Joshua Farnsworth’s Earlysville woodworking school, Wood and Shop, is the result of a reignited childhood passion. Photo: Sanjay Suchak
Stepping into Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop schoolhouse is like wrenching open a time capsule. Traditional woodworking instruments, including saws and handheld shaving tools, dangle from pegs and hug the surrounding white walls. Walking among the homemade workbenches and rustling up a rush of sawdust, you slip back a few centuries.
Farnsworth began to home in on his handyman identity as a kid. The youngest of 10 raised on a farm in rural Utah, he learned to program resourcefulness into his daily routine (an inclination that persists). In fact, he repurposed the very room he teaches craft courses in, remodeling an old RV garage into a vast makerspace boasting soaring ceilings and brimming with natural light. This Earlysville lodge, an addendum to the lot he lives on with his wife and four children, backs up to the front porch, where he often shares conversation with students over supper. The Wood and Shop experience is homegrown in more ways than one.
Farnsworth’s fascination with traditional woodworking sprang from youthful admiration: He calls his brother-in-law, also an artisan, his “childhood hero.” Farnsworth, too, was propelled by a calling to create, later tinkering with woodworking in secondary school vocational classes (“That’s what I loved about growing up in the ’80s and ’90s,” he says). Even then, though, he couldn’t imagine this passion blossoming into a profession.
Photo: Courtesy Joshua Farnsworth
Fast forward past college and into the middle years of a real estate career. “The economy crashed out West, and I still had a company that I’d started with some people [in Virginia],” he says. After returning East, the other business buckled under similar pressures, nudging him back toward carpentry. “I think I was glad because it pushed me back into what I love doing,” he says.
But Farnsworth didn’t set out to make money from woodworking exactly. His inherent enthusiasm and thirst for intellectual exploration naturally propelled him to the peak of the niche scene. He accrued introductory materials, assembled a site, launched a YouTube channel, and recorded tours of renowned furniture makers’ and tool collectors’ workshops. The money followed.
Gaining ground
Farnsworth has amassed an international following, drawing in emails from fans dotting the globe. One eager student even jetted cross-country from Colorado to take a class with him in person. Farnsworth eventually found himself in the same space as his second childhood hero, Roy Underhill of PBS’ “The Woodwright’s Shop.”
Despite his indisputable celebrity, Farnsworth oozes humility. He credits his entrepreneurial spirit and situation in the present media moment as the primary factors driving his success. “When I first started getting really interested in hand tools, there weren’t a lot of resources available, especially online,” he says. “I jumped in at the right time.”
He also uses his platform to shine a light on other talented artisans who lack marketing and/or digital media skills. He offers other experts teaching slots at his school, features them on his site, and is expanding a digital marketplace to connect them with potential customers. “There are a lot of unsung heroes out there,” he says.
Farnsworth reflects on how his professional journey—though at times turbulent—resulted in this gorgeously unexpected outcome. “I guess everybody over time is kind of making a tapestry,” he says. “There [are] some dark threads—hard times in your life or struggles—but then at the end, I hope you look back and say, ‘The tapestry wouldn’t have been this beautiful without those times.’” He underscores the joy of teaching—of pushing people past fears of failure and granting them temporary refuge from the dizziness of the digitized world.
To Farnsworth, artistic integrity means simplicity, and beauty equals imperfection. He mainly focuses on Shaker furniture, highlighting how neutral designs transcend time and constantly oscillating trends. It is this trade he works to sustain, an act of cultural and environmental influence. Although only one man, he recognizes his ability to have an enduring influence—to usher in continued artistry, in-craft connectivity, and furniture functionality for years to come.
Chris Conklin’s Vintage Swings are made from double-planed white oak and hand-spliced rope. In other words, they’re handmade to last. Photo: Jen Fariello
Chris Conklin grew up in a family that liked to figure things out. He learned at an early age how to restore old cars and farmhouses, and he loved to make things from scratch. So when his photographer wife, Jen Fariello, came home one day from a photo shoot in Ivy and asked him to make her an old-fashioned swing like the wooden one she’d used as a prop at the shoot, he immediately began his research.
“I came up with my own design,” says Conklin. “I wanted nice wood and nice ropes, something that looked good and lasted a long time.” He built a swing and hung it from one of the 200-year-old oak trees in the island of their driveway, and an interesting thing happened. “Everyone who came over would gravitate toward the swing,” he says. “A lot of people don’t have a swing, and it turns out they really like the feeling.”
