The Festy Experience returns this weekend for the seventh straight year, taking place Friday through Sunday at its new home, the Nelson County Preserve in Arrington. Once again, the festival will feature an impressive mix of national acts and local bands—focusing on some of the best in bluegrass, Americana and roots rock. Especially intriguing this year are the unique collaborations taking place between acts on the three-day bill. Here are five essential sets to catch.
The Infamous Stringdusters: Ladies and Gentlemen
Earlier this year bluegrass expansionists The Infamous Stringdusters—The Festy Experience hosts—released Ladies and Gentlemen, a collaborative studio album with an impressive cast of some of the band’s favorite female vocalists. A handful of the album’s high-profile participants—Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lee Ann Womack, Sara Watkins, Abigail Washburn and Nicki Bluhm—are on The Festy line-up and will likely join the Stringdusters during the band’s Ladies and Gentlemen set on Friday evening. After the Stringdusters’ three-hour, two-set headlining slot on Saturday night, the band’s fiddle player, Jeremy Garrett, will lead an acoustic gospel set on Sunday at noon.
Mary Chapin Carpenter. Publicity photo
Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen
An undisputed highlight from last year’s Festy was the joint set featuring Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt—two iconic troubadours sitting side by side, trading songs and stories with coffeehouse-style intimacy. On Sunday, Lovett will return to the festival to revive the duo format, this time performing with Texas tunesmith Robert Earl Keen. While both performers have decades of material to mine, expect to hear a version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “T for Texas,” a song the pair sang together on Keen’s 2015 album, Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions.
North Mississippi Allstars and Anders Osborne
On Saturday, the North Mississippi Allstars team up with New Orleans singer-songwriter-turned-electric-guitar ace Anders Osborne, revisiting a project unveiled last year with the album Freedom & Dreams under the name North Mississippi Osborne. The Allstars use traditional hill country blues as a launchpad for fuzzy psychedelic tangents, while Osborne is a swamp rocker with a crafty, lyrical mind. Expect a hard-driving journey between the Delta and the bayou with plenty of guitar fireworks along the way.
Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn
Best known for jazz-meets-bluegrass explorations with his longtime band the Flecktones, banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has lately been concentrating on a duo project with his wife, fellow plucker and songwriter Abigail Washburn. The pair will take The Festy’s main stage under the afternoon sky on Friday, playing banjo duets that move from old folk songs to more complex instrumentals.
Jim Lauderdale
Prolific songwriter and Grand Ole Opry veteran Jim Lauderdale recently received some serious props when he was given the WagonMaster Lifetime Achievement Award at last month’s Americana Honors & Awards. Although not a household name, Lauderdale has written country hits for the likes of George Strait, who presented him with the award, and recorded albums with Ralph Stanley and Robert Hunter. Lauderdale will be The Festy M.C., and likely have his guitar in tow to play some tunes with other artists on the bill.
Deepwater Horizon stars Mark Wahlberg as engineer Mike Williams in a depiction of the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
The ensuing oil spill following the explosion and sinking of semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Deepwater Horizon in 2011 devastated states along the Gulf Coast for years to come. It was the worst natural disaster—and largest corporate settlement—in United States history. But before the constant media coverage, before the horrendously painful hearings in which BP CEO Tony Hayward complained, “I want my life back,” there was the incident itself, in which 11 workers lost their lives, 17 were injured and 94 were rescued in an accident that required quick thinking and heroism from ordinary people placed in an extraordinary situation.
Deepwater Horizon PG-13, 107 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema and Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
This is the focus of Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon, an appropriately straightforward disaster film that puts the focus on the people who did their best in impossible circumstances to contain the damage and save one another’s lives. The film follows engineer Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), head of safety Jimmy “Mr. Jimmy” Harrell (Kurt Russell) and navigation worker Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez). The crew, 43 days behind on their drill, arrives on the rig to find total disarray. Some key safety crew members have been sent home, shortcuts have been taken on vital security protocols, there are numerous structural and mechanical problems in need of immediate attention—even the phones are unreliable. Under pressure from executives at BP—led by an especially sleazy John Malkovich as Donald Vidrine—to begin drilling immediately, Mr. Jimmy is convinced by a strained yet plausible explanation for bad test results and leaves for his quarters to “wash the day away,” while the team proceeds in his absence.
