Month: July 2011

As an undergraduate, I was taught in a neuroscience class that the brain habituates within 30 seconds to new smells. That is, within 30 seconds, the smell largely goes unnoticed. This is useful—it keeps your nose sensing out new pleasures or dangers while ignoring those already known, whether fragrant or noisome. In this week’s cover story, Andrew Cedermark takes us on a smell tour of Charlottesville. He re-awakens our noses to the city, describing odors to which we have become so habituated that they no longer register, reminding us how integral they are to the fabric of the city. His tour is very personalized, and no doubt each of us reacts differently to the many smells he catalogues (I’m apparently the only one in the office with a soft spot for the smell of Subway bread). But it’s an invigorating reminder of all the surrounding beauty and decay we usually take for granted. Read the cover story here, and don’t forget to leave comments.

"Places" is a new feature by where local artists show us the places around town that inspire them.

Guest post by Anna Caritj

“My muse is everyone’s grandma,” says Patrick Costello, scraping his foot along the sidewalk in front of his “huge, beautiful, double porch Charlottesville mansion” at 712 Nalle St. We’ve just rounded the block, the neighborhood speckled with lush back gardens, long wraparound porches and bits of broken glass. The walk is familiar to Costello; a circumambulation of sorts, in which the young artist consciously moves around the sacred object of his inspiration: the home.

In this way, his affinity for grandmas makes sense. He works with materials of the home, using tools of comfort and closeness by stitching soft fabrics, jamming handpicked wine berries, and reaching out to his housemates—his “family unit,”—for collaboration and inspiration.

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Does this place remind you of anything?

My grandparents’ house in Idaho Falls. When we’re there, my grandma is cooking, my mom is cooking, her sister is cooking and there are a million kids and a million people everywhere in this really small little space. [As kids,] we were always putting on plays and playing music in the living room and there was always noise everywhere. This house has that same energy. I don’t need it to be quiet; the presence of other people helps my work. I’m a verbal processor and if there are people to talk to and things going on, ideas happen.

Does nostalgia come into play when dealing with the home?

When you’re dealing with the domestic sphere as a point of inspiration, it can very quickly become too precious or too dark. It’s something I’ve always struggled with in my work. Often times I look back at it later and I’m like, “Ughh! This is so…benign, so precious.” That’s where I tend to lean more than the dark side of nostalgia: I tend to over-romanticize. I don’t want to make art that’s nostalgic and precious, but I don’t want to make art that’s not tied to place and memory. I’m sitting between so many of those ideas, but that’s why I make art: I want to be part of the process.

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Many of Costello’s pieces reflect this focus on relationships, closeness, and home. They often feature an enclosed center or core, filled with shooting stars or endless, oceanic waves of earthen mounds (“I spent a whole Spring drawing the compost heap over and over and over,” he says.) Surrounding these spaces of cosmic and agrarian infinitude are pastel geometric patterns, reminiscent both of thick woven afghans and the beams and bricks that construct a sturdy home.

In a piece called “Gimmiedat!”, two hands—swarming with streaking comets and celestial dazzle—cradle a quilted space in efforts to grasp the core: a foamy, green, seemingly sacred triangle. However, the fingertips never quite reach around that site of warmth, implying a piece always missing, always incomprehensible, when it comes to the meaning of home, of place, and of comfort. This unreachable space also suggests an open and infinitely flexible expanse rather than one of stagnancy and entrapment. Here, "place" is not static, but ever changing, teeming with creation, destruction and an endless spectrum in between.

Governor Bob McDonnell recently announced appointees to the UVA Board of Visitors (and, as you’ll recall from our coverage of everything from school architecture to tuition increases, the board wields some serious power). The most familiar name on the list? Tim Robertson, son of televangelist Pat Robertson, who previously served on the BOV and also helped launch UVA’s Media Studies program with a $1.2 million donation for an endowed chair and a new media center.

Robertson’s family has supported McDonnell over the years, and McDonnell, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network University, served for eight years on that school’s Board of Trustees. So, what goes around…

The appointees also include McGuire Woods partner George Keith Martin (a colleague of McDonnell’s former senior policy advisor, Eric Finkbeiner) and UVA alum John Nau, the Houston-based beer baron whose $8.5 million donation for the development of the South Lawn nabbed him a building in his name.

As we mentioned above, the BOV has quite a bit of clout. Track its influence in our Power Issue.

Things are about to get ugly at C-VILLE Weekly. That’s because our art director—the guy who makes ours such a pretty paper to behold—is going on vacation.

So photographers, we need your help. Submit a photograph for a chance to see it on the cover of our July 26 issue. Otherwise, things may get really ugly—we’re talking MS Paint ugly.

Details are below.

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C-VILLE is looking for submissions for our annual photo contest. We are seeking high quality prints featuring local people, places or things (no smaller than 4" x 6"). Preference may be given to vertical compositions. Photographers may submit multiple entries.

Winners will be published in the July 26 issue of C-VILLE. Deadline: July 7. Entries must have photographer’s name, address, and phone number securely attached TO EACH PRINT. (Prints only.)

