Month: September 2015

Categories
Living

Meals on Wheels brings back its popular foodie fundraiser and more local restaurant news

The Ivy Inn’s Angelo Vangelopoulos will offer delectable bites for a good cause at the Meals on Wheels fundraiser Taste This! on Tuesday. Photo: Robinson photo

Meals on Wheels brings back its popular foodie fundraiser

Charlottesville prides itself on being a food-oriented town, with restaurants, food trucks and breweries popping up left and right. But what doesn’t always get as much attention is the food-and-drink world’s involvement when it comes to giving back to the community.

On September 15, more than a dozen local chefs, bakers and brewers will set up shop at the Boar’s Head Inn for Taste This!, a fundraising event for Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville/Albemarle. They’re volunteering their time and products at no cost to Meals on Wheels, according to volunteer manager Brittany Cane-Conley, and all the proceeds go to the organization. For $75 you can wander from booth to booth, tasting sample-sized portions from places such as MarieBette Café & Bakery, Gear-hart’s Fine Chocolates, Grit Coffee and The Local.

Taste This! has been around for years, but went on a brief hiatus due to staff changes, according to Cane-Conley.

“It’s the primary fundraiser for Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville/Albemarle,” she says. “So this year we’re kind of reinventing it.”

In addition to the 20 or so local purveyors serving up food, beer, coffee, wine and desserts, there will be a cash bar, a silent auction and live jazz music by the Bob Bennetta Trio.

Meals on Wheels Charlottesville/Albemarle delivers lunch to about 275 people per day, using close to 180 volunteers a week. Cane-Conley says people are often surprised to learn that the organization is 100 percent locally funded.

“Meals on Wheels has a sort of umbrella national organization,” she says. “But we receive all our support from local individuals and organizations.”

For more information about Taste This! and to buy tickets, check out www.cville tastethis.com.

Tea time

Good news for any Wahoos who don’t drink coffee. Argo Tea Café, a Chicago-based chain that is trying to change the way Americans drink tea, opened up a location on Grounds just in time for the start of the fall semester. The full-service counter is located in Wilsdorf Café, which is in the first-floor lobby of Wilsdorf Hall. Argo Tea has been making its way around the world, with locations in New York, Boston and Washington D.C., plus overseas in India and Kuwait. College campuses have become home to several of them, and UVA’s director of dining Brent Beringer says it’s a perfect match for UVA.

“On the most basic level, we have a lot of coffee operations here, and of course they serve tea, but it’s not quite the same,” Beringer says. “This is something completely different, and they just do some wonderful things from a food-and-beverage perspective.”

The menu features loose leaf teas from all over the world, plus signature drinks such as the Teappuccino, Mojitea and Iced Maté Laté. And for those of you who have been craving bubble tea, the milky iced tea with chewy pearls waiting at the bottom of the cup is available at Argo.

Marketing spokesman Aaron Brost says people in the U.S. still tend to associate the concept of tea with a bag in a glass of hot water with a lemon, which doesn’t do justice to the most widely consumed beverage in the world.

“Argo Tea has brought a new appreciation for tea,” Brost says. “They’ve really done that with all-natural ingredients, by fresh-brewing using loose leaf tea and injecting great flavor.”

The menu also offers a selection of paninis such as roasted tomato and spinach or wasabi ham and Swiss; salads featuring chickpeas, lentils, edamame or black beans; baked goods including muffins and macaroons; and breakfast items such as quiche and SpecialTea parfaits.

And, no, you don’t have to have a UVA dining plan to try it out.

Smoked or boiled?

You’ll probably see a lot of familiar faces running the food and beverage tents at this year’s Lockn’ festival—local favorites like Jack Brown’s, The Pie Guy, Castle Hill Cider and Shenandoah Joe Coffee will be ready for the hordes of hungry and thirsty festival-goers. New this year is Squeal or Scream, a pop-up restaurant put on by the guys behind Ivy Provisions, Brookville and The Rock Barn. (We use the term “restaurant” loosely considering it’s under a tent, but it will have full table service.)

According to Brookville owner Harrison Keevil, guests will have the option of barbecue, which will include brisket, pulled pork and chicken plus sides, or a low country boil of Rappahannock clams, shrimp, corn, potatoes and Rock Barn sausages. Both meal options are intended to be shared between two people, and the menu will also have beer, lemonade and tea.

