Month: April 2003

Last year, local hospitals treated more than 53,000 patients for cancer. From prostate and breast cancers to melanoma and pediatric lymphoma, these numbers show no signs of abating. In 2003, the American Cancer Society estimates, cancer will strike 32,800 more Virginians. The State-wide death toll this year is estimated at 13,700.

It’s hard to obtain firm figures for the dollar value represented by that much disease and death. But this much is known: Treatment numbers for cancer care have nearly doubled in the past decade. Clearly millions of dollars are changing hands locally in the pursuit of cance research, treatment and, ultimately, a cure. But the wave of cancer money does not crest only at the UVA Cancer Center and Martha Jefferson Hospital where primary diagnosis and treatment take place. Five miles north of the Downtown and Corner areas, at UVA’s North Fork Research Park, is PRA International, a clinical research organization that specializes in oncology. Inside the 80,000 square-foot facility, PRA provides drug development services—that is, drug trials—on a contract basis to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Founded in Charlottesville in 1976, PRA has since spread to six continents and 60 countries. It employs more than 2,000 employees in total.

Where other local employers have announced cutbacks in response to hard economic times, in 2002 PRA reported 25 percent workforce growth, hiring 75 additional employees to a local staff now topping out at more than 300. Indeed, at $140 million, PRA’s revenue beat out the $115 million generated by the UVA Cancer Center’s clinical care.

Unquestionably, cancer is big business in Charlottesville.

And as is usually the case when plenty of money is flowing, a competitive market has sprung up. There’s a contest for cancer warriors being waged behind the scenes. Fueled by steady growth, leadership opportunities and the comparatively stress-free work environment that it offers area physicians, nurses and research experts, PRA may well be winning this hidden battle for the sharp minds and unfaltering dedication needed to build a strong army against the disease.

Bob Fritz is a case in point. Now a medical director with PRA, Fritz closed the doors of his family practice more than a decade ago. His career had been marked by devotion to his patients, but with the changes in medical care, he simply couldn’t afford, mentally or financially, to keep his practice afloat.

He gave up the ghost in 1996 and joined PRA to monitor and support drug and vaccine trials.

“I grew to truly dislike the direction of modern American medicine,” says Fritz. “I simply couldn’t do it anymore.”

UVA and Martha Jefferson hospitals each treat cancer patients, but in terms of sheer girth there is virtually no comparison. Recently rated among the nation’s top centers by U.S. News & World Report, the UVA Cancer Center offers 34 doctors in direct care, and many dozens of specialists on staff.

UVA attracts more than 2,100 new in-patients and 50,000 outpatients annually. Two-thirds of patients come from an 80-mile radius while 24 percent travel from other parts of Virginia. And 10 percent fly in to be treated from around the world.

“During one of my appointments I was sitting beside people who had traveled hours to come to the UVA center,” says Mary Kay Ohaneson, a 54-year-old two-time cancer survivor, who was treated in both cases at UVA. “I felt so fortunate. I had traveled about 15 minutes.”

Martha Jefferson’s cancer center saw 801 cases in 2001, the most recent year for which data is available. With its new Martha Jefferson Outpatient Care Center inside a 14-acre, 94,000 square-foot facility at Peter Jefferson Place on Route 250E, Martha Jefferson plans to ramp up its cancer care, especially in the area of medical imaging when doors open in mid-September.

The $28 million building will be updated with state-of-the-art machinery such as a new PET scanner, which detects changes in the body at the cellular level. Martha Jefferson will also be offering the only open MRI machine in town.

But with a smaller workforce than UVA, only 56 Martha Jefferson medical staff are involved in or specialize in cancer diagnosis and treatment, 32 of them nurses with cancer specialization. In reality though, all physicians at Martha Jefferson and UVA are directly or indirectly involved with cancer care.

“A good family physician should be the conductor of the orchestra as far as all cancer treatment goes,” says Fritz. “The family doctor doesn’t have to be the one turning the switch of the chemo machine, but someone has to be the cornerstone and coordinator of the treatment.”

Three units at UVA are solely for cancer patients, with 35 beds in total. Out of the 106 cancer nurses at UVA, 33 are certified oncology nurses, the highest level of training attainable by nurses in the field of cancer care. UVA has the largest concentration of oncology nurses in the Commonwealth.

But beyond greater numbers of certified doctors, nurses and specialists, UVA has the deeper pockets.

As one of 60 clinical cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute, UVA receives more than $60 million each year to support some 200 cancer researchers. In conjunction with PRA and other research companies, UVA has more than 250 patients enrolled in clinical trials, reflecting the industry-wide bias for research.