So Conklin, whose day job is art director at the Daily Progress, developed a prototype and made a jig, and began constructing swings in batches of a dozen. They take two to three weeks to make from start to finish (given time-consuming steps like varnishing, which takes one day per side per coat), but the end result is smooth, strong, and gorgeous. He offers single and toddler versions plus a tire swing, and sells them on his own website as well as on Etsy under the name Vintage Swings.
Photo: Jen Fariello
Conklin’s swings feature some unique elements, starting with their length. “Modern swings are very short,” he says, “but the ones I sell have really long ropes [he has had customers special-order 100-foot lengths], so you can swing high.” The wood is white oak, double-planked for strength, and the rope, which resembles old-fashioned Manila but is synthetic to resist weather and rot, is hand-spliced.
Conklin’s 9-year-old can attest to the enduring joy of a great swing. “My son loves giant pushes,” he says. “I run at top speed and time it so I can push him up over my head, and he goes so high.” Conklin and his son will never forget those moments, and neither will those Ivy homeowners, whose original swing rotted away two years after Conklin’s wife spotted it. “They called me and I made a new one for them,” he says. This time, it’ll be an heirloom.
There’s just something about leather: It’s at once rugged and polished. And always cool. Plus, it’s a material that’s easy to source in our area, thanks to local saddle shops and nearby tanneries. Here are three hand-crafters making your next favorite accessory.
Stamp of approval
Siberia native Daniel Foytik became fascinated with leather as a kid, when he’d make his own toys from leather found in his grandfather’s saddlery. Today, his work still has a playful touch—patterns hand-stamped on dyed leather flasks, sunglasses cases, and iPhone covers—but with a high-end polish, sophistication, and confidence. Says Foytik, “There is nothing that we can’t make.”
Known best for his furniture pulls—loops of leather that give drawers and cabinets an especially modern-rustic touch—Aaron Baker has been branching out of late. “I’m working on a line of small furniture, a line of toy kits, and laced dog products,” says the Pratt Institute grad. “I think with my art and sculpture background I can manipulate the leather well in 3-D forms. I enjoy molding the leather and pushing to its limits to see what I can make it do.” Last year, he worked on a line of leather slug toys with his two sons, which they launched on Kickstarter.
If John Coles had to name the thing that he feels sets him apart from other leather workers, it’s his hand-stitching. “Even though it is time-consuming,” Coles says, “it’s my favorite part of the leather-working process.” Having thrown “tens of thousands” of stitches since the first time he experimented with leather work five years ago, Coles’ line of leather rucksacks, duffels, totes, and wallets is built to last, from leather sourced in Pennsylvania, Maine, and down the road in Richmond.
One night when artist Laurel Smith was sleeping, her mind projected her future onto the backs of her eyes. She dreamt up a whirring dremel tool, a jewelry-making instrument then somewhat unfamiliar to her, and awoke with a newfound sense of purpose. A D.C.-based event planner in her 20s at the time, Smith sensed she was on the cusp of a major career breakthrough.
Smith is a Charlottesvillian through and through, from the maternity wing of Martha Jefferson hospital to the halls of Albemarle High School. She graduated from James Madison University with a degree in studio art, then relocated briefly to Washington, D.C., and Hoboken, New Jersey, before returning home.
Just as Smith cannot divorce her hometown from her story, art is integral to her existence. Creating has always pointed her toward comfort and confidence—a happy mashup of emotions she first remembers experiencing as a young Spectrum summer camper at Tandem Friends School. In fact, this is where her fascination with calligraphy first sprouted.
Photo: Courtesy Laurel Smith
Decades later, Smith is the frontwoman of a celebrated, self-launched jewelry brand, “laurel denise,” which features bracelets incorporating inspirational messages engraved in beautiful calligraphy. She leads a fully female staff—including her full-time assistant, Nancy Cronauer, and a map-scattered crew of bracelet makers (aka “Mama Elves”)—in the quest toward artistic excellence. Smith is two women in one: She jokes that she’s “40 percent artist and 60 percent business.” Her online shop offers a sweeping array of accessories and home goods, including options for product customization, and her pieces put multiple mediums into conversation, including leather, metal, and glass.
