK: Muscle Shoals

Take you there: Founded in 1969 by four Alabama session musicians, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio became legendary for soul music after producing hits for Wilson Pickett (“Mustang Sally”), Aretha Franklin (“I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”), and the Staple Singers (“I’ll Take You There”), among others. The magical environment and […]

PICK: Kenn Kaufman

Winging it: Kenn Kaufman is an extreme birder who’s been at it since the ‘60s, when he dropped out of high school and hit the road in pursuit of feathered creatures. The author, artist, naturalist, and conservationist’s career really took flight when he won 1973’s Big Year birding competition and set the record for most […]

In the trenches

Sprawling cinematic stories of drug abuse and crime sprees are nothing new. Martin Scorsese has honed this sub­genre of brittle masculinity and confessional narration throughout his long career, and many others have tried to ascend to his platform for storytelling. Cherry never quite climbs to that rank, but it is an empathetic look at one […]

Milk, but no honey

On the cover of Mala Leche’s inaugural issue, the name of the zine is tiny, hardly visible. The focus is much more on the “bad milk” itself—a cut-out image of a baby bottle, emblazoned with a black skull and crossbones and resting in an equally inky puddle. It’s an eye-catching design, one intended to draw […]