“I would absolutely make the argument that clearly the way to eliminate cancer is through research,” says Michael Schwartzberg, media advocacy manager for the American Cancer Society.

Just this year, UVA received about $3.5 million in additional research grants from the American Cancer Society.

UVA doctor Michael Smith is getting about $623,000 of those funds for his research project. By studying the hepatocyte growth factor, or HGF, which, when it grows uncontrollably defines cancer’s basic manifestation, Smith hopes to block the activity of the HGF receptor. His work, if successful, could help uncover a treatment for gastric cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.

On the direct-care side of things, UVA’s cancer center was recently named a “designated” cancer center by the National Cancer Institute—one of 13 in the United States—all of which adds up to a top-notch cancer facility at UVA.

“Patient satisfaction is the main outcome you want in any care situation, period,” says Janice Fabbri-Fritz, a public health nurse who previously worked at Martha Jefferson, “especially where cancer is concerned.

“We’ve finally discovered that we can no longer be the all-powerful doctor telling the little patient, ‘You’ll be fine.’”

Even as new bedside ethics put patients first, some doctors and nurses find themselves wanting to do more.

“I was a frontline oncologist for more than 20 years,” says Bruce Silver, a physician who oversees medical and safety management of numerous clinical trials for PRA. “Yes, it’s extremely ennobling work. But all my work, and all my efforts, would have been futile if I had no drugs to use.”

Indeed, what PRA seems to have going for it in the contest for doctors and research experts is the chance to mingle with other thought-leaders in pursuit of cutting edge oncological discoveries. Additionally, PRA’s draw is simply the escape from what some physicians call the “pressure cooker” of modern medical practice. For a patient-oriented doctor like Fritz, for instance, PRA offers a space where he no longer has to worry that his productivity is scored by the number of patients he moves through the mill.

“I have finally found a platform to preach about patient advocacy and the important relationship between doctor and patient,” says Fritz. “I’ve been looking for it for a very long time.”

Joy Stockton, a senior clinical safety associate with PRA, is a former UVA neurosurgical nurse. After seven years in the intensive care unit as a “weekend warrior” (the crew that works ‘round the clock on weekends) Stockton was looking for a reprieve. Sure, she wanted better hours and no pressure to work holidays or nights. But beyond that, she wanted to avoid burnout.

“When I first started at UVA, the nurse-to-patient ratio was one nurse to every two patients,” she says, adding that there was also a charge nurse on duty, who had no patients of her own and covered for people when they took breaks.

“By the time I left, I would be the charge nurse for the shift, and I myself would have two patients,” says Stockton.

Ideal staffing, according to Stockton, would be seven nurses to every 12 beds. But in reality, the numbers were more akin to four or five nurses for every 12 beds. Although Stockton left her direct-care position five years ago, her friends remaining in various nursing departments say the shortage, the stress and the bureaucratic red tape is only getting worse, making drug development firms such as PRA more attractive than ever before.

That being said, these corporate firms aren’t for everyone. Dr. Peyton T. Taylor, a specialist in gynecological oncology and the deputy director of the UVA Cancer Center, says he, like others, could never be the people person he is in the world of PRA.

“It’s a very different world,” says Taylor. “There you look at data, and a low white blood cell count is simply an event rather than a friend of yours who has cancer.” Although Taylor, also a proponent of clinical trials (he has completed several himself), describes his daily activities as “very painful” emotionally, he believes that for hands-on, patient-oriented oncologists such as himself, there would be no place for him at PRA.

“Without throwing stones, I think that detachment is the appeal at PRA,” he says. “When you cannot invest emotionally in each individual patient, you invest in the research.

“That way, you still feel as if you’re helping people, just indirectly.”

For those unlike Taylor who are willing to make the leap, PRA has open arms for them. “Nurses and doctors are a very high commodity for us because the thrust of our work is interacting with physicians and hospitals,” says Silver. “We need former doctors and nurses who can communicate most efficiently, especially when it comes to medical and procedural questions, documenting and reporting adverse side effects of trials to the Food and Drug Administration.”

With cancer-related research such a large component of PRA’s work (46 percent of PRA’s overall contracts are in oncology), Charlottesville’s hospitals provide a fine pond in which PRA can fish. “Oncology nurses, with their expertise, are critical to our success,” says Bruce Teplitzky, senior vice president of worldwide business development for PRA.

While PRA offers a less frustrating venue for some medical practitioners, it also offers a higher rate of compensation. UVA oncology nurses’ entry-level salaries generally begin at $34,000, and can go up to $73,000 for the most experienced nurses. While she wouldn’t reveal how much PRA pays, Stockton says that the company generally beats those figures.