A mother of two, Smith cites “time” as the most pressing part of this gig. Between caring for and carting around her kids, she hunches over worktables in her home, where her makeshift studio is based. Although her team attends two large wholesale events in New York City each year, most of her sales are shipped directly from her home address. These large-scale trade shows, while excellent opportunities to showcase new work and make human connections with customers, take a toll timewise and financially. “My lights alone cost $2k to rent,” Smith says. “I find that I reach more people through the internet.”
Smith sees her career as a calling to serve others. Her handwritten messages adorn the wrists of assault survivors (“Be you bravely”), breast cancer battlers (“She walks in beauty”), mothers enduring miscarriages (“Dwell in hope”), missionaries (“Be strong and courageous”), and general accessory-lovers alike. Although her curling calligraphy and dainty bracelets may be geared more toward women than men, she points to the drip-down effect of her art’s influence: The messaging behind it all unfurls like a song, and everyone will want to sing along.
“Even if [my jewelry] is just empowering women, all the women I know are empowering everybody else around them. We’re the doers. We lift up our husbands. We help shape our kids,” Laurel says. “It trickles down to empowering people in general.”
With her delicate calligraphied bracelets, jewelry-maker Laurel Denise taps into the bigger picture.
What’s not to love about a handmade piece of jewelry? Here are five local gems worth wearing.
Direct from nature
As a kid, Rebecca Perea-Kane would play with Fimo clay, sculpting tiny animals with her sister (“we must have made hundreds of them,” she says). No surprise, then, that her line of delicate jewelry celebrates the little things. More specifically, the little things found in nature. Each piece is cast directly from a natural element—lemon seeds, blackberry thorns, skipping stones—through a process of lost-wax casting. “I love how many natural objects look like abstract shapes from a distance,” Perea-Kane says. “On closer inspection you can see so much texture and detail.”
Having collected vintage odds, ends, and doodads since childhood (“I grew up lagging behind my parents in all the antique malls, thrift shops, and junk stores, sometimes states away, following their lead and noticing every little thing”), Jen Deibert amassed quite a collection by the time she started making jewelry. Consequently, each of her pieces is unique, and sourced from wherever she goes. “It’s always been about the hunt for me,” she says. “I don’t think I love anything more than walking into an antique store for the first time and looking for treasure.”
Amy Bauer had always dabbled in the handmade, finding ways to create jewelry, clothing, and home décor for herself that she couldn’t find in shops. Then, after years of creating jewelry for herself, friends, and her daughters as a hobby, the self-taught designer launched Girls Day Out. “I started off making mothers’ bracelets with mixed stones and sterling silver block letters with children’s names on them,” she says. “One of my most popular designs is still the personalized line of bracelets and necklaces in mixed metals and birthstones from my Heirloom collection.”
A pro bead-stringer and pearl-knotter by day, Jann White (aka this writer’s mom) started making her own jewelry to sell on the side 30 years ago. “I’ve had an unnatural obsession with beads since I saw my first tiny glass bead so many years ago,” White says. “I started by beading T-shirts (hey, it was the ’60s), and then started stringing them and buying more and more, even skipping a meal or two so I could afford the more expensive ones.” Her only rule for creating her pieces—which often feature semi-precious stones in bold colors with a statement pendant—is that she doesn’t design anything she wouldn’t wear herself.
Maybe our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, but these five cooks, bakers, and concocters make an extra helping hard to resist.
It’s all gravy
No one knows the phrase “food is an international language” more than Yvonne Cunningham. The sauce-maker developed the recipe for her “Italian gravy” (so-called because it’s so thick) while living in Naples during her husband’s tour in the Navy. It was there that she met a 78-year-old grandma (“nonna” in Italian) who didn’t speak English. Cunningham didn’t speak Italian, but together they cooked and developed what Cunningham calls “a beautiful relationship through food.” The red sauce, which Cunningham has been making for 30 years, is just like they prepared it back then, with authentic ingredients (including San Marzano tomatoes imported from Naples) and produce from the summer garden. She recommends spooning it over cavatappi pasta with a pile of grated Parmigiano Reggiano on top.
Nona’s Italian Cucina red sauceCharlottesville
City Market
The real deal
After reaching for healthy snacks for her three young daughters and coming up short, Coco Sotelo decided to take matters into her own hands, producing small-batch granola with no artificial flavors or preservatives. Her artisanal treats draw on her Mexican heritage, utilizing the same ancient grains that were used by the Aztecs and Mayans. And each flavor’s all-natural ingredients—like amaranth and cacao—come directly from small farms in Mexico, which she is proud to support.
Gaona Granola Integral Yoga, ACAC Downtown, Blue Ridge Country Store, Rocket Coffee (Crozet)
Just a sprinkle
The best recipes have been developed over decades—and Cass Cannon’s Peg’s Salt blend is no exception. “My mother, Peg, was an amazing cook,” Cannon says. “She came up with a blend of salt and spices in the 1970s and gave it to friends and family throughout her life. Because it made pretty much everything you put it on taste just perfect, people couldn’t live without it.” After much nagging, Cannon finally got her mom to write the recipe down and, after Peg passed away, Cannon took over the work of preaching the Peg’s Salt gospel. The recipe’s 25 spices are sourced from all over—The Spice Diva, Old Mansion in Petersburg, SaltWorks in California—and can be enjoyed in dozens of ways: “Sprinkled on steak before grilling, scrambled eggs, in a high-quality olive oil with bread for dipping. Everything, really.”
Peg’s Salt Foods of All Nations, The Spice Diva, Keevil & Keevil Grocery and Kitchen, Market Street Market, Greenwood Gourmet Grocery
Decked-out dessert
If we’re judging by sheer numbers alone, One Creative Cookie takes the cake on buzzworthy sweets. Kelly Trout estimates that, in the eight years since she’s turned her hobby into a business, she’s baked more than 40,000 cookies out of her home kitchen. The treats range from classic drop cookies like chocolate chip to more elaborate creations such as vanilla almond sugar cookies with edible photos on top, which take 10 hours to dry “after the last touch of the decoration,” Trout says. The baker got a taste of the sweet life as a kid, when her mother, a piano teacher, would allow each student to decorate two cookies for their guests before the holiday recital. “I loved the fun of that group decorating session,” Trout says. “And I really enjoyed working on the leftover cookies after everyone else had gone home.”
One Creative Cookie onecreativecookie.com
Special sauce
With homegrown habañeros, jalapeños, and heirloom tomatoes, Catbird Kitchen’s Vahotcha BBQ and sriracha sauces are a farm-to-table dream for those who love to kick everything from salmon to soup up a notch. That’s the secret to Bridget Meagher’s line of artisanal sauces (Vahotcha mayo and Double Chocolate Caramel Sauce included): The ingredient list comes straight from the dirt of her orchard and gardens west of Ivy, and what she can’t grow, the career chef and restaurateur sources responsibly. Keep an eye out for the company’s aged (vegan!) Worcestershire and roasted tomato conserve, two new additions to the lineup.
Catbird Kitchen sauces Feast! and Greenwood Gourmet Grocery
Uzo Njoku’s “Out of the Shadows,” featuring vivid, large-scale paintings that bring black women to the forefront, is on view at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery during the month of December. Photo by Amy Jackson
While working on her newest series of paintings, Uzo Njoku learned the importance of telling a story through portraiture.
The story Njoku tells with “Out of the Shadows,” on view this month at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery, is one that has global reach and widespread effects, and is perhaps not told—or heard—nearly enough.
“Out of the Shadows” is a series of large-scale portraits of dark-skinned black women painted in front of vividly-hued, bold backgrounds that reference traditional West African Ankara print fabrics. By juxtaposing her subjects’ dark skin against a brightly colored background, Njoku pushes the women she paints to
the forefront, not just of the painting but of the viewer’s attention.
Njoku, who was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was 7 years old, is making a point about skin lightening and skin bleaching, a practice the World Health Organization considers a global public health concern.
According to a 2011 WHO report on the effects of mercury in skin lightening products, up to 77 percent of women in Nigeria “are reported to use skin lightening products on a regular basis,” likely the highest proportion in the world.
These soaps and creams are heavily marketed to women in countries where skin-lightening products are not banned. When applied to the body’s largest organ—the skin—they can cause kidney damage, skin rashes, skin discoloration, and scarring, and can negatively affect the skin’s resistance to fungal and bacterial infections.
Njoku says the damage is more than skin-deep—it’s emotional and psychological, too. “In many countries, like Nigeria, whiteness is still connected to the old power structures of
British and European colonialism,” says Njoku, to a time when “’whiteness’ symbolized power and status.”
