Month: April 2022

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News

Tracing roots

Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, is co-leading this summer’s civil rights tour, which will include stops at former plantations, museums, memorials, and sites of slave revolts in the Deep South. Photo: Eze Amos

In 1808, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished in the United States, but the horrors of slavery raged on for nearly six more decades. Between 1810 and 1860, approximately 1 million enslaved people in the Upper South were forcibly relocated to newly established plantations in the Deep South, fueled by the booming cotton industry.

This summer, the Charlottesville Civil Rights Tour will take participants along the route of this lesser-known domestic slave trade, stopping at an array of former plantations, historic civil rights sites, museums, memorials, and locations of slave revolts in the Deep South. The eight-day trip—hosted by the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center—will examine how Southern communities are reshaping the narrative surrounding slavery and white supremacy, and elevating the voices and stories of enslaved people and their descendants.

“There are people from here who were trafficked down there, [and] members of the community who hold the torch of the Lost Cause narