Artists to Zion: Deliver us
Will performance come to the house of God?
In the year of the building’s 119th anniversary, Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street stands vacant, and what fills it will likely stir conversation in the coming months. The Mt. Zion congregation held its final service in the building on May 25, pursuant to its occupation of new South First Street facilities. Developer Gabe Silverman purchased the church in February 2002 and takes possession of the property later this month.
“I’m hoping that somebody comes up with an idea that’s compatible with what we’d like to see happen there,” Silverman told C-VILLE. “One of the most obvious would be a music venue. It should be something that continues to give back to the community.
“What I’m not looking for,” he told the Daily Progress when he bought the building, “is a restaurant or to make it residential or anything like that.”
Silverman’s commitment to nurturing the space as a performance venue could offer new possibilities to the City’s leagues of roving theatre and dance groups. Even as capital campaigns for the arts flourish, many feel increasingly restricted in where they can stage and rehearse their works.
“There are lots of people out there that are doing work when they can. Not all of us have a huge network,” says Zap McConnell, the current director for the dance group Zen Monkey Project. Of the potential for Mt. Zion, she says, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was some way it could be a sort of collective where people contribute a certain amount…a community arts organization that could provide space for different people?”
Thadd McQuade, a founding member of the theatre troupe Foolery, believes that the building’s devotion to a limited number of performers may have better results and build more prestige.
“I think in some ways it would serve the community more to dedicate a space to a particular group or artist,” he says. “I’d rather see one or two people use the space in a high-profile way with accountability. Let them use it for a year and then see if they’ve used the space wisely.”
The space itself shows its century’s worth of wear and tear. Metal trusses support the wooden beams of its cathedral ceiling, and tiles overhead have fallen or come loose. Chipped and cracking in places, sea-foam green paint covers the walls. Regardless, with its stained-glass windows and aged, dark pews, the 12,000-square-foot church retains a noble atmosphere.
As one of the City’s two oldest church buildings, along with First Baptist on W. Main Street, Mt. Zion’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places owes in part to its racial history. A City Architectural and Historic Survey notes that at the time of Mt. Zion’s formation, “Segregation had not yet become entrenched, and blacks and whites lived side by side. Mt. Zion’s location at the entrance to Ridge Street seems symbolic of the integrated nature of that most prestigious residential street.”
Any new incarnation of the space should emphasize Mt. Zion’s cross-cultural significance, according to Mecca Burns, who runs the theatre institute Presence with Brad Stoller. She suggests that the church could bridge the City’s racial divide, which further widened when the officials razed the adjacent Vinegar Hill neighborhood in the ’50s.
“My really strong feeling about Mt. Zion is that it needs to be intensely multi-cultural,” she says. “I think there need to be step groups and hip hop teams. I don’t want it to be another place that has this invisible cultural barrier around it like Live Arts, where there are black people and black kids who walk by all the time but rarely go in.”
McQuade agrees. “If it gets too converted, that would be a shame. If it could still be in touch with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church [community], that would be phenomenal,” he says. “And I think Gabe is sensitive to that, to unifying the community.”
Mt. Zion’s pastor Rev. Alvin Edwards once sought for the church to become a regional black history museum or merely to retain its role as a house of worship. Now, he seems to be relinquishing those ideas as he prepares to hand over the building.
Questioned about Mt. Zion’s possible transformation into a performance space, Edwards summarizes the feelings of many City artists with his understated reply: “I wouldn’t object to anything like that.”
—Aaron Carico
Courting public opinion
Competing Court Square designs to get public airing
Sometimes it helps to have the Federal government on your side. At least that’s the hope of some City officials as they prepare on Thursday, June 19, to share with the public two competing plans for a Downtown courthouse redesign. Federal guidelines specifying how new courthouses should look unequivocally favor contemporary architecture, and Washington’s imprimatur is among the things Mayor Maurice Cox hopes will persuade the public to go modern on Court Square. While merely a single building’s façade is under discussion in the current debate, the choice between faux historical design and up-to-date design will have wider-reaching implications for Charlottesville.
“It will be a real test of whether the City and County can jointly conceive and fund a public project,” Cox says about the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court, which is located at 411 E. High St. and is operated by Charlottesville and Albemarle. “I think it can be an example of good City-County relations.”
Indeed, in the three years that the courthouse’s slated redesign has been under review, City-County discussions have been mostly harmonious. Matters of how to site the new building to respect a truly historical jail structure behind it, along with questions of financing, underground parking and easements from Park Street, have been largely settled. But relations are chillier on the question of the building’s proposed facelift. Albemarle Supervisor Charles Martin, who sits on the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court Design Committee, says he speaks for all the County Supervisors when he expresses the view that “all along the Board has been operating with the view that the [courthouse would have] a more traditional façade.
“The old-fashioned style is more of what you normally think of when you think of a courthouse,” Martin says.
But the General Services Administration, which administers all Federal court buildings for the U.S. Department of the Interior, couldn’t disagree more. Among its standards for rehabilitation, the GSA states “changes that create a false sense of historical development…shall not be undertaken.”
Moreover, the GSA dictates, “the new work shall be differentiated from the old.”
Martin says he is unfamiliar with the Federal design mandates.
The code is well known, however, to the City’s Board of Architectural Review, which will have to vet the High Street court’s redesign once the City-County committee signs off on a single proposal. Architect and UVA professor Kenneth Schwartz, who until recently served on the BAR, says his former colleagues “know very well the Department of Interior standards for adaptive reuse indicate that if you replicate the past, you trivialize history.
“That’s a mainstream position for guidelines in the United States,” Schwartz says, “and those guidelines are important to the BAR.”
BAR Chair Joan Fenton concurs. While the BAR has not formally reviewed the competing courthouse plans, in keeping with national standards, she says, “the new building should not look like it’s an old building. You should be able to distinguish what is new and old.”
That task is especially crucial in the Court Square area, says Schwartz, where a very important historical structure should, by rights, hold center stage. That’s the Albemarle Circuit Court building whose white columns, broad portico and red bricks truly derive from the 18th century. Given that the Albemarle courthouse has been witness to the law practices of three U.S. presidents—Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—“it is the most important building in Court Square from a historical point of view.
“The last thing you want to do is trivialize it,” says Schwartz.
And while Martin characterizes the modern design of architects Wallace, Roberts & Todd as “futuristic,” Schwartz says that across the nation “there are many examples of contemporary designs that are sympathetic to a historic setting.
“It has to do with issues of scale and proportions and the way the doors and windows are handled.”
In Charlottesville, Schwartz continues, design need not be “Jeffersonian or classical to honor the historical context.”
On Thursday, June 19, at 7pm, the public will have its chance to discuss the question when the Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court Design Committee presents two designs, seen above, from the team of Wallace, Roberts & Todd, and Moseley Architects. The meeting will take place in the court building at 411 E. High St.
Cox, who is the lone architect on the design committee, says he’s prepared to accept the outcome of this public process—whatever it may be. It’s been his experience with public discussion, says Cox, that when people are given information “inevitably they have the miraculous ability to make the right decision.”
—Cathryn Harding
Phat city
Hip hop shops serve a broad market
West Main Street may resemble an illustration of gentrification-in-progress, where diners sip chardonnay while overlooking construction of upscale apartment buildings that will eventually hide the lower-income neighborhood behind them. But you can still buy a throwback NBA jersey, or a baseball cap meant to be worn sideways, at Charlottesville Players, an unassuming storefront next door to Continental Divide. Owner Quinton Harrell has been selling urban and hip-hop fashion from the same location since August 1997, and despite the ongoing yuppification of his block, he has no plans to move.
“Fashion has always been in my blood,” he says. “My grandmother and grandfather were known as the best dressers in town.”
Harrell got into the rag trade while still a college student, investing $500 in merchandise and a table, which he set up in the Estes parking lot on Cherry Avenue. Things went so well that, rather than finish his degree, he made the leap and opened a store. From the beginning, he had his eye on 801 W. Main St.
“It’s on the main drag, and it’s a nice building,” he says, explaining why he didn’t consider any other location for his fledgling business. “It already had track lighting and slat walls, so it was pretty much perfect.”
Harrell acknowledges that his business is an anomaly on ever-pricier West Main. “My core clientele, their per-capita income is not that high,” he says.
Still, the location brings him crossover business he might not get in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. “You can’t cater to everybody,” he says, “but it’s still a mix that I can have, where I can expand my market without sacrificing my original formula.” Harrell’s crossover strategy resulted in sales of $265,000 during 2002. A sizable portion of his market, he says, consists of browsing restaurant-goers and white moms shopping with their teenagers.
That’s not a surprise: Suburban whites have long been consumers of hip-hop culture. In fact, another urban fashion shop, Sexshuns, recently opened on the east end of the Downtown Mall, and owner Reynold Samuels also hopes to appeal to a broad market. The new store has the minimalist look of a Manhattan boutique, with each futuristic sneaker given plenty of shelf space.
“I didn’t want to overcrowd the store,” Samuels says. “I like the middle-aged crowd. That’s who I’m trying to target.”
With another hip-hop shop in town and gentrification marching onward, Harrell knows that changes are coming. Indeed, right across W. Main Street, a new 225-unit apartment complex owned by Dave Matthews Band manager and real estate mogul Coran Capshaw is under construction. Though its residents likely will be UVA students, the building—with a pool and fitness center—won’t exactly be budget-friendly. “I don’t really know how those high-income apartments are going to affect my business, because I don’t know if the stuff I carry is going to cater to [residents],” he says.
Still, he’s confident. “You can either be victimized by the growth, or take advantage of the growth. Longevity means a lot. We have something established here,” he says, adding, “I may need to move into some linen suits.” —Erika Howsare
Turn the page
Parting words from the director of the CWC
Charlottesville’s reputation as a garden of literary greatness has long been nurtured by the prize-winning pens at UVA. Since 1996, however, the Charlottesville Writing Center has provided budding scribblers a place to find community outside of ‘Hooville.
Seven years ago, four local writers––Heather Burns, Wendy Gavin, Greg Bevan and Browning Porter––discovered that their talents for prose and poetry, alas, wouldn’t pay the rent. To give themselves and other writers a place to ply their trade, they formed the Writing Center, where they taught classes on poetry, fiction and memoir writing.
As executive director, Porter has grown the non-profit company from 40 students in its first year to more than 300 last year. But this summer, Porter will step down as executive director.
Along with the brown fedora he typically sports, the 36-year-old Porter wears a myriad of other hats––graphic designer, singer, poet, magazine editor. Recently C-VILLE caught up with the renaissance man to talk about life after the Charlottesville Writing Center.
Does Charlottesville really deserve its reputation as a “writer’s town”?
I don’t know if Charlottesville is necessarily a more writerly place than other cities. It has that reputation, and it’s not entirely undeserved. I’m sure people have heard the rumor that Charlottesville has more book stores per capita than any town in the United States, and there are some high-profile writers here, not all affiliated with the University.
I think every town is a writing town. I believe writing is a skill, like cooking, that everyone needs to know how to do a little bit, just to survive. Everyone benefits from getting better at it, even if they just do it for their friends and family.
This town is crawling with wonderful writers that you never see. They continue to work, but they’re invisible most of the time. People who come to teach at the Writing Center say they expected the students to be pretty rank amateurs, but they’ve discovered they’re leading one of the most lively and talented groups of writers they’ve ever been around. I think that level of energy comes from people who have been feeling invisible suddenly feeling that they have a new community.
But what made me stick with the Writing Center this long was the realization that writers really need a community. Writing is almost necessarily a solitary endeavor. Writers need a place where they can bounce works in progress off people besides their parents or spouses or friends. They need to get exposure to other kinds of writing. They need to find friends with similar interests. Writers need people, too.
Why are you stepping down as director?