“It’s the value of the salary that’s more important,” says Stockton. “What you have to do to earn it is better.”

PRA is the world’s largest privately held contract research organization. And with an impressive acquisition track record of five other CROs since 1997, the company is now one of the top five drug development organizations in the world. Growth has not been trouble-free, however.

In the United States, only 2 percent of cancer patients are enrolled in the company’s tests. Some physicians blame this phenomenon on the growing number of aging baby-boomers being diagnosed with the disease. Older generations, some believe, are far more likely to be skeptical about clinical trials, while others hear the diagnosis, and immediately anticipate the worst. “Why bother?” they think.

Furthermore, according to Silver, only 3 percent of all physicians participate in the administering of the tests. PRA employees worry the reluctance to participate lies in not only physicians’ indifference, but also in a misapprehension of clinical trials generally. This, in turn, puts the clinical trials themselves at risk to suffer.

But patient and doctor anxieties are misplaced, says Fritz, adhering to the company line, and pointing out that physicians administer various drugs regularly without strict guidelines or oversight. “These are no longer guinea pig trials anymore,” he says. “This, in fact, is the best form of cancer care for a lot of people.”

In trials, cancer patients get constant attention, screenings they might not have been able to afford before, and strictly FDA-regulated care.

On the other hand, even if all physicians nationwide wanted to participate in studies, PRA wouldn’t want them. PRA maintains a clinical-trials blacklist, of sorts, full of the names of physicians the company shuns. In trials, individual physicians are paid a per-patient stipend, which apparently motivates some to hide adverse side effects in the trial patients to whom they’re administering drugs. When PRA discovers this, the doctor is cut off.

“There are sites that are money mills,” says Fritz, “but then again, wherever you have money, you will have greed and fraud.”

For Virginians, out of the 13,700 forecasted to die of cancer this year, 3,900 deaths will be from lung cancer—the most prevalent form of cancer in the State. The UVA Cancer Center reports that the number of general cancer patients it sees grew 6 percent annually between 1996 and 2000, and Martha Jefferson’s center saw a 15 percent rise in 2001 from 2000. Even more staggering, over the past decade, Martha Jefferson’s annual total of cases diagnosed and treated rose 67 percent to 801. Due to the aging population of area residents and local population growth—more than 28,469 people in the last decade—cancer growth numbers in Charlottesville are soaring.

All of which means there will, unfortunately, be plenty of business for expanding cancer programs including UVA’s new $1.9 million Breast Cancer Center. Set to open in July, it will house 7,500 square-feet of consolidated breast cancer services, equipped with valet parking in front. Martha Jefferson hopes to acquire even more acreage at its new Peter Jefferson Place as soon as the Board of County Supervisors approves rezoning plans.

“The oncology field is never ending,” says Fritz, “not until cancer is either cured, or at the least, kept under control.”

But even the glitz of new digs and greater renown can’t win back the hearts of some doctors and nurses who have seen the ugly side of health care in the age of managed care.

“We’ve done some bad things in the medical profession—we’ve empowered lawyers and insurance companies,” says Fritz. “I’m proud of what I do, but I’m not proud of what my profession does.”

That’s an excerpt I like from “Whitman in 1863,” a song on local folk musician Brady Earnhart’s new album, Manalapan. In a way, it’s only fitting that the enterprise contains a tribute to America’s bard. Earnhart wrote his dissertation on the man many consider the country’s first original poet, and his songs, while the product of an original voice, evidence Whitman-esque powers of observation, particularly with regard to nature and location. For years before Earnhart ever began recording songs, he wrote, studied and published poetry.

There is another similarity between the two: Earnhart is gay. Does that matter? Should you think of him as a gay songwriter? Well, that depends on what you mean.

“When I hear a song that’s self-consciously dedicated to some cause, even one I agree with, my heart tends to clam up: The singer isn’t singing to me anymore. I’m just convert fodder,” he says. “On the other hand, if you forge a personal connection with the audience, you can’t help but be political on some local level, because you’re reminding people that they’re powerful and human, maybe in ways they hadn’t realized before.

“What good songs do is give us maps to places we need to know but never quite knew about. They throw flour on the invisible man.

“I don’t sit down to write about an issue. If I did that I would feel manipulative and dirty,” Earnhart says. “I write about what I see as the truth.”

If you have even a passing interest in Charlottesville’s folk music scene, chances are Earnhart’s name is familiar. He has been performing in Charlottesville for years, since coming to town in 1992 to start his graduate studies (he now lives in Harrisonburg, where he teaches creative writing at James Madison University), and many of the area’s better-known artists are friends with him, or have worked with him, or both.