It’s then that all hell breaks loose, simultaneously highlighting Deepwater Horizon’s best and worst attributes. The exact reasons why this accident occurred are often rushed and technical to the point of being incomprehensible, and in the ensuing melee, it’s often difficult to remember who is doing what and why. All we are left with for character development is “Mr. Jimmy good, Mr. Vidrine bad,” which turns out to be plenty, given the chief concern of the film on the moment-to-moment struggle to prevent a terrible accident from becoming a full-blown catastrophe. Berg certainly respects rig workers and paid detailed attention to the factual sequence of events, but anyone going into Deepwater Horizon with questions about what happened is unlikely to find clear answers.
On its own terms, Deepwater Horizon succeeds; it’s lean, it’s somehow exciting amid the confusion, it’s respectful of the victims and survivors, it does what it sets out to do while remaining steadfastly apolitical. It’s a satisfying depiction of real-world heroism and mankind’s capacity to rise to the occasion with no preparation or warning. The epilogue includes real footage of testimony from Williams, Harrell and Fleytas, which for a moment is as gripping as the film preceding it. If those moments are any indication, a documentary that clarifies some of the unresolved issues on a Blu-Ray release would be the ideal way to experience Deepwater Horizon.
Playing this week
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213
Blair Witch, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Don’t Breathe, The Magnificent Seven, Masterminds, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Queen of Katwe, Snowden, Storks, Suicide Squad, Sully
Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week-— The Touring Years, Bridget Jones’s Baby, Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words, Hell or High Water, The Magnificent Seven, Masterminds, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Snowden, Starving the Beast, Storks, Sully
Trinity Irish Pub, a popular bar on the Corner, fights charges by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control. Staff photo
Trinity Irish Pub on the Corner, a favorite destination for UVA students, has previously made headlines for being a weekend hot spot for those of legal drinking age and their underage friends. But in a September 28 court hearing with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, underage possession of alcohol or fake ID usage weren’t discussed.
The violations in question come from a citation written by ABC agent Jared Miller in the late hours of November 22, 2014, when he and agent John Cielakie observed a Trinity bartender serving alcohol to someone whom they say was already obviously drunk, and also for not adequately illuminating the premises.
Agents Miller and Cielakie are also named in the case against former UVA student Martese Johnson, who was turned away from Trinity on St. Patrick’s Day two years ago and tackled to the ground by ABC enforcers. Photos and videos of his bloody arrest went viral, and he is currently involved in a federal lawsuit with his alleged assailants.
In court, Midlothian attorney Paul Buckwalter, who represented Trinity, said the pub’s bartender may not have known how intoxicated one patron was when he served him a beer. He says the agents described the man as having “glazed eyes” and an “unsteady gait,” when he was escorted from the top floor of the bar and off the premises by a bouncer. Though agents reported later seeing the same man ordering a drink from the bottom floor of the bar, Buckwalter argued that “the new server [downstairs] can’t be expected to know what he did upstairs.”
As for the improper illumination, the ABC’s hearing officer who heard the violation case said in her summary that Trinity was so dark inside that agents needed flashlights to see the ground, though Buckwalter argues the transcript does not reflect that. Instead, he says the agents recounted using the lights to identify themselves as officers to patrons. And at no point, he says, did they ask Trinity management to turn on the lights.
“I don’t know what to tell the client to do so it doesn’t happen again,” Buckwalter told Judge Richard Moore, who said he needed more time to review the appeal.
The ABC intends to charge $2,500 in fines, or suspend Trinity’s mixed beverage and wine and beer licenses for 25 days.
In January 2011, the bar was cited for misrepresenting a brand of beer and was fined $1,000 with a 10-day license suspension. Two years later, Trinity was nailed for advertising its happy hour, but the charge was dismissed, according to ABC records. While these are administrative charges, ABC spokesperson Kathleen Shaw says the bar’s license history shows approximately 30 criminal charges, which may have been made against patrons.
Area business ABC violations since July 2015
Underage buyer: 6
Failure to timely submit mixed beverage annual review: 2
Failure to comply with the operation of its government store: 1
Qualifications: 1
Ratio: 1
Licensee cannot demonstrate financial responsibility sufficient to meet requirements: 1
Louis “Waterloo” Hampton of The Beetnix is on the bill for The Ante Room’s next Round Robin Hip-hop Showcase on Thursday. Eze Amos
Go to a hip-hop show in Charlottesville and you’ll see a rapper spitting lines to a crowd full of people giving him their full attention. They’ll be standing there, hipsters and hip-hop heads alike, stroking their chins, heads nodding to the beat. “They’re listening to every single word,” and when the rapper “says something dope, people fucking cheer,” says Mike “Mike Bizarro” White, a local rapper who performs as one-half of the duo Cognitive Dissidents.
“People go because they admire the craft, both in the beat production and the lyricism. It’s almost like going to see beat poetry,” White says. “Everybody’s there wearing their heart on their sleeve,” and with events like the newly established Round Robin Hip-Hop Showcase at The Ante Room, local rap artists are being given more chances to gain new audiences.
Jeyon Falsini, who owns and runs The Ante Room, noticed that rappers brought in by local promoters to perform during the last hour of his venue’s dance parties had more talent to share. The rappers needed a stage to themselves, so he started building hip-hop bills.
“I was noticing that rappers’ fans that came out for just their one friend wouldn’t stay to see the other acts,” says Falsini. After hosting a singer-songwriter round robin, where each artist played a song before passing the mic to the next artist, Falsini thought a similar format would work well for hip-hop. Each rapper performs a short set before passing the mic to the next MC. The mic makes two full rounds—each rapper performs twice.
Falsini expects the performers to come prepared, to know their lines and spit them out over their backing tracks—“warts and all”—no lip-syncing. “The energy, ‘the vibration,’ as I’ve heard it put, comes from performing live,” Falsini says.
The next showcase takes place on October 6 and features three individuals and one duo, all from Charlottesville, with each offering a slightly different musical style (it’s a broad genre, after all) and a different perspective on life. But they all agree on two things: Hip-hop is important, and it’s on the rise in Charlottesville.
Danny Lz, one of the youngest rappers on the scene, delivers straight-up hip-hop, with rhymes and beats heavily influenced by ’90s rap (think Jay-Z and Nas). He tends to tell stories about himself, and about his life, to relate to his audience. The genre, he says, “keeps your ear to the streets, to what’s going on in the world.”
That’s precisely what drew Louis “Waterloo” Hampton, member of The Beetnix and one of the scene’s most established lyrical artists, to hip-hop when he was a teen in the ’90s. “At the time, I didn’t have a dad in the house, and I was the big brother, so I didn’t really have anybody to look up to,” he says. “Music let me know what was cool, what was hip. It let me know what to keep my eyes peeled for, gave me the advice that I needed.” Plus, it “let me know it was okay to be who I was.”
Hampton cites Ice Cube’s “Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself,” off of 1992’s The Predator, as particularly important to him. Not only was it musically and lyrically fantastic, it offered good advice: “You better check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self,” Ice Cube insists, warning of the pitfalls of the street.
“Ice Cube really spoke about the ills of the system and police brutality,” Hampton says, sighing heavily before pointing out that incidents of police brutality toward black men is, 24 years later, still an issue. Hip-hop, he says, can provide sound guidance.
For White, who played in jam bands before forming Cognitive Dissidents with Phil “dogfuck” Green, rap is an emotional and mental release that’s open to audience interpretation. When he spits “My thoughts sink distantly, consistent as barflies / Stand guard for epiphany, turn rosary to barbed wire,” he expects the listener to find personal meaning in his lines. “It’s not up to me what my words mean,” he says. He’s all about metaphor and simile, allusion and allegory.