“It’s going to be a nice place to come sit down, relax, listen to the music,” Keevil says. “We’ll start everyone off with a couple treats before they get the main event and then send them off with a cookie.”

Categories
News

Residents petition BOS to slow comp plan amendment

The Board of Supervisors could vote to adjust the comprehensive plan boundary at the September 9 meeting.

People living around the property at the Interstate 64/U.S. 29 interchange, which the Albemarle Board of Supervisors is considering adding to the growth area to attract a West Coast brewery, are circulating a petition to slow the process.

“We started being concerned about a factory across the street surrounded by a rural and residential area,” says Sherwood Farms resident Christine Davis. “Now we’re concerned about the process. The schedule the board set is rushed, and it suppresses public debate.”

The petition asks the board for a neighborhood master plan before the comprehensive plan is amended, and for a citizens advisory council like the one used in the development of Crozet as a growth area.

Petitioners also want a comprehensive land use plan to tally and identify all industrial-zoned land before hastily adding more to the comprehensive plan. That’s something Faith McClintic, new county director of economic development, has said she intends to do, says Davis, but “she hasn’t had the time.”

Albemarle County, which is not known for its speedy approval of development plans, has surprised many with the accelerated processing of the amendment to turn rural land into growth area in its comprehensive plan.

A spokesperson for Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, said the company is looking at Albemarle, along with two other sites.

On August 18, the Albemarle Planning Commission unanimously rejected amending the comprehensive plan. The Board of Supervisors had a work session September 2, and the amendment is on the agenda for its September 9 meeting.

Davis said neighbors met September 5 and started the petition the next day. At press time, it had around 25 signatures, but she was optimistic there would be more before the Board of Supervisors meeting.

Categories
News

Legendary attorney, Foxfield president Benjamin Dick dies

Benjamin Dick was photographed in his law office in 2006. Photo Jen Fairello

Stetson-wearing James Benjamin Dick, longtime Charlottesville attorney and colorful president of the Foxfield Racing Association, died August 29 at age 67 in Winchester, the town where he was born.

Dick graduated from Virginia Military Institute and served in the Army during the Vietnam War. His penchant for Stetsons started at Fort Leavenworth, where he once told this reporter he hung out with colonels. “You had to drink their gin, smoke their Camels and wear their Stetsons,” he said. After the military, he got a law degree from the T.C. Williams School of Law in Richmond, and practiced in Charlottesville and Winchester for the next 40 years, according to his obituary.

In 1979, he became president of the newly formed Foxfield Racing Association, a position he held until his death. Dick fought epic battles with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control. Dick blamed the end of Easters in 1982 for sending students to party at Foxfield instead. Although the ABC attempted to pull Foxfield’s license in 2002, ultimately more enforcement and education of UVA students tempered the event’s notoriety.

Dick was a regular at C&O, and was once presented with the bill for a $4,000 tab. A chair at the end of the bar has a brass plaque with his name engraved on it.

His funeral will be held at 2pm in Winchester, with, not surprisingly, a party to follow.

Categories
Arts

Space exploration: An orchestra of gongs takes the stage at The Haven

Tatsuya Nakatani tours the country with his gongs and brings local participants together in one day for emphemeral, transformative concerts. He will perform solo, then lead the Nakatani Gong Orchestra on Saturday at The Haven. Photo: publicity photo

“I have two arms and two legs to work with my instruments,” says musician Tatsuya Nakatani. Indeed, in his solo performances he makes full use of all four, improvising with countless approaches to sound with drums, gongs and other instruments. For those who have seen him at The Bridge PAI or Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, it’s clear he doesn’t hold any part of himself back when he performs. He creates many of his own instruments, including wooden bow mallets and attachments to hang from gongs. Still, two sets of limbs feels like a limitation to Nakatani. “I always think: ‘How can I maximize this?’” he says.

His answer? The Nakatani Gong Orchestra. The basic concept behind the project is to train others to play bowed gongs. Nakatani leads a workshop with 11 musicians, who then perform together in order, increasing the depth and intensity of his music in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible for one person. After all, that’s 44 limbs to work with instead of just four.

Not content to just form a touring orchestra, Nakatani has created something closer to performance art. Each touring group is comprised of different members, many of whom aren’t musicians; what unites them is geography, curiosity and an interest in experimentation. They are all volunteers in a single city, fused together into the orchestra over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour workshop.