Indeed, Earnhart’s contributions to music in Charlottesville are legion. The “King of My Living Room” 2002 concert series was inspired by a party Earnhart threw for Mardi Gras at which a group of local songwriters stayed up late playing and singing. Eventually they made a pact to do the same thing as a concert (the title is taken from Earnhart’s song of the same name, on his album After You). Earnhart wrote the string arrangements for The Naked Puritan Philarmonic’s Live Arts album. Nickeltown, the duo of Jeff Romano and Browning Porter, has covered some of his songs. The list goes on.

“I’ve known Brady to be a gregarious catalyst for the music scene here in Charlottesville,” says Romano, who, with Earnhart, co-produced Manalapan. “I doubt we’d be as cohesive a group if it weren’t for Brady and his parties.”

Charlottesville-based folk singer Paul Curreri’s first experience with local musicians was through his participation in the King of My Living Room series, after moving to town last year. He recalls Earnhart’s welcome fondly.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s the teacher in Brady, his just being supportive and kind to younger writers or musicians, but I specifically remember Brady earnestly thanking me, giving me a copy of After You and saying, ‘Welcome to Charlottesville, Paul. I look forward to seeing you around,’” Curreri says.

Earnhart’s songs are, in one sense, recognizable folk music: Most numbers feature his deep, slightly mournful voice (all the more memorable for its acknowledged imperfections) and skillful guitar arrangements of varying complexity. But it’s folk music with a twist as the electric guitar, cello, saxophone and French horn all make appearances in Manalapan.

Lyrically, however, enough simply cannot be said. Earnhart has a knack for evoking location (“The fleas never die in Delray/and the patio peppers with mold”), whimsy (“If this had been a hit song/I’d have paid off this guitar/but I’d lose my excuse to sing off-key”) and, of course, unrequited love (“I’ve prayed all my life to change/to anything I can for you/but if you loved me I would even/be this thing I am for you”).

Earnhart speaks from the point of view of other characters, often literary or artistic figures, like Whitman or Stephen Crane, who have influenced or interested him. “I think he has the history of literature under his belt. After all, he holds a Ph.D. in American Lit,” Romano says.

“He sometimes writes from a long-ago perspective that can only be mastered by being touched by the writers of our past.”

He does not always, or even often, overtly address his sexuality, but when he does he shows insight and humor. In “Honey Don’t Think Your Mama Don’t Know,” one of Manalapan’s catchier numbers, Earnhart sings “it wasn’t just a slacker fad to keep/a Playgirl underneath the mattress pad/maybe you can fool your dad/but don’t think she don’t know.”

To wit, sometimes being gay is the subject of Earnhart’s music. More often, it isn’t—or doesn’t have to be. As music writer Keith Morris wrote in his favorable review of Manalapan, published in this newspaper, “Fact is, there is a paucity of literate music out there, and Earnhart’s songs may well be the most subtly poetic, skillfully crafted, and all-inclusively human stuff I’ve heard in years.”

Romano puts it another way: “Many of his love songs transcend sexual preference, you could easily change the pronouns and have a beautiful love song for any alien in the universe.”

For Curreri, “Brady’s sexuality generally plays no more or less a role than yours does in writing this article, or certainly, than mine does in songs: Both enormous and none.”

Earnhart was born in Florida, a place he still visits and that is featured prominently in many of his songs (Manalapan is a Florida town where Earnhart snorkels). Earnhart, who was not taken with sports, became interested in music as a “social galvanizer,” a “way to get to people,” he says. He vividly remembers a skiing trip when he was 16 in which a group of youngsters ended up trading songs in a room.

“I was an eccentric kid, and it just seemed magic to me what a guitar could do,” he says.

Still, for quite a long time, music was not the first priority. During college, Earnhart, who attended William and Mary, spent most of his time on creative writing, afterward earning an M.F.A. degree in poetry from the University of Iowa’s prestigious program.

It was only after a six-year relationship came to a close, that Earnhart, living in upstate New York at the time, began to take composition and playing more seriously.

“It started to seem very lonely to write poems,” he says. In person, the 46-year-old Earnhart is handsome and self-possessed. He looks a bit like a classy character actor who you know you like, but whose name you struggle with.

“It’s just a very solitary business,” he says. “I wanted to write the kind of thing that would bring me in contact with other people.”

His attitude toward songwriting is sober. “To me, music is a serious thing,” he says. “Even when it’s funny, it should have a serious side to it.”