Green, on the other hand, goes for specificity. He raps: “Your mom’s so white, she said ‘Hey’ I said ‘Hey.’ / I said ‘Goodbye’ and she said ‘Namaste.’ / Then she dove in her Volvo and drove on her way / To practice her Spanish down at Chipotle. / Your mom’s so white she almost makes a white dude’s pay / But if she stayed at home and raised you then that’d probably be okay / and Hannity and company, they wouldn’t have shit to say about the welfare state of America’s decay.” He calls out his own whiteness, gender and race politics, big business and more all in a few lines.
Lalo Lloyd, who lived in Washington, D.C., New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia before moving to Charlottesville about a year ago, blends old-school hip-hop with a little R&B. “I base everything off an emotion,” he says, beats and lyrics alike. His songs are about relationships. As a child, he watched his stepfather abuse his mother; he’s lost friends and family members to drugs, to disease. “Most of it is stuff I’ve seen with my own eyes,” he says. “When people listen to [my music], I want them to feel like they know me. What you see is what you get; there’s no smoke and mirrors here.”
In addition to The Ante Room, Magnolia House, Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar and Milli Coffee Roasters host local hip-hop shows. But while the scene is emerging, it can only grow and deepen if people start to come to shows and if more venues begin supporting the hip-hop community, says White, who insists Charlottesville needs that musical diversity.
But no matter what, “Hip-hop is never going to go away,” Hampton says. “It’s a part of music—it’s a genre of music that’s in every city, everywhere you go. So, to have hip-hop in Charlottesville is totally normal,” he says. Not only that, but it’s necessary. “There are kids, who grew up like I did, who need that outlet like I did,” kids from all backgrounds who need their version of ThePredator, he says. Maybe he—or another local rapper—will be the one to provide it.
Wale brings his most personal work to date, inspired by “Seinfeld,” to the Jefferson on Monday. Publicity photo
On his recent release, The Album About Nothing, Washington D.C., hip-hop musician Wale has a lot of relatable things to say. The deeply personal album lightens up through its connection to the popular ’90s TV show “Seinfeld,” even featuring a guest appearance by the comedian as its narrator (Wale refers to Jerry Seinfeld as his “conscience”), and resulting in an unlikely friendship between the performer of “Lotus Flower Bomb” and the co-creator of the sitcom that gave us “yada, yada, yada.”
$30-130, Monday, October 10. 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.
Red Knierim and Matt Wyatt performed for patrons at Feast!’s rooftop wine garden on Saturday, October 1. The pop-up space will host wine tastings from Blenheim Vineyards on Fridays and Saturdays through October 22. Rammelkampfoto
There’s a rooftop wine garden in town, but blink and you’ll miss it.
On Fridays from 4-7pm and on Saturdays from 1-6pm, now through October 22, Feast! is hosting a pop-up wine garden with Blenheim Vineyards in the Main Street Market tower, a cozy, open space with bistro tables, padded benches and some excellent views of the city.
Tracey Love of Blenheim says the vineyard approached Feast! about doing the pop-up. It “was based on wanting our wines to be easily accessible and approachable to folks visiting from out of town and for those living in Charlottesville,” she says. “Even though our actual tasting room is only 15 minutes south of town, that is sometimes too far for people that don’t have means of transportation or time to make the trek.”
Feast! owner Kate Collier was eager to utilize the space, which Feast! has had for about a year and a half and uses for gift box production during the holiday season. “We felt bad hiding it from the public for so long,” she says.
Rooftop wine sippers have their choice of Blenheim’s chardonnay, Painted White (a blend of chardonnay, viognier and sauvignon blanc), merlot or cabernet franc. The wines cost $6 per glass, and between $17 and $25 for a bottle. A tasting flight of all four wines costs $6, and you can bring your glass to Blenheim’s tasting room at a later date for a free glass of wine, Collier says.
Customers can purchase food at Feast!—salads, sandwiches, cheese and charcuterie—to take up to the garden, or you can buy small snack packs, such as Virginia cheese straws, dark chocolate with cranberries, roasted Marcona almonds and tart cherries, or wasabi crisps with Virginia peanuts for between $4 and $8 at the bar.
The setup is temporary, but Collier says that other vineyards and cideries have expressed interest in doing something similar at Feast!’s rooftop garden. Stay tuned for future pairings.