Njoku notes that in these countries (the U.S. included), women of color, and dark-skinned black women in particular, are often made to feel small or in the background. And so with her “intentionally black portraiture paintings of black women,” she aims not just to capture and emphasize their physical beauty, but their intellectual and emotional complexity as well.
“I’m hoping to captivate the viewer’s attention and evoke a sense of dominant power coming from the women in the paintings,” she says. —Erin O’Hare
The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “P.O. Box America,” Curtis Grimstead’s photo series that captures the charm of America’s rural post offices as well as the grand architecture of post offices in major U.S. cities. 5:30-9:30pm.
“Curtains of Night,” by Barbara Iobst
Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “Uncle Drosselmeyer’s Other Gifts,” a group exhibition proposing ideas of magic, imagination, and transformation, featuring fantastical “toys” by Megan Marlatt, Sean Samoheyl, Beatrix Ost, Deborah Rogers, Barbara Iobst, and Aggie Zed. 5-7pm.
CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. “Looking Deep Into Nature,” featuring photography by George Beller, a doctor and former chief of the cardiovascular division at UVA Health System. 5:30-7:30pm.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “New Directions for Ben Greenberg Photography,” featuring newwork by a photographer known for his dramatic and inspirational images of central Virginia. 6-8pm.
Dovetail Design + Cabinetry 309 E. Water St. “Winter Solace,” an exhibition of Melissa Malone’s oil and acrylic paintings on canvas of various bodies of water, meant to conjure feelings of contentment and quiet. 5-7pm.
Fellini’s Restaurant 200 Market St. “Celebrating the Season,” oil paintings by Marla McNamara. 5:30-7pm.
Joseph Joseph & Joseph Antiques 508 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. An exhibition of paintings by Edward Thomas. 5-7pm.
Malleable Studios 1304 E. Market St., Ste. T. An artisan soirée and sale featuring work by Tavia Brown, Mia van Beek, Rebecca Phalen, and Karen Eide. 5-8pm.
“Forested,” encaustic on panel by Giselle Gautreau
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Sarah B. Smith Gallery, the annual holiday shop full of gifts made by McGuffey member artists; in the Downstairs, Upstairs, North, and South Hall Galleries, the annual cash-and-carry holiday members’ show, featuring work by both renting and associate McGuffey artists, including Tami Walker, Klaus Anselm, Jill Kerttula, John Trippel, Judith Ely, Giselle Gautreau, Charlene Cross, and others. 5:30-7:30pm.
Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave. Ste. 150. An exhibition of landscape, portrait, and urban photography by Zach Phillips and Taylor Rigg. 7-10pm.
New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Summer Days,” featuring oil paintings by Blake Hurt. 5:30-7pm.
Piedmont Virginia Community College College Dr. “Let There Be Light,” a one-night-only outdoor exhibition of light-based artworks and performances that illuminate the darkened grounds surrounding the Dickinson Building. 6-9pm.
Roy Wheeler Realty Co. 404 Eighth St. NE.“Enter Nym’s World,” an exhibition of work by Nym Pedersen, who keeps in mind the approach of many great jazz artists when he makes paintings and sculpture: Paint what you feel, and keep it free. 5-7:30pm.
“Dahlia,” by John Grant
Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “Attraction,” an exhibition of new botanical work by John Grant, who collects blossoms from his personal gardens and across central Virginia, and brings them to his studio to scan at a high resolution; in the Dové Gallery, “TORN,” an exhibition of work focused on the modern portrayal of women by photographer Scott Irvine and artist Kim Meinelt, who together work as WAXenVINE. 5:30-7:30pm.
Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St. Downtown Mall. “I Saw an Angel,” featuring paintings by Jane Goodman and Winston Wiant. 6-8pm.
Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Dear Lilith: A Body of New Work. Sincerely, Sam Gray,” an exhibition that shares the unfolding conversation between the artist, a self-described “modern angry feminist,” and Lilith, ancient mother goddess, proto-feminist, and original wife of Adam. 5:30-7:30pm.
Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “These Days,” featuring work by Susan Mills and Bethany Pritchard. 5:30-7:30pm.
VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “Beads and Wood,” a multimedia show of work by the firm’s architects. 5:30-7:30pm.
Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “Out of the Shadows,” featuring Uzo Njoku’s vivid, large-scale paintings that bring African women, who are often made to feel small or in the background, to the forefront. 5-7:30pm.
WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “University Reflections,” an exhibition of oil paintings on canvas, textured with a palette knife, by Lauchlan Davis. 5-7pm.
WVTF/RadioIQ 216 W. Water St. An exhibition of landscape paintings by Nelson County artist Susan B. Viemeister. 5-7pm.
First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions.
Other December shows
Annie Gould Gallery 121B S. Main St., Gordonsville. A holiday show featuring paintings, jewelry, photography, sculpture, textiles, and other unique gift items from more than 25 artists and artisans.
Art on the Trax 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Looking West,” featuring Deliece Blanchard’s plein air paintings from national parks. Opens December 8, 4-6pm.
Buck Mountain Episcopal Church 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. “Hope: Prepare the Way,” featuring work by BMEC artists.
Create Gallery at Indoor Biotechnologies 700 Harris St. “Faces at Work,” an exhibition of Blake Hurt’s 40 small oil-on-canvas portraits of people who work at 700 Harris St.
Gift Forest 301 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. The Bridge PAI’s annual holiday pop-up market features handmade gifts, vintage finds, and vinyl records from more than 100 local purveyors.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Reflections: Native Art Across Generations”; “Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu”; “Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings”; “Camera Work: American Photography of the Early 20th Century”; “Highlights from the Collection of Heywood and Cynthia Fralin”; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW “(W)here To Stay?!,” An exhibition of Magnus Wennman’s photographs of Syrian refugee children accompanied by artwork and writings by Charlottesville High School inspired by the stories of displacement of their classmates. Opens December 12, 6-8pm.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Freshwater Saltwater Weave,” a series of glass works by contemporary urban-based Arrernte artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello; “Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States,” revealing the ways in which, since 1988, Indigenous Australian artists have forged one of the most globally significant art movements of our time.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Annie Harris Massie: New Paintings,” featuring work that captures the subtleties of color and light played over area landscapes.
Martha Jefferson Hospital Cancer Center, Second Floor 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. “Sunrises and Sunsets,” featuring work by Randy Baskerville. Opens December 11.
Piedmont Virginia Community College V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North Gallery, “Possibilities,” featuring ceramic vessels and objects by Tom Clarkson; in the South Gallery, works by PVCC art faculty such as Fenella Belle, Ashley Gill, Lou Haney, Will May, Beryl Solla, Jeremy Taylor, and others.
Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. The annual winter contemporary juried exhibition, this year titled “Women’s Work” and featuring a collection of cutting-edge work from Inez Berinson Blanks, Colleen Conner, Eileen Doughty, Sarah Lapp, Peg Sheridan, Astrid Tuttle, and others. Opens December 8, 5-7pm.
Telegraph Art & Comics 211 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. Fourth annual picture show with Adrian Todd Webb, featuring small, original, framed pop-culture prints.
UVA Medical Center Main Lobby 1215 Lee St. “Distant Worlds,” an exhibition of 15 deep space paintings by Patty Avalon.
Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge 250 Pantops Mountain Rd. “Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water,” featuring 24 art quilts by the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective. Open daily, 9am to 5pm, during the month of December.
The Levy Opera House Building, pictured here on the corner of Park and High streets, will be renovated, and a new $30 million courthouse complex will be built beside it.
staff photo
After a couple of years of contention over Albemarle County’s threat to move its courts from downtown Charlottesville, elected officials in the two jurisdictions have finally decided to jointly locate their lower courts in a downtown building both localities purchased together in 2005.
“We have reached agreement on the expansion and renovation of the Albemarle County District Court and the Charlottesville General District Court to meet our future needs right here in Court Square,” said Ann Mallek, chair of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors.
“Today’s agreement is the result of years of work by the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle to co-locate their general district courts in the same facilities, and for the county courts to remain downtown,” said Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker.
The joint decision ends a nearly five-year period during which Albemarle supervisors explored the possibility of moving the county’s courts to a location outside of Court Square, which is technically the county seat. That would have required approval by voters in a referendum.
Mallek said county supervisors explored different possibilities to make certain the more than 100,000 residents of Albemarle were best served by a downtown location.
“We have studied as many as five different court locations and options over the last two years,” she said. “At the public hearing last December and in countless emails, we’ve heard strong support for the continued adjacency of city and county courts.”
The legal community fought hard against the proposal to move the courts out of downtown, with some arguing that splitting the courts would make it harder for poorer residents to access the justice system.
Palma Pustilnik with Central Virginia Legal Aid Society says, “I think it’s wonderful that we have finally managed to have an agreed upon situation that best serves all the members of the public.” She adds that the deal has the support of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association, both commonwealth’s attorney’s offices, and the legal community.
All five city councilors and six Albemarle County supervisors gathered at the corner of Park and East High streets on Monday in an impromptu joint session to announce the deal.
After the announcement, both elected bodies met to ratify the deal in public session. Supervisor Rick Randolph cast the only vote against the deal at a meeting at the county office building.
“The county had an opportunity with this court location decision to steer its own independent path towards its own strategic objectives,” Randolph said at that meeting.
Randolph said he believes the Board of Supervisors will one day vote to move the court. He also said there was a missed opportunity to use the negotiations over the courts to help change the revenue-sharing deal that has been in place for more than three decades.
One complaint from county residents advocating for courts outside of town has been the perceived difficulty of parking downtown. Part of the deal involves the creation of a new parking garage to be built by the city of Charlottesville at 701 E. Market St. That property has also been co-owned by the city and county since 2005, but the county will sell its portion to allow the city to build its third municipal parking garage.
“The city will then purchase the county’s interest in the parcel for one half of the appraised value,” Walker said.
As part of the deal, Charlottesville will provide 90 spaces in the new structure to Albemarle, as well as 15 on-street parking spaces reserved for county court patrons “in the area immediately surrounding the county court facilities,” according to Walker.
The need to update the court facilities stems from University of Virginia projections which forecast Albemarle will grow to a population of over 148,000 people in 2045, up from a 2017 population estimate of 108,000.
“Population growth has brought increased caseloads, and the existing court facilities do not meet contemporary standards for safety and security,” Mallek said.
These trends have long been anticipated. The city and county spent nearly $5.4 million in 2005 for the Levy Opera House property in Court Square, and that same transaction also included the surface lot that will become part of the future parking garage.
Charlottesville spent $2.85 million in November 2016 for the half-acre lot that now houses Lucky 7 and Guadalajara, and soon entered into a long-term lease with the businesses. At the time, the idea of housing the businesses in the retail portion of a new garage was floated, but that did not come up at the press conference.
The new $30-million general district courts will be built next to a renovated structure that dates back to 1852.
“The facility will be approximately 60,000 square feet, and the county will maintain three courts at the facility and the city will maintain one court,” Walker said. “The Levy Opera House building will also be renovated for the relocation of the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney office.”
It’s going to take more than an ad campaign to rehab Charlottesville’s image after the white supremacist violence of 2017.
SUSAN PAYNE
Before the summer of 2017, a Google image search of the word “Charlottesville” might have turned up some photos of our picturesque purple mountains, or the stately columns of Monticello and the University of Virginia. These days, as demonstrated in the recent Charlottesville documentary, it turns up images of flag-waving neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Now, with the city back in the national news for the trial of accused murderer-by-car James Fields, the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau is looking for a little help. Specifically, the bureau released a request for proposal seeking a public relations firm to turn around the area’s negative image, which stems, it says, from “the takeover of our town by a white nationalist rally organized by Jason Kessler.”
“There’s been a lot of negative press,” says the bureau’s interim director Adam Healey. “There’s no doubt it’s impacted tourism.”
The number one metric of the tourism industry is revenue per available hotel room, says Healey. “For Charlottesville and Albemarle, that number is down 4 percent while every other major market in the state is up.”
He attributes the decrease to the “public relations challenge” since the Unite the Right rally, as well as underfunding of the visitors bureau—it gets 20 percent of the transient occupancy tax while top tourist destinations in other states get 100 percent of that tax. Marketing and branding efforts have so far failed to establish this area as “the crown jewel of Virginia,” he says.
Tourism is about jobs and quality of life, he says. “It’s a driver of economic development.”
The PR firm will work with Healey and Clean, the bureau’s Chapel Hill-based ad agency, which it hired in 2017. “We need both of those,” says Healey. A typical retainer for this type of PR work is around $8,000 a month.
Healey wants a public relations firm experienced in crisis communications to be proactive in changing the narrative about Charlottesville.
