Pick: Merrie Mill Farm & Vineyard Art Festival

In vino ars: Say so long to summer by enjoying wine and art at the Merrie Mill Farm & Vineyard Art Festival, a day-long showcase of local creatives. Sip on a sparkling white as you peruse works from 18 artists in a variety of mediums. And a crisp rosé pairs nicely with soulful blues-folk from […]

Pick: Light House Studio’s 21st Annual Youth Film Festival

Film stars: Behold the future of movies at Light House Studio’s 21st Annual Youth Film Festival. A celebration of the art of storytelling, the fest supports the org’s annual budget and offers a first-time viewing experience of 22 short films created by 90 student filmmakers in the past year. Get your blood pumping with a […]

Firmament of referentiality

As a poet, Kiki Petrosino has published four collections, including most recently, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, and received the Pushcart Prize and the Rilke Prize, among other awards and fellowships. As a prose writer, her first full-length book, Bright: A Memoir, published in August, and she will give a reading from it on […]

Pick: Steel Magnolias Drag Brunch

Steel a few moments: Celebrate friendship and love, and learn a few life lessons too, at a Steel Magnolias Drag Brunch. Don any shade of “blush and bashful,” tease up your hair, and enjoy the sweet Southern drawls of Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Sally Field as they navigate life in a small […]

Art from the future

There’s a new wall mural at Ix Art Park. It’s an explosion of colors, shapes, and symbols. There are words of advice—“Be humble”—and statements of power—“Black women built this,” “Lesbian pride.” It’s made of hearts and rainbows and flowers and peace signs. And above it all, a bold and insistent proclamation: “There are Black people […]

September Galleries

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 170 McCormick Rd., UVA Grounds. “No Unity Without Justice” centers around the work of UVA students and Charlottesville community racial justice activists who organized demonstrations and events that resulted in significant anti-fascist victories in response to Charlottesville’s 2017 Summer of Hate. Through October 29.  Botanical Plant-Based Fare 421 […]

Pick: Gregory Orr

Poetic journey: For more than a decade, recently retired UVA professor and poet Gregory Orr has been writing what he describes as “the book”—an imagined tome containing every poem and song ever written. Inspired by the tradition of lyric poetry, Selected Books of the Beloved is a celebration of love, feeling, and the transformative power […]

Leaders and lessons learned 

Virginia journalist and bestselling author Beth Macy returns this week with Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. The book builds off her previous book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. While Dopesick traced Purdue Pharma’s orchestration of the opioid epidemic and shared stories of those caught […]

Looking back

During the now-infamous tiki torch rally at the University of Virginia, hundreds of white supremacists marched across Grounds on the evening of August 11, 2017. Shouting racist and anti-Semitic chants like “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” the group later surrounded and attacked student counterprotesters at the Thomas Jefferson statue in front […]

Keen on Keene

If you lived in Charlottesville in the early ’90s, you’re probably familiar with Steve Keene’s art. Keene worked as a dishwasher at Monsoon Café, which opened on the Downtown Mall in 1992, and owner Lu-Mei Chang gave him free rein to paint the walls, tables, and chairs. Chang’s early efforts to promote Keene are immortalized […]