Special delivery
Keevil & Keevil Grocery owner and chef Harrison Keevil loves Champion Brewing Company beer so much he’s made four sandwiches—available exclusively for delivery from his store to Champion beginning Thursday, October 6—to pair with it. “I wanted to highlight the amazing things the Champion brew team is doing,” Keevil says, and make food that would “bring out the essence of the beer.”
He’s made a chicken tikka masala burrito with Carolina gold rice to pair (if you choose) with the Missile IPA; a beer-braised sausage sandwich with housemade beer mustard and sautéed onion to go with the Shower Beer; a braised beef sandwich with carrot salad and beer cheese for the Black Me Out Stout; and a roasted chicken wrap with Carolina gold rice, romaine and ranch to pair with any of the lighter beers on tap. Keevil is currently developing a vegetarian sandwich option as well.
At Champion you can call in or text your order along with your name, and you’ll have your $10 sammy within an hour—Keevil & Keevil will deliver on the half hour, from 30 minutes after Champion opens until 7pm Mondays through Saturdays.
These sandwiches are exclusive to Champion, but Keevil & Keevil will soon offer hot in-house sandwiches—such as bahn mis and burgers.
UVA welcomes the First Folio, a rare collection of Shakespeare’s plays published after his death, to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library through October 26. Courtesy UVA, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Seven years after William Shakespeare died in 1616, a collection of his plays was assembled into a single volume for the first time. Only 900 copies were printed—235 survive today. For the first time, one of those First Folios is at the University of Virginia, on loan from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and on display at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library through October 26.
The opportunity for the loan became an excuse for a larger exhibition of UVA’s various Shakespeare-related materials in their collections, according to Dr. Molly Schwartzburg, curator of collections at the library.
“When we found that we had been selected to be a venue for the First Folio, we thought why don’t we select a few of our best items to accompany it,” says Schwartzburg. “And then we realized why would we do that work if we aren’t going to select all of our best items? Why don’t we make a whole exhibition out of it? So, we decided to build a large Shakespeare exhibition that would be up all year and then would adjust to accommodate the First Folio. The Folger project inspired us to go whole hog.”
The library went whole hog, indeed. Visitors to the gallery on the main level are treated to a trip through centuries of Shakespeare’s printed history. Early quarto-sized editions of his plays are on display, with texts that may have been authorized, or, just as likely, cribbed by scribbling bootleggers in his audiences. Piracy of entertainment began long before the Internet.
“UVA’s greatest strength is the history of the book,” says Schwartzburg. “Other institutions may be great in theater history. …We decided to look at the printing of Shakespeare up until the present day.”
Each copy of the First Folio is unique, owing to the fact that the typesetters made corrections to their sheets of paper as they worked, but did not discard the flawed drafts. It was a living document throughout its production, which mirrors the doomed struggle to identify definitive versions of any of Shakespeare’s plays.
“There is no such thing as a text of Shakespeare’s plays that is authorized by Shakespeare,” says Schwartzburg.
The plays likely changed even during the Bard’s own life. Scribes copied his drafts for the actors to use, with errors along the way. Like most playwrights, it’s possible he made changes to scripts based on the reactions of audiences and input from actors.
“A play in Shakespeare’s day was probably a fluid thing,” says Schwartzburg.
A comparison of the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy from various early printings of Hamlet shows wide variation. The first standalone quarto copy of Hamlet from 1603 is about a third shorter than what we are familiar with today, and many alternate lines are substituted. A 1604 edition was close to the First Folio version, but lacked a few key words.
Hamlet is now categorized as a “tragedy,” thanks to the First Folio.
“A key thing that happens with the First Folio is that it starts making claims about the text that don’t exist before,” says Schwartzburg. “It breaks the plays up into categories: tragedies, comedies and histories. …That has a huge impact on how you interpret them and has nothing to do with an intention of the author that you can return to.”
Eighteen of the plays had never been published before the First Folio and might otherwise have been lost. In fact, without the First Folio, Shakespeare might have been forgotten entirely.