1st Prize: $500 gift certificate from Pro Camera; 2nd Prize: $250 gift certificate from Fast Frame; 3rd Prize: $100 gift certificate from Zocalo.

Send or hand-deliver to: C-VILLE PHOTO CONTEST 308 E. Main St., Charlottesville, VA 22902. Prints will not be returned.

To see past winners, click here (for 2008), here (for 2009) and here (for 2010).

All right, friends. If you’ve never canned anything and you wish you could, I am here to offer a little encouragement and inspiration. As I write this, a pot o’ pickles is boiling on the stove–the year’s first batch.

Here’s all that’s involved in making pickles.

You cut up the cukes into rounds, spears or both. Put them in a bowl with some kosher salt and ice, then go do something else for several hours while they sit in the fridge. (I opted to sleep.)

Fill up a canner (or any huge pot) with water and start it heating. Meanwhile, rinse off your cukes and pack them into pint jars. Combine vinegar, sugar, celery seed, whole allspice and mustard seed and bring to a boil. Pour this liquid over the cukes, leaving a quarter-inch of "headroom" at the top, then put the lids and bands on the jars.

When the water is almost-but-not-quite boiling, put your jars in carefully, boil for 10 minutes, then remove. (A special jar lifter tool is very handy here, but you can do it with tongs.) Let the pickles sit for 24 hours before you touch them or test the seals. And don’t eat them for at least a month–six weeks is better.

From four pounds of cukes, I got six pints of pickles.

And that’s all there is to it. For the exact recipe, see this book, or find another that you like.

Put off by the cost of jars? Kathy Kildea of Market Central writes that she’s got "thousands of $1.50 off coupons for Ball jars." Pick some up at the Market Central booth at City Market.

Albemarle County residents are happy to live where they do. According to a survey conducted by National Research Center, Inc., “most residents experienced a good quality of life in Albemarle County and believed the County was a good place to live." The overall quality of life in Albemarle County was rated as “excellent” or “good” by 90 percent of respondents.

A majority reported that they plan on staying in Albemarle County for the next five years. In fact, 51 percent of the survey’s respondents said they would recommend Albemarle County as a place to live to whoever asks. The county received praise for its reputation, its appearance, the quality of the environment and schools. However, “ease of rail travel,” the lack of affordable child care and “ease of bus travel and ease of bicycle travel” failed to earn wide approval numbers.

The survey also reveals that, generally, county residents trust in the local government and rate the direction of the leadership as either “good” or “excellent.”

To read the survey report in its entirety, click here.  

To put the Downtown Mall’s 35th birthday celebration in perspective, consider this: Fred Savage, who played Kevin in the coming-of-age TV show "The Wonder Years" was born early this month 35 years ago. Celebrate the Mall’s birthday all weekend, with "performances, cake, musicians, games, dancing, a Kid’s Carnival (!)" and more. Sounds like a "Wonder Years" episode. Happy birthday, Mall; happy birthday, Fred Savage.

Included under the banner of that celebration—the Mall one—are Fridays After Five and Finally Fridays, two nearly identical music events that today continue the second week of their peaceful co-existence. Tonight The Main Street Arena hosts the country act Sweetwater, and the Pavilion hosts Southern rockers Down ‘Til Now.

Why leave the mall? Mostly confined between those two venues are today’s First Fridays. Plenty of excitement to be had there: The Garage hosts prints by Jason Kachadourian, which look great; Chroma, McGuffey and most local galleries have new shows up. On your walk, pick up this week’s C-VILLE and flip to the Galleries page for complete listings.

It’s Independence Day Weekend, so remember—wear gloves while shooting off firecrackers (actually, don’t), have a glass of water for every beer you enjoy and apply lots of sunscreen. How to celebrate? The Newsplex hosts fireworks and fun Monday night at McIntire Park, though there’s free parking at Charlottesville High School. Best bang for your buck (it’s free) is up at Monticello, where Muhtar Kent, CEO of America’s most recognizable brand, Coca-Cola, presides over the Naturalization Ceremony, wherein noncitizens become Americans.

Two great, glum Richmond bands play at the Tea Bazaar on Friday night, and I’ll let their darkly enjoyable music speak for itself:

White Laces’ "Motorik Twilight"

Diamond Center’ "Caraway"

What are you up to this weekend?

Is it the Fourth? Thanks to Thomas Jefferson, no place does Independence Day quite like Charlottesville. Below, a few newsy July 4 events of note:

• Monticello’s annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony is slated for 9am on that big ol’ mountain. This year’s speaker is Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, who will likely receive a warm reception given his recent $500,000 gift to Monticello.

• Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek blogs about a trio of parades in her White Hall district, with U.S. Senate hopeful Tim Kaine slated to appear in Crozet tomorrow.

• And the Jefferson Area Tea Party will host Virgil Goode and a Patrick Henry impersonator at Jackson Park, in Court Square.

So, make your July 4 decisions the same way you treat fireworks: carefully.

Where do you go for your fireworks? Post your comments below.