He is not interested in disposable pop, or clichés of any sort. “The best symbol is the accurately drawn, concrete object,” he says. Hence, Manalapan is grounded in everyday detail but also serves as a metaphor for the imagination and how it can become “a sanctuary, or a friend.”

For Earnhart, poetry and songwriting are distinct tasks, each with its own objective. A songwriter must “think a lot about setting, motivation, like a dramatist,” while “poets don’t have to think so much,” he says. “A poem is more allowed to be just a stray thought.”

When it comes to forming a connection with the audience, however, studying poetry has helped. “Poetry is all about finding places where the intangible and the tangible intersect. That’s how it creates experiences, instead of just talking about them. It brings them within reach of the listener’s sensual imagination,” Earnhart says. “Big abstractions tend to fail. They’re indigestible.”

He describes songwriting as similar to “cleaning house”: You can start with anything—a chorus, a scrap of music—and then build out from that. The most important thing is to “figure out who it is that is singing the song, to get a sense of the character.” Then, Earnhart says, you can figure out how smart they are, what language they might use, what rhymes are appropriate, etc.

And what about the gay question? Earnhart is wry about the effect of that word. One the one hand, he resists labeling. On the other, he knows it is inevitable and recognizes the potential for benefit.

“It’s probably a good thing for me right now, because singer-songwriters are multiplying like rabbits, and there’s less and less you can do to distinguish yourself from the pack,” he says.

Earnhart expresses skepticism that many gay men would readily take to his music, even were they exposed to it.

“All marginalized groups are extremely conservative. A lot of young gay men are so hungry for identity, that sadly they’ll snap up a stereotype because it’s the most readily available identity there it is,” he says.

For these reasons, Earnhart said, a young gay man may be more comfortable listening to dance music and hanging up Judy Garland posters than listening to another gay man singing seriously about passion in a personal way. That “might seem a little too novel to be comfortable.

“An ironic attitude is a really safe attitude to adopt,” he says. “You’re much less vulnerable. But to me, if a song doesn’t have vulnerability, it’s probably not going to be very important to me.

Earnhart would like to reach a larger audience, but downplays the possibility of far-reaching fame. “I’m a passionate fan of other singer-songwriters,” he says. “I’m a devoted listener. And I make music that’s not out there yet that I wish were out there.

“Why would a solitary and sort of ‘arty’ singer-songwriter get famous?” he continues, rhetorically. “Maybe if I save somebody in a car wreck, or my brother is elected president.”

It’s a dilemma others have noted.

“On one hand, he seems to have a built-in audience that is just waiting for someone like him to come along,” Morris says. “And he does that niche wonderfully, about as artistically and directly as anybody I’ve heard. So on one hand, he has got this built-in audience, but on the other, maybe the danger is that he’s just too good. That his music is too subtle, it’s too intelligent.

“And people, whatever their sexuality, are just not that intelligent. The mass audience might not be smart enough to get Brady.”

Nevertheless, Earnhart doesn’t seem particularly troubled about occupying a smaller space, aware as he is that fame of any sort perhaps more often than not involves compromise. And the alternative has its own rewards.

In King of My Living Room, Earnhart sings, “I don’t mind three-dollar wine/and I guess I won’t too soon/won’t be a kept monkey/on TV country/I’ll be the king of my living room.” And later in the song: “Say it’s got something for everyone/then I know it’s got nothing for me.”

Truth be told, to listen to Earnhart for any length of time, whether in person, on a record, or at a tiny show at the Live Arts LAB space, is to realize that any discussion about fame, sexuality or politics ultimately falls just a little shy of the point.

“I guess songwriting makes my own life seem more real to me,” he says. “It makes me feel like my ideas and emotions are valid.”

They say that in Charlottesville, the guy who serves your coffee probably has a PhD. Increasingly, the coffeeshop where he works likely serves another function too: art gallery. In the past several years, all over town, new art spaces have proliferated—in restaurants and boutiques, and as cooperatives and nonprofits. The town’s concentration of visual art venues is earning it a national reputation, boosting tourism and attracting artists. “Charlottesville is definitely getting to be known,” says Leah Stoddard, director of Second Street Gallery. “Word of mouth travels fast.”

Examining the burgeoning local arts scene exposes some interesting issues, from the relationship between art and commerce to the quality of tourist-friendly art. But most local art experts agree that the more, the merrier: The variety of spaces benefits the art viewer, the artist and even the art collector. In truth, the wide range of venues—from commercial to non-profits to hybrids—helps showcase why each is a necessary component of a thriving arts scene. And as local artists attest, that’s what Charlottesville’s becoming.