The First Folio “tells us a lot about the significance of Shakespeare in the environment of 1622 when the project probably begins,” says Schwartzburg. “It tells of a legacy continuing beyond Shakespeare’s own lifetime, which isn’t the case with a lot of other very popular playwrights of the time whom we’ve never heard of today because they didn’t have someone going out and thinking it’s a good idea to publish and sell an edition of this person’s plays.”
Two of Shakespeare’s friends organized and edited the First Folio, giving it special legitimacy versus some of the standalone copies of his plays (which were never known to have been authorized by Shakespeare or edited by anyone with knowledge of what his intentions were for his work). John Heminges and Henry Condell, both actors in his troupe, the King’s Men, were close enough friends of the Bard to be named in his will.
Without Heminges and Condell, would anyone remember Shakespeare today? What about the thousands of words in the English language that he invented or popularized?
The First Folio led to a Second Folio in 1632 (also on display in the exhibit) with around 1,700 changes from the First Folio. When the Third Folio appeared in 1663, seven more plays were added but only six of those are now accepted as Shakespeare’s work.
Various editions of Shakespeare’s supposed plays blossomed in the centuries since. Editors censored some material and changed lines to fix rhymes that stopped working as accents changed. As generations of publishers have used Shakespeare’s name and work in whatever way that has suited them at a particular moment, the First Folio is the closest thing to a gold standard that actors, directors and fans have.
This month’s Abode features a city home with a cool, uncomplicated palette; a sleek white kitchen in Farmington Heights; tips from Rebecca Schoenthal on choosing art for your home and more! Here’s everything you’ll find inside:
HOME: Wanting to plan for the future, the homeowners of this Charlottesville home asked architect Jeff Sties to create a space for their kids now and their retirement later. The solution was simple: “The house really is a box,” says the client. Read more here.
Photo: Stephen Barling
KITCHEN: Technically, not much has changed for this Farmington Heights kitchen since its owner purchased the property. Ultimately, it came down to a few key moves at the hands of designer Wendi Smith: a new backsplash, a new paint color and new lighting. Read more here.
Designer Wendi Smith found not just good but excellent bones to start with when she tackled a recent kitchen redo. And that was lucky, because the look of this kitchen was very different from what her client ultimately wanted.
“She definitely has a style,” says Smith of her client. “She likes neutral and calm colors; blue’s her favorite.” The client favors modern and transitional furniture, but the house—a four-bedroom showplace built in 1967—had been given a highly traditional treatment.
Not just traditional, but fussy. “The house was covered in wallpaper, with lots of florals,” says Smith, who owns the Leftover Luxuries consignment shop. The kitchen, too, had a bit of wallpaper to call its own, along with floral curtains, wicker barstools and green and yellow cabinets that made the white appliances stand out awkwardly.
Still, the Farmington Heights house had some wonderful assets. It was built with an abundance of beautiful details—fine woodwork, a graceful curved stairway and built-in storage everywhere. In the kitchen, it turned out that a light facelift was all that was needed to transform the feel of the space.
Photo: Stephen Barling
“We considered opening the wall to the living room,” says Smith. “What would that benefit?” Such a move might have made it slightly easier to carry dinner out to the lovely screened porch overlooking the pool. But it would have sacrificed an attractive wall of built-in cabinets in the living room. Meanwhile, the kitchen layout—three walls of cabinets wrapping a long island—was quite functional as is.
Perhaps the luckiest break was that the cabinetry itself, aside from its colors, had just the right level of detail to swing effortlessly from a traditional to modern style, and was in excellent condition. The team did intend to change out the countertops for stone. But the length of the island—12’—turned out to be a barrier. “There was no way we could find a slab of marble or granite with no seam,” says Smith.
Photo: Stephen Barling
So, in the end, the existing countertops—a white composite material that isn’t spectacular, but also isn’t offensive—were left in place. The kitchen facelift was going to come down to a few simple but key moves: a new backsplash, a new paint color on the cabinets and walls and new lighting. Hardwood flooring could stay; a soffit over the island could stay; even the appliances could stay.
Once the cabinets were refreshed with white paint, “The appliances look all new,” says Smith. For the island cabinets, she chose a fresh blue hue that looks vibrant in the otherwise neutral palette. It’s echoed in the four blue seeded-glass pendant lights that now hang over the island. They replaced recessed lights, adding dimension to the room. “Having something hanging vertically stops your eye,” Smith explains.
The crowning glory of the redo? “The backsplash tied everything together,” says Smith. She and the client agreed immediately that this tile, sourced from Sarisand, was the one they’d been waiting for: elongated hexagonal marble tiles with tiny squares intricately inlaid around the borders. Many shades of gray in the marble provide a rich range of neutrals to offset the smooth blue finish of the island.
Photo: Stephen Barling
Brass hardware was exchanged for chrome, with long pulls on every door and drawer, a “sleeker look” than a mix of pulls and knobs. Other details likewise added to the contemporary feel—the ghost chair at the desk, and the books with specially wrapped white spines on the shelves. “She’s very minimalist,” says Smith of her client, noting the serene lack of clutter on the expansive countertops.
One final touch: new barstools to fit at one end of the island. Smith found just the right pieces on allmodern.com. They sit on hydraulic posts so they can be adjusted for these high counters, and their white leather seats are set off with chrome and black trim.
In all, it’s remarkable how different the kitchen now feels—clean and open rather than heavily textured—after just a few surface changes. Great bones really do matter, says Smith: “The house was done really well.”
When one Charlottesville couple started building a house in December 2014, they had a front-row seat to the construction: Their new house was going up in what had been a vacant lot right next door to their old house.
In their case, having daily contact with the building process was welcome—they’d been highly involved with the design process, too. With sustainable design and nontoxic materials being key goals for the project, the couple had extensively researched every aspect of the building, right down to whether the gypsum in the drywall was the naturally mined sort, or reused coal ash.
“We did spend an above-average amount of time,” says architect Jeff Sties diplomatically. His clients initially chose him for his green-building credentials, and now that the house is built, they heap praise upon him for his patience with their exacting standards.
Besides sustainability, the couple’s major goals were to build a house in which they could comfortably raise their two young children now, while also aging in place in the future. They needed a lot more space than their previous house could offer. “Our son’s nursery was a guest room, storage room and office,” they say. “It wasn’t working for us as a family.”
Aesthetically, their tastes weren’t an exact match—he fantasized about a steel-and-concrete box, while she craved something warmer—so Sties tried to strike a balance. After dozens of drawings, he found the right solution to address looks, layout, solar shading, budget and many other concerns. It was deceptively simple: “The house really is a box,” says the client.
Gray HardiePanel combined with honey-colored black-locust siding makes for a striking front façade. A band of white wraps the roomy balcony on the second floor. Photo: Kip Dawkins
Quiet finishes
A box, yes—but a highly articulated one, with great thought evidenced in every detail. The size and placement of windows, for example, was part of an intricate puzzle involving the dimensions of the HardiePanel that covers most of the exterior. Minimizing the number of panels that had to be cut would help out with the budget, but the results needed to be pleasing, too. “Creating the variation and pattern—it gives it a timeless quality,” says Sties.
Gray HardiePanel combined with honey-colored black-locust siding make for a striking front façade, where a band of white wraps the second story with its roomy balcony.
Exposed glulam beams over the kitchen and dining areas are a focal point signaling this as the heart of the home. The space is open and airy, allowing light to travel from room to room, and even down from the skylight on the second floor. Photo: Kip Dawkins
That palette—gray, natural wood and white—carries through the interior of the house, too. “We were trying to keep the color palette normalized,” says Justin Walton, who managed the project for Element Construction. While there are several different types of wood used inside the house (reclaimed red and white oak for the flooring; birch for the doors; fir for the cabinetry), their “quiet” finishes, he says, pull it all together.
The clients, who say they’re not particularly interested in redoing interiors for fun, felt a minimal scheme would best stand the test of time. “Kid-friendly modern” is how they describe their style.
The open kitchen-living-dining area is the house’s centerpiece. Part of what gives it its airy, uncluttered feel is that storage has been maximized and carefully planned to accommodate specific belongings. In the kitchen, custom cabinetry by Charlottesville’s Todd Leback features both white and natural-fir finishes, set off by black honed granite and stainless steel countertops. A bank of windows just above the cooktop on the east side of the house provides daylighting and makes a place for potted herbs to flourish.
A tight materials palette shows up from room to room: fir cabinetry, nearly identical to what’s in the kitchen, is also used in the bathroom; reclaimed flooring found in the kitchen lines an accent wall in the master suite. Photo: Kip Dawkins
Exposed glulam beams over the kitchen and dining areas are a focal point signaling this as the heart of the home. “We cook a lot; it’s how we spend most of our evenings,” say the clients. “We entertain in a casual way.” Guests can gather around the kitchen island or at the stools that pull up to a bar-height counter separating living room from kitchen. Along with those stools, the woodstove, a nook for stacking firewood and a built-in bookshelf fit seamlessly into the same axis.
Smart choices
Reclaimed flooring does double and triple duty in this house—it was also used to make a bench and a sliding door for the mudroom, and it plays a starring role in the master bedroom, lining an accent wall behind the bed. In a similar, minimalist way, all the bathrooms share the same key materials: large rectangular dark-gray floor tile, cultured white marble countertops and fir cabinetry that’s nearly identical to what is in the kitchen.
Photo: Kip Dawkins
The master bathroom gets a few special touches, including oversize white shower tile with a wavy textured pattern and a graceful eggshell-shaped tub from Badeloft. (“Kid-friendly modern,” say the clients, means here that their kids and all their cousins can fit in the tub together.)
Under it all, the house’s systems are working hard to save energy and keep indoor air quality high. Photovoltaic panels on the roof, which comprise a single south-facing slope, provide all the electricity needed to run the house. A super-tight building envelope and high-quality insulation keep energy use low. Even the shape of the opening beneath the stairwell skylight is, Sties says, meant to “spread the light”—allowing the clients, per request, to mount the stairs in the daytime without turning on a light.
Having moved in this summer, the clients are savoring all the little touches of beauty and functionality—from a roomy kitchen pantry to the modern-style grab bars in the ADA-accessible first-floor bathroom. All in all, it’s what they’d hoped for: “Clean lines but warm, not the kind of place where you’re afraid to sit down.”
Photo: Kip Dawkins
Color and glass
Not being oriented toward interior design themselves, the clients brought Roanoke-based Circle Design Studio on board to help complete the look of their new home. Designer Theresa Dorlini says that given the neutral white used throughout the house, “We knew the actual materials were the star of the show: the reclaimed flooring, the exposed beams, the steel on the staircase.” With those materials as a starting point, she and her colleagues searched for ways to inject color with rugs, accessories and artwork.
Iconic furniture pieces, like a womb chair and two Wassily seats, give the space a classic modern feel even as the designers made provisions for the realities of living with two young children—durable sofas and rugs, for example.
Circle also made structural suggestions, including in the master bathroom. “That was an opportunity to create a very open, minimal space,” says Dorlini. “The use of the frameless glass shower enclosure was a key decision to make the master bath feel larger than it is.”—E.H.
The breakdown
2,957 square feet
Structural system: Exposed Ground-Face concrete masonry unit (GFCMU) foundation; 2’x6′ wood frame walls; open web wood joists and custom southern yellow pine glulam beams.
Exterior material: HardiePanel and HardiePlank with extruded aluminum trim joist; custom black locust siding and decking.
Interior finishes: Mixed red/white antique oak flooring and wall paneling; custom antique white oak shelving and treads; custom steel stair and handrails; clear finished custom CVG fir cabinetry throughout; honed absolute black kitchen counters; stainless steel kitchen island; custom matte white cultured marble vanity tops and utility counter.
Roof materials: Prefinished, white standing seam metal.
Mechanical systems: American Standard Platinum A2GX Geothermal with two vertical wells, dual zone with Energy Recovery Ventilation, interlocked Broan makeup air system; Supreme “Opus” woodburning fireplace unit; Geospring Pro 50-gallon hybrid hot water heater.
Architect: Jeff Sties, Sunbiosis
General contractor: Mike Ball, Element Construction
Interior designer: John & Theresa Dorlini, Circle Design Studio
Structural engineer: Ben Hays, Constructure Design