While the events of August 12 were a crisis, Batten Fellow and global communications expert Barie Carmichael says at this point, Charlottesville has “an issue,” which requires a long lead time to mitigate. “It’s not a flip-the-switch situation.”
Carmichael, who worked for Dow Corning during its silicone breast-implant crisis, says it’s important not to assume everyone associates Charlottesville with white supremacists without doing the research to find out exactly what the target market—tourists—thinks. Without research first, it’s a “fire, ready, aim” strategy that’s pretty much a useless exercise.
“Smart companies are going out and looking at social media” and using analytics to find out what people are already talking about, she says. In doing so, a firm may find “unexpected allies” that can help change the narrative.
“Communications issues management doesn’t begin with what you say,” she says. “It begins with what’s received.”
Healey notes that 1,500 hotel rooms are currently being developed that will increase the area’s capacity 35 percent in the next three years. The PR firm will get a one-year contract that can be renewed for an additional four years, hopefully long enough to fill all those hotel rooms.
“We’ve got to be proactive about public relations,” he says. “There’s been a lack of accountability.”
It’s that time of year, when the natural cycle of trees becomes a source of controversy, lighting up Nextdoor. One neighbor’s decision to let them lie to decompose and enrich the soil—either through environmental conscientiousness or sloth—is another’s annoyance when leaves drift into a meticulously raked yard.
Some go the mowing route to speed the breakdown of leafy matter into compost, while other city dwellers, who receive a free roll of plastic bags, rake and bag and send everything off to Panorama Farms. Or they corral the leaves to the curb to be sucked up.
It’s enough of an issue that the city is conducting a survey at charlottesville.org/leaves to see what citizens think of its collection method.
Here’s what we learned from city leaf guru Marty Silman:
Both bagged and loose leaves go to Panorama Paydirt for composting.
The city distributes 25 plastic bags per resident, and anticipates passing out 350,000 this season, at a cost of $50,000.
The bags are not compostable nor are they recycled, but they can be returned if you don’t want them, to 305 Fourth St. NW.
Last year the city collected an estimated 98 tons of bagged leaves and 145 tons of loose leaves.
Quote of the week
“I didn’t respond to request for comment because I think these reporters are, a lot of them, not all of them…but the majority of these reporters, they have ill intentions and it’s not how I roll.”—Mayor Nikuyah Walker on Facebook Live in response to a Daily Progress article about councilors’ credit card spending
In brief
Racist robocalls
Idaho white supremacist group Road to Power again targeted Charlottesville residents with racist, anti-Semitic calls as jury selection for the James Fields trial began. The same group slimed the area with calls around the August 12 anniversary.
Love refiles civil suit
Sharon Love, the mother of deceased UVA lacrosse player Yeardley Love, has refiled her $30-million wrongful death lawsuit against George Huguely, her daughter’s former boyfriend who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. In June, Love dropped the case, called a nonsuit in legal terms, which gave her six months to refile.
Having his say
A memoir from City Councilor Wes Bellamy, who was vice-mayor when he called for removal of the city’s Confederate statues, will be available January 1. Monumental: It Was Never About a Statue covers the year before and after white supremacists came to town to protest removal of the statues. Says the book’s press release, “Step into his shoes and read what it felt like to be in the midst of a war for the soul of a community.”
Booted from Facebook
Former C-VILLE editor and Summer of Hate author Hawes Spencer was banned from Facebook for 24 hours November 30 for posting memes that will be presented as evidence in the murder trial of James Fields. Fields posted the images of a car driving into a crowd on Instagram three months before he did so in Charlottesville.
This is the image that got Spencer banned from Facebook for 24 hours.
Going rogue
Virginia students at the largest evangelical Christian school in the country have created an independent news website, the Liberty Torch, after Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. vetoed a negative article about Donald Trump in 2016 in the school’s official newspaper, the Liberty Champion, and said the school administration must approve student articles.
New office
County officials announced last week the creation of the Office of Equity and Inclusion under director Siri Russell. The office formalizes the county’s strategy to engage in work that promotes equity, using data to assess equitable access, according to Russell.
New leader
Legal Aid Justice Center’s director of litigation and advocacy Angela Ciolfi will take on a new role as its executive director this month. She succeeds Mary Bauer, who left recently for a job at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ciolfi is now suing the DMV and asked a judge for an injunction to stop the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses, often for offenses that have nothing to do with driving.