As he leads the workshop, Nakatani adapts the skills and tendencies of his volunteers to the unique acoustic setting of the performance. His overall approach is improvisational and experimental but draws influence from Japanese folk music. “I don’t compose in the normal music way,” he says. “I remember the gong sounds and I know how to layer and match them.” Nakatani views his role as a conductor more than a composer. “The gong orchestra is very limited in time,” he says. “I have to teach people how to bow the gongs and read my signs.”

Once the performance takes place on the evening of the workshop, the group then disbands, and Nakatani packs his gear into a van and drives on to the next stop. The experience lasts no more than half a day from start to finish, yet the effect is transformative for both participants and audience members. “I always feel it,” says Nakatani. “Everybody is so happy. Vibrationally, you get chills from that many gongs playing at the same time.”

The timbre and vibration of the gongs create a meditative atmosphere that is relaxing and restorative. Many say that the gongs produce frequencies that ultimately cultivate a heightened awareness of sound elsewhere. Nakatani likens this to the Japanese concept of ma, the idea that space can be created by defining non-space.

Though similar to gong baths and other rituals with sound waves, Nakatani notes that the events should not be mistaken for a spiritual ceremony. Rather, he places emphasis on the creative expression that comes from playing the gongs, stressing the importance of individuals finding their personal sound. “Sometimes people make unexpected sounds, but I try to use them in good ways,” he says. Much like the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, the gong orchestra embraces imperfection as part of the beauty of performance.

The Nakatani Gong Orchestra will arrive in Charlottesville on September 12, making way for an evening performance at The Haven. Lap the Miles event coordinator Annie Dunckel helped organize the event. “I wanted to have the gong orchestra come to Charlottesville after I saw it last summer in Baltimore,” says Dunckel. “I was blown away by the fact that all the people were local and sharing this music with their friends and neighbors. I love how this will be a local show despite it being a touring artist.”

To gather the right mixture of participants, Dunckel asked area creatives to participate, and musician Davis Salisbury is one of the volunteers. As one half of experimental drone duo Grand Banks, Salisbury also performs solo work as Dais Queue and is attuned to improvisational music. “I use a lot of [similar] influences to steer my own performances, so I am a good fit for this kind of thing,” Salisbury says. “But I have never personally played a gong in a real musical situation, just played around with them in stores or when a friend had one.”

He hasn’t seen the orchestra perform, but volunteered to participate based on Nakatani’s past performances. “Tatsuya is something like a force of nature, and it is impossible to passively sit through one of his performances,” says Salisbury. “He is an extremely skilled and dynamic improvisor. He brings a real energy and commitment to what he is doing to the performance, but there is also a palpable joy and even humor to the performances that humanizes them and provides moments of real connection.”

Nakatani will take the stage prior to the gong orchestra to play an improvisational set with his varied set of instruments—most likely including drums, hammered gongs and singing bowls. “I think that just about anyone could go to a Tatsuya show and walk away feeling like they saw something unique and joyful,” says Salisbury.

What music do you meditate to?

Tell us in the comments below.

Categories
News

Crozet man killed by train

Matthew Shannon was killed on the Crozet train tracks on September 2. Photo courtesy of his family

On September 2 around 8:25pm, Albemarle police say a 22-year-old male was hit and killed by a train in Crozet about 100 yards east of Starr Hill Brewery.

This man has been identified as Matthew Michael Shannon of Crozet. No criminal activity is suspected, according to police spokesperson Carter Johnson.

“We’re coping with family and friends,” Shannon’s brother, John, says.

Shannon graduated from Western Albemarle High School in 2011 and took some classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College, before his brother says he stopped to focus on his love of cooking and art. He was working as a chef at Fardowners Restaurant in Crozet.

Aside from his love of cooking, his brother says he was an avid piano player and loved painting. He used these mediums to “share his unique view of the world with everyone,” and he “made it his life’s goal and passion to share his love of life and the beauty contained within it with everyone he met,” John Shannon says. “His loss has been deeply felt by family and friends.”

The funeral service will be held at 3pm Sunday, at Teague Funeral Home.

This article was updated at 8:05 a.m. September 5.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Guy Gilchrist

Country singer and comic artist Guy Gilchrist frequently includes musical tributes in his drawings of the daily cartoon Nancy. He plays at the Ix Arts Park on Saturday. Photo: Publicity photo

Nashville singer-songwriter Guy Gilchrist has enjoyed a very colorful career—literally. An accomplished illustrator, Gilchrist got his first big break when Jim Henson hired him (along with brother Brad) onto The Muppets comic strip creative team. In 1995, he took over the popular American cartoon Nancy, sketching the daily antics of a curious girl recognized by her fringed halo of hair. The lifelong country music fan takes temporary leave from his desk to hit the stage and kick off a new local music series.

Saturday 9/5. Free, Ix Art Park, 955 Second St. www.ixartpark.com.

Categories
Arts

Woman of steel: Lily Erb’s unyielding approach to modern sculpture

Local artist Lily Erb has gained notice for her large steel rod sculptures which she calls “abstract organic.” Photo: Courtesy of the artist

For Lily Erb, art mirrors life—but only to a certain extent.

The Charlottesville-born and -based artist creates large steel sculptures, most lately composed of numerous steel rods bent into gentle, repetitive curves, then spray-painted in bright, jovial colors. She calls her style “abstract organic” because the pieces don’t resemble actual organic objects. Instead she starts with the idea of natural forms, then follows that concept in a non-representational way.

Her work resembles mountain ridges, split seedpods, the (abstracted) contours of human bodies. “My first memory is not being able to sit on my mom’s lap because she was pregnant with my sister,” she says. “Maybe that has something to do with [my fascination with] fullness and space, because I didn’t know what was in her stomach. I was like, ‘Why can’t I sit here?’”

There is a lot of empty space in her 3-D works, which cover walls and fill rooms without smothering them. “I like making space and I like filling space, but I also like being able to see everything. Something about being able to see every section of a piece is helpful to me,” she says.

Erb began sculpting in college after she signed up for what she thought was a sewing class. But Women’s Fabrication turned out to be a toned-down version of shop class, “more of a safe space to first learn the equipment as opposed to being around all the guys who are making cars and taking up a lot of space with their macho attitudes,” she says.

But from those first sparks, Erb was hooked. “I did torch welding, which is just really hot fire. I would start out with these long straight pieces—I was using coat hangers at that point—to make these forms that are very organic and immediate.”

Her first sculptures were pregnant torsos. Then she made one out of steel. Just like that, she created a structure with volume and emptiness, an absent vessel.

For the first time, Erb began to think of herself as an artist. Sculpting steel lines around what wasn’t there turned her attention to other voluminous organic forms—the contour lines of topography, specifically, and what might lie beneath them.

Erb began to wonder what the inside of a mountain might look like after a summer art course in The Burren, Ireland, “which has all this limestone rock that had been eroded away. It’s sort of like looking at a mountain range uncovered, but 6″ tall.” She also began sculpting abstract mountain ranges that reminded her of home.

Welding is a bit of a lonely business for women, as Erb quickly discovered. “There were women who really liked the class but didn’t end up continuing [to go to the shop] because it’s an intimidating space,” she says. “I just happened to be extremely stubborn, like ‘I’m going to show these people.’”

Show them she did. After college, she spent time in an artist’s residency in Tennessee, then came back to Charlottesville to work in Lauren Hanley’s steel fabrication shop in exchange for studio space.

Eventually Erb bought her own machine, and now she bends steel as much as possible. She sold 30 small sculptures through The Bridge PAI’s 2014 Community Supported Art program, and her work has exhibited all over Charlottesville.

She says it’s fun to be a woman who welds, that her craft feels important in part because “it’s not a skill people often think of women having.”

She no longer fields classroom machismo, but the surprise of strangers can get her hackles up. “I’ll go to pick up my steel and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re going to bring that in? Is someone going to be there to help you unload it when you get back?’” she says. “Like, ‘No. I’ll be okay. I have muscles.’”

But she goes on to quote Tina Fey: “‘If someone’s in between you and where you want to be in your job, just ignore them and keep going.’ I just ignore them and try not to get angry about it. That’s just part of the game, and I’m still making my art.”

In essence, Erb’s role as a female sculptor plays the same part as her work. Both present the question, in abstract: What truths exist beyond what we see?

“There’s a potential for growth in a seedpod,” she says. “Most vessels contain things that have energy. It’s in this little package, like an egg or an acorn, to help something continue on in its life.”

View and purchase Lily Erb’s work currently on display at tavola’s cicchetti bar, 826 Hinton Ave.

Categories
Living

Lunch break: Foodify CEO discusses evolving technology-and- food trends

Hunter Stokes is the CEO of Foodify, an online food ordering system that partners with restaurants to serve the business community’s catering needs. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

The world of online food ordering is constantly evolving. OrderUp was just acquired by Groupon; companies like Blue Apron deliver pre-measured ingredients straight to your door to save you the trouble of using things like spoons when you’re prepping dinner; hell, there’s even Stadium Concierge, an app that lets you order your game day pizza and soda without taking your eyes off the field. One regional company with headquarters in Charlottesville is trying to capitalize on this ever-growing food market, and we sat down with Foodify CEO Hunter Stokes to chat about the industry and how companies like his can get ahead in (and at) the game.

The concept of Foodify is similar to OrderUp and other online meal ordering companies, with one major difference: Rather than delivering cases of cheap Chinese food to college kids at midnight, the service connects businesses with local restaurants to provide catered meals in the workplace.

“Catering in our universe is, for the most part, business lunches,” Hunter says. “I’d say 85 percent of our business is lunchtime food drop-offs, not white tablecloth staffed events with alcohol. Our core business is business lunches, project meetings, employee appreciation meals.”

The model, which originated as VMeal and was revamped and rebranded as Foodify last year, is designed to make transactions between businesses and restaurants easier and more manageable for both sides. Don’t confuse it with a delivery service, though: Foodify works with restaurants that can provide their own delivery, and strictly serves as the middleman.

Restaurant and catering partners pay a commission to Foodify for each transaction, but the service, which includes things like e-mailed invitations with ordering options to each individual attending the meal, is free for businesses. The concept of a liaison between food service providers and customers isn’t a new one by any means but Stokes, a UVA and Darden School of Business grad who joined the team in 2011, emphasizes the importance of investing in modern platforms and marketing. Given things like Groupon’s recent acquisition of OrderUp and the constant release of new apps will make the screen-to-food process more efficient, Hunter predicts that within a few years the market, which is currently saturated with small startups, will consist of just a few big names.

“I would say the industry is still somewhat unsettled and in its nascent stages,” Hunter says.

Foodify was founded and is headquartered in Charlottesville, and it also serves Richmond, the D.C. metro area, Baltimore and Houston. Hunter says the company is “eying expansion opportunities,” but for now it’s focusing on the existing markets.

“We’re making sure we have an economic moat around the business so that when the competition does move in, we’re well-protected,” he says. “I think we’ll see over time that a handful of dominant brands will emerge, and it’s probably reasonable to think that those brands will serve individual customers and businesses, and probably will manage the delivery piece as well. We’re a long way from that. Until then, it’s still up for grabs, and there’s an opportunity for us to build a really meaningful, significant business focusing on what we do well.”

Categories
Arts

Film review: Zac Efron plays up the cute in new EDM rom-dram

We Are Your Friends stars Zac Efron as an electronic dance DJ trying to break out of the San Fernando Valley house party scene. Photo: Warner Bros.

There are two types of people who will find something of value in the EDM apologia We Are Your Friends: GoPro oversharers who post hours of vapid, slow-motion footage to Vimeo, and sad bros who lament that “Entourage” never had a Coachella episode. Certainly, there is a worthy story somewhere within the world of electronic music that has both a firm grasp of its subculture along with the mainstream appeal of Saturday Night Fever, but We Are Your Friends is so slow yet scatterbrained, unfocused yet obsessed with minutia, it’s difficult to believe that actual fans of this music and lifestyle would enjoy watching it when they could be raging instead.

Directed by “Catfish” co-creator Max Joseph from a screenplay co-written by Meaghan Oppenheimer, We Are Your Friends tells the story of Cole Carter (Zac Efron), an ambitious yet rootless DJ and producer living in the San Fernando Valley. Cole’s crew—budding actor Ollie (Shiloh Fernandez), shy Squirrel (Alex Shaffer), and walking liability Mason (Jonny Weston)—have dreams of making it big in the world of event promotion, when jaded veteran DJ James (Wes Bentley) takes Cole under his wing and inspires him to flourish personally and creatively. Eventually, Cole’s interest in James’ girlfriend and personal assistant Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski) reaches its breaking point, and the crew gets tired of spinning its wheels while waiting for success, forcing Cole to choose between his mentor, his ambition, his desire and his loyalty.