Origin of a species

Ten years ago, art was mostly relegated to museums or more traditional art spaces. Now it’s hard to order a double Americano without catching a glimpse of a landscape, still-life or experimental photo work. More and more restaurants, bookstores, jewelers, churches and even office buildings decorate their walls with rotating art shows. Take, for instance, Downtown Mall coffee spot Mudhouse. Currently customers can see the works of abstract painter Delmon Brown Hall IV while sipping their java. Before the mid-‘90s, such a show would have likely been relegated to a handful of local galleries or one of the few forward-thinking bistros supporting local art.

Sarah Sargent was the director of Second Street Gallery from 1993 to 1999. “When I started at Second Street,” she remembers, “there was Second Street and McGuffey, and [now-defunct] Gallery X, and those were really the only three that were around.” She adds that the current trend of showing art in restaurants and stores was, at the time, almost unheard-of.

A symbiotic relationship between art and Downtown business has fueled the growth of each, say many observers. Whereas Sargent likens the Downtown Mall of 10 years ago to “a wasteland,” there are currently at least 20 separate places to see fine art Downtown, and more than 30 in Charlottesville overall. “It’s impossible now to get a restaurant table on a Friday when there’s an opening,” says Sargent. “I really feel like the arts were responsible for the development in the Downtown area.”

And in return, increased tourism—Downtown or otherwise—has been a contributor to the explosive growth of the gallery world. “We’re getting on the radar now as a regional art center,” says Jill Hartz, director of the UVA Art Museum, adding that Monticello-driven tourism can complement Charlottesville’s standing as an arts destination.

And certainly “in-town” tourism by locals hasn’t hurt the art scene: The popular First Fridays gallery walks have given a celebratory atmosphere to the local art world for at least one night per month. The well-marketed idea of the “Downtown arts district”—since, to be sure, that’s where most art venues are located—might turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. “I think that could only benefit [artists],” says Russell Richards, an artist and member of the McGuffey Art Center.

Everything in its right place

The expansion of art into the commercial realm has sparked some issues regarding culture and commerce. When Lynelle Lawrence, Mudhouse co-owner, talks about the only art show she’s ever had to remove from her Downtown coffeeshop, the story reveals a tension between high culture and the economic engines that underlie it. The show included a sizable pastel drawing of a nude man, surrounded by severed heads on platters.

It was not a hit. After the piece went up on a Monday, says Lawrence, “My phone was ringing literally nonstop. People said they wouldn’t come here, wouldn’t bring their children.” By Friday, the piece (and one other, a female nude with a breastfeeding baby) had been pulled. Lawrence says she herself didn’t mind the works, but “it was not an appropriate space to hang them.”

Lawrence maintains that art is an integral part of Mudhouse’s mission: “to create a space for free expression.” She also says that the severed-head snafu did not make her more skittish about showing provocative art. Yet, as a businessperson, she was forced to choose between art on the walls and customers at the counter.

That’s a consideration most non-commercial spaces—especially those solely devoted to art—generally don’t have to worry about. They can be bolder about what they show, and view controversy as an opportunity rather than a liability. Leah Stoddard, director of Second Street Gallery, recalls that several pieces by Todd Murphy (which dealt with Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with slave Sally Hemings) sparked strong reaction in 2000. The gallery responded by organizing discussions. “I felt like we were being responsible—not ignoring the controversy, not taking advantage of it, but encouraging the audience to have their say,” she says.

Even if a business is explicitly art-centered, it must strike a difficult balance between aesthetic and commercial considerations. Lyn Bolen Rushton, owner of Les Yeux du Monde (now sharing prime Water Street digs with E.G. Designs in Dot 2 Dot), says that her career as a Charlottesville art dealer has taught her about her market’s limitations. Back in the mid-‘90s when she was selling art out of her home, she says, “Some of the most experimental things that I thought were really interesting just didn’t click with the buying audience. People came, but it was hard for me to break even.”

Rushton is now betting on a new solution to the small-town problem of limited art markets: the “hybrid”—mixed-use art and retail space. Dot 2 Dot is now well-regarded by many observers for its mixed stable of local and nationally known artists, supplemented with prints and smaller works by contemporary masters like Jean-Michel Basquiat. Rushton describes her artists as “already-established artists who have a unique place in the art world, and that are somehow going to sell.”

Rushton then hastens to add, “I’m not going to sell out, ever,” and local art teachers and professionals tend to corroborate that statement, using words like “adventurous” and “serious” to describe the art Rushton shows. The vintage furniture and fine papers that make up the E.G. Designs part of the business, Rushton says, contribute to the cozy atmosphere rather than tarnishing the purity of the aesthetic.

There is a wider range of art to be seen in Charlottesville’s retail market than one might expect—even if you have to peer over stacks of merchandise to spot it. Willow 88, also on Water Street, deals in contemporary Chinese, Vietnamese and aboriginal Australian art, paired with antique Chinese furniture. Susan Flury, co-owner, says this is an art niche unique in Charlottesville (commercially, that is—the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection covers part of the same territory). GOvisual concentrates on photography exhibits. Some businesses, like Main Street Market and Les Yeux du Monde’s Starr Hill location, provide a platform for student work.

And, though some may fret about the dilution of the market—or about restaurants that should do their own interior decorating—it’s clear that local artists would have far fewer opportunities to show their work were it not for hybrid spaces. Lawrence says that, from 125 artists who apply yearly to show at Mudhouse, the 12 she chooses are overwhelmingly local. “We love to show first-time art, people that have been turned down elsewhere,” she says, adding that work usually sells briskly in the busy café. At Hamiltons’, City Centro, and Angelo, among others, Charlottesville artists have opportunities for exposure and, with luck, sales.

Feed your head

One group certainly benefiting from the explosion of art spaces is the artists themselves, many of whom delight in the increased opportunities for exposure. But some watchers lament a lack of experimentation in the majority of art shown in Charlottesville.

Rich Davis is a fifth-year studio art major at UVA who describes his own work as “not very traditional. I don’t know if a lot of people even call it art.” His dada-influenced projects include modifying electronic gear and making masks out of giant stuffed animals. Unsurprisingly, Davis finds much of the art in Charlottesville galleries “really conservative, really tried and true.”

Still, he says, “The gallery scene is definitely good for such a small town.” And he singles out the Downtown Gallery at Nature as the one venue he makes a point of visiting, since it sometimes offers video and installation pieces—much rarer in Charlottesville than painting and other traditional media. Piedmont Virginia Community College art professor Chica Tenny says her students, too, favor Nature, and that this is the natural order of things in a vibrant art scene. “It is important for fresh things to start,” she says. “There’s always someone thinking things need to change, and that’s the great thing about artists.”

The dissatisfaction younger, more experimental artists feel sometimes translates into action—a new space, or a temporary takeover of a non-art space, like the use of the Frank Ix Building on Monticello Avenue for the Fringe Festival last October. And having a critical mass of galleries—even conservative or commercial ones—may actually be a crucial factor in allowing experiments to blossom.

For one thing, art draws artists. “Artists are now making a decision to come to Charlottesville and make a home for themselves because of this environment,” says Stoddard.

Artists, in turn, are apt to band together, identify gaps, and fill them. McGuffey Art Center is a Charlottesville institution and the most venerable example of an artists’ cooperative in town, having provided studio and exhibition space since 1975. Richards, who’s had a McGuffey studio for three years, calls it “a fantastic resource” for its high visibility and tight community. Artists get 100 percent of sales from McGuffey walls, whereas commercial galleries, of course, take a cut.

Membership at McGuffey is seen as a mark of accomplishment, and many members are full-time artists. But less-established artists have outlets too. Members of BozART, a cooperative on the Downtown Mall, generally have day jobs, says member Karen Whitehill. “People who really expect to sell a lot are misled. But people who just want to feel like on Friday nights people will come out, be interested and give you some feedback,” she says, find BozART valuable.

Bullseye, meanwhile, is a newer and proudly informal entry in the co-op category. Director Kimberly Larkin says Bullseye’s studio spaces are its most important component. Though she and former partner Stacey Evans ran it as a regular gallery for a year, these days it’s a “vanity gallery” for the seven artists who share the rent.

Without a regular exhibition schedule and conventional hours, says member Monty Montgomery, the space—located under the Jefferson Theater—becomes a dynamic center for exchange and conversation. “I put the sign out at 10 at night” while working, he says. “People come down. Every night, I meet awesome people that can’t come down here during the day.” Bullseye also has a loose relationship with Nature, sometimes organizing joint exhibitions, and Larkin says Bullseye is flexible enough to accommodate possibilities like film screenings and puppet shows.

Tried and true

A true art scene isn’t just an art mall. Traditionally, galleries have served an equally significant purpose as places for artists (and especially students) to learn and be inspired. It is in that area—and in the ability to show more interesting, non-commercial works—that the established non-profit galleries differentiate themselves from upstart boutiques in the gallery world.