I looked into my heart, and found that I’m not an arts administrator. I can do it, but it’s not what makes me jump out of bed in the morning. There are people who are better at it than I am, and I think we’ve found one. Her name is Mary Miller. She was one of our students last summer, and she has a lot of experience with non-profits.
What are you going to do now?
I’m going to do graphic design for my day job, which is my most lucrative skill at the moment. And I’m going to put more energy into my writing and music, which I’ve been neglecting with all my other responsibilities. I’ll probably take a class at the Writing Center, which is something I’ve never had time to do. I have a volume of poetry that’s long overdue to be published, and we have a Nickeltown CD that’s been in the works for about seven years now. We need to get that finished. I’m going to continue to be on the Writing Center board of directors, and I intend to contribute to the organization as a volunteer. For the time being, I plan to continue working on Streetlight Magazine. I also have an idea for a novel.
What’s the novel about?
It’s a secret.
Can writing be taught?
Yes. Can you teach any random person to be Shakespeare or Jane Austen? No, probably not. But everyone can be taught to learn the craft of expressing themselves more compellingly in their own words. The idea that writing is some mystical power that God handed out to you at birth is not helpful to anybody.
—John Borgmeyer
The Nature of the business
As gallery closes, Water Street loses original art draw
On June 6, the usual First Fridays crowd was swirling in and out of the oversized green front doors of Nature Gallery on Water Street—greeted, as always, by gallery director John Lancaster. But for those who noticed it, the small sign at the entrance put a damper on the normally upbeat mood: “Yard Sale, June 21. Nature is Closing.”
During its gradual evolution from studio space to Warhol-worthy gallery during the four years that Lancaster has been a tenant, Nature has earned a reputation as the edgiest venue in town, not to mention the one with the best parties. The decision to leave, Lancaster says, occurred when discussions with the building’s owner, Hawes Spencer, failed to yield an agreement about renovations (including improvements to the precarious entranceway) in the atmospheric but dilapidated space behind the Jefferson Theater.
Lancaster and co-director Laurel Hausler say they were surprised by the talks’ outcome. But, Lancaster says, “It was mutual in that both sides had qualms about continuing on,” adding that the timing of the move was “totally” his decision.
Spencer, who is a newspaper editor, says that while the space’s “highest and best use is as a gallery,” he’ll be concentrating on improvements before seeking a new tenant.
Many art watchers see the change as a loss to the local scene. Leah Stoddard, director of Second Street Gallery, had anticipated rubbing shoulders with Nature when SSG moves into its new home, the City Center for Contemporary Arts, later this year. “I was very disappointed to learn it because I was looking forward to [the Water Street] corridor being diverse,” she says, adding that without Nature the area will lack “unexpected, scrappy” programming. Nicole Truxell, whose paintings are Nature’s current and final exhibition, concurs that losing the gallery is bad news. “John’s given a showcase to a lot of people who probably wouldn’t have tried to get into other galleries,” she says.
But Lancaster and Hausler aren’t throwing in the towel. After leaving the current space July 1, they’ll spend the summer gearing up to open a new gallery, called Nature Visionary Art, in a to-be-determined Downtown location. The new space, which they aim to open in September, will feature “outsider, visionary and folk art,” according to Hausler. Lancaster calls it a “voodoo hodgepodge.” For the first time, they say, the gallery will be a full-time job for both of them.
While the new space will, in theory, be “a little glossier,” according to Lancaster, the pair say they hope to continue Nature’s role as an adventurous, experimental art venue. Still, the old location will be hard to replace, with its soaring ceiling and rich history of Vaudeville performances. Acts like Harry Houdini and the Three Stooges performed on the very floor that Nature-goers now tread. “It’s an amazing location,” Lancaster says. “It definitely adds to the experience” of looking at art.
The gallery will host a yard sale in its Water Street home on June 21, Lancaster says, to “say goodbye with a bang.” Nature lovers are invited to browse a selection of objects collected from the gallery’s many nooks and crannies: “furniture, eclectica, construction material, more books than you can shake a stick at, art supplies and Donald Duck figurines.”
According to Lancaster, “Everything must go.”—Erika Howsare