At least, that’s what director Joseph was evidently going for. What we end up with is closer to a world where Cole is so nice, talented and good-looking that every obstacle he faces seems to willingly dive out of his way the moment it comes into view. When Cole’s friends crash a party at James’ house and start a fight, James brushes it off with: “Your friends are gorillas, but we’re cool.” An argument with his part-time employer—a sleazy opportunist who buys the homes of people facing foreclosure for a fraction of their value, played by Jon Bernthal—somehow ends up with him making even more money. When James is slipped PCP without his knowledge, his confusion turns to joy as the party turns delightfully rotoscoped. Basically, Cole is less a protagonist than a guy everybody in the movie wants to be nice to, which is great for him but insufferably boring for a film.

In fairness, Joseph does appear to have a keen understanding of EDM as a genre and its artistic value, setting aside time for hands-on demonstrations of how music is assembled, as well as fourth wall-breaking tutorials on the science of crowd management and track assembly. The final 15 minutes of the film could have (indeed, should have) comprised a standalone short about finding inspiration. But inspiration is exactly what the film as a whole is lacking, save for Bentley, who delivers what may be his best performance yet in a character so well-developed that he should have been the focus of the movie. No stakes, no real conflict, easy resolution, lazy direction and uneven commitment to its subject, We Are Your Friends drops the ball along with the bass.

Playing this week

American Ultra

Ant-Man

Fantastic Four

The Gift

Hitman: Agent 7

Jurassic World

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Minions

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

No Escape

Ricki and the Flash

Shaun the Sheep Movie

Sinister 2

Straight Outta Compton

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Trainwreck

War Room

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Categories
Arts

September First Fridays Guide

Photo: Martyn Kyle

En plein air, a French expression meaning open air, is used to describe the act of painting outdoors. Artist Meg West prefers the form, the environmental immersion and challenge that comes with it. Living in Virginia, she says she benefits from being able to “breathe, see and experience the view large all around,” and see through eyes that want to recreate and express a sense of beauty. West maintains that it is the act of painting that is important, and says she enjoys the feeling of being connected to her environment and herself as well as her creation.

 First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com.

First Fridays: September 4

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Four Seasons,” featuring plein air oil paintings by Meg West. 6-8pm.

CitySpace Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. “All Pastel Paintings,” featuring work by Piedmont Pastelists. 5:30-7pm.

McGuffey Art Center 201 2nd St NW. “Something Forgotten,” featuring photographs by Kim Kelley-Wagner in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery; and “The 2015 Annual Exhibition,” featuring juried works by the Central Virginia Watercolor Guild. 5:30-7:30pm.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Animals and Clouds,” featuring prints and paintings by Dean Dass. 5-8pm.

PCA Office Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. An exhibit by Amy Atticks. 5:30-7pm.

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. “Labels,” featuring a site-responsive installation of digital prints, vinyl curtain, a searchable web-based database, and audio by Siemon Allen. 6-7:30pm.

Spring Street Boutique 107 W Main St. “Sketches of Scotland,” featuring photographs by Frank Murphy.

The Garage 250 N. First St. “No Precious Thing,” featuring mixed media collage by Mike and Lisa Ryan. 5-7pm.

The Loft at Freeman-Victorius 507 W. Main St. “Joshua Tree Rocks,” featuring photography by Jackson Smith. 5-8pm.

WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. An exhibit by Kathy Kuhlmann. 5:30-7:30pm.

WVTF & Radio IQ Studio Gallery 216 W. Water St. “Rain Dye,” featuring textiles by Jess Lee. 5-7pm.

Other Exhibits

Chroma @ SCS 214 W. Water St. “Repository of Missing Places,” featuring 30 years of paintings by Richard Crozier.

The Art Box and Creative Farming 2125 Ivy Rd #5. “Cool Landscapes and Warm Flowers,” featuring pastel paintings by Nancy Galloway through the month of September. Reception 4-6pm on September 12.

JMRL Central Library 201 E. Market St. “Portraits: Artistry in Ordinary Architecture,” featuring photographs by Gary Okerlund.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Where the Water Moves, Where It Rests,” featuring eucalyptus bark paintings by Djambawa Marawili AM.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Views from the Garden,” featuring paintings by Susan Mcalister, through September 20.

Northside Library 705 Rio Rd W. “Recent Oil Paintings,” featuring oil paintings by Randy Baskerville.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Collection,” featuring photography by Sol LeWitt; “Struggle…From the History of the American People,” featuring paintings by Jacob Lawrence; and “Cavaliers Collect,” featuring a variety of genres on loan from UVA alumni and friends.