While strapped-for-cash artists might feel comfortable just standing and looking in upscale shops—Flury says that Willow 88 often plays host to artists asking about Asian and aboriginal techniques—traditional nonprofit art spaces are still better equipped to educate than their commercial counterparts. Stoddard says that at Second Street, “My whole shifting of the mission was away from the artist’s career to the audience. I’ve tried to make it more of a mini-museum.” That means more informative text to go along with exhibitions, as well as outreach efforts like partnering with local schools and universities for visiting-artist workshops. “I try to share that visitor with as many people as possible,” she says.

Ultimately, Stoddard and Hartz can show work even if they know no one will buy it. Both name installation art—which can be room-sized—as an important part of the contemporary scene that is difficult or impossible to sell, but has been exhibited at Second Street and the museum. Hartz points out too that, “Most of the galleries show contemporary art; there are not a lot that show other time periods and non-Western art. We can have the kind of shows [like the current Shunzhi porcelain show] that no other places in this community can do because of the budgets involved and the staff needed.”

Artists and art teachers agree that these older, non-commercial spaces are still the best for learning. William Bennett, a UVA studio professor, says “I think Second Street Gallery is a really good gallery. I think our students are missing out if they miss out on things that happen there.” Richards, who lived in Washington, D.C., before moving to Charlottesville, says that while he sees lots of peers’ work he respects at McGuffey, for him the UVA Museum is the only local substitute for the capital’s barrage of top-flight museum exhibits. In D.C., he says, “I’d go down to the museums practically every weekend. I really miss that.”

Small galleries at UVA and PVCC provide still more non-commercial—and therefore more adventurous—wall space. In UVA’s Fayerweather Gallery, says Bennett, “We pretty much do exactly what we want. We don’t feel constrained at all.”

Cultural cohabitation

Even with the growing hybrid and commercial art spaces, the three area art anchors—Second Street, the UVA Museum and McGuffey—will always have a place. But they are learning how to adapt to a much more crowded house. Second Street’s Stoddard says that publicity has become more pressing in the new climate. “I must admit that I got pretty passive about getting publicity out. I just assumed we would get coverage for exhibitions,” she says. “At first I was sort of like, ‘Hey!’ But then I adjusted my thinking and thought, ‘What am I doing? This is fabulous.’”

Hartz echoes her excitement about the growth of the art scene. “Galleries have become more professional,” she says. “It just adds a lot more vitality to this community. We’d like to be supportive.” Hartz adds that the new spaces create opportunities for city-wide themed shows like 2000’s “Hindsight/Fore-site,” which examined Charlottesville’s Jeffersonian legacy in 20 sites around town and was curated by Rushton.

That kind of synergy between educational, commercial and even government forces (the City helped finance the 1975 renovation of McGuffey School, for example) emerges as the most positive measure of Charlottesville’s arts scene. Established, experimental, academic and for-profit spaces may have different missions, but they don’t necessarily feel competitive.

The emerging “arts corridor” on Water Street (comprising Dot 2 Dot, Nature and the under-construction City Center for Contemporary Arts), says Stoddard, is a good example. “It’s a really thrilling time. There are things we haven’t even thought about that are going to happen with cross-pollination,” she says.

And, just as students need galleries to learn from, galleries need students, who represent future suppliers of their product. Chica Tenny of PVCC says that the school’s art department nurtures connections between students and the local marketplace. “I do think our faculty make an effort to connect them up with places to show,” she says. Whitehill, a former student, says this is precisely how she got involved at BozART. PVCC connects students to the Richmond art world too, since many faculty earned master’s degrees at Virginia Commonwealth University and have connections there.

UVA, says Bennett, is more insular, with students sticking close to grounds. “We’re working on that,” he says. “My colleagues and I would like our students to be a greater part of the arts community in Charlottesville.” The self-containment of UVA compared to PVCC may be unavoidable given that most UVA students grew up elsewhere and move on again after graduation. In fact, says Bennett, “I really encourage our students to leave town. They need a broader view of the world. I also encourage them to come back” after working or getting graduate degrees. Some students, he says, have indeed returned to Charlottesville to find their niches in the art community.

Ultimately, artists themselves provide an important barometer of the health of the art scene. Richards says Charlottesville has been a good environment for him since moving from D.C. three and a half years ago. He was already a full-time artist there and, he says, a big city is probably still an easier place to start an art career. But, he says, “I feel extremely fortunate to have this studio here. McGuffey is pretty unique to Charlottesville.”

Perhaps most tellingly, Richards feels that in Charlottesville he can both put food on the table and remain true to his vision, which sometimes includes explicit sexual content. “I think people are a little bit more enlightened around here than one might think,” he says. “I do have people come in here sometimes and look at my work and kind of turn pale and walk back out the door. But I’ve never felt censored.”