Peter Benedetti never planned to make a deck of tarot cards. Instead, you might argue, the cards found him. “It’s not something I would normally do,” says the Brooklyn-based artist, who points to the abstract expressionist influence on the style of his inventive drawings and paintings. But a few years ago, during his daily research […]
Halloween is right around the corner, and, for some of us, candy corn, costumes, haunted houses, horror movie marathons and monster mashing is celebration enough. But for those who like a little extra treat in their bag of Halloween tricks, two Charlottesvillians have developed Hellmouth, an interactive choose-your-own-horror-adventure audio tour. Head to the Downtown Mall, […]
On Seth Glier’s new album, Birds, he processes grief through songcraft, touching on themes such as a broken criminal justice system, capitalism through fracking and the fragility of life. The Grammy-nominated artist, who’s been compared to Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, made the record in a revamped textile mill in western Massachusetts following the death […]
The first installment of Think & Drink, a new series from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, features NPR reporter Lulu Miller reading from her upcoming book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. Wes Swing accompanies her with his original compositions on the cello, followed by a Q&A on “the dangers of miscategorization, the infallibility of the […]
Adam Ostrar Brawls in the Briar (Super Secret) Adam Ostrar, né Busch, former Charlottesville resident and WTJU DJ, was also a main mover behind Curious Digit, Manishevitz and SONOI. On Brawls in the Briar, Ostrar is joined by members of Califone and White Rabbits, and combines characteristics of all those bands. The tracks gently stir, […]
Laura Lee Gulledge wrote her young adult graphic novel Will and Whit as a show of gratitude to Charlottesville, a place that helped her pursue her ambitions. Four years later, the story is coming to life in the form of a musical in the very town where it began. Using live drawing and shadow puppetry, […]
Three actors, 37 plays and an hour and a half to perform The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Andy Davis, Jack Rakes and Kendall Stewart rip through plots and costumes at a blistering pace, navigating shortcuts with tactics such as turning Othello into a rap and replacing the comedies with an improv Mad Libs […]
Sit down, find a comfortable position—lay down, if that’s more relaxing. Close your eyes. Can you find the quiet place in your mind where there are no thoughts, no words, no images? Can you remain in the quiet mind place by listening to all the sounds you can possibly hear, including the most distant sounds […]
A civil rights superhero movie? Why not? For a country so enamored with our national mythology, we are remarkably inconsistent when it comes to cinematic depictions of our historical figures. After all, many of our founding fathers owned slaves, and many more recent icons emerged at a time when personal shortcomings could not be as easily […]
Nine years ago I reviewed an exhibition at the Fralin Art Museum featuring the work of William Christenberry. Included in the show was his “Klan Room Tableau,” a peculiar installation of dolls dressed in KKK robes. According to Christenberry, the highly personal work was his means of exposing and exorcising the hatred and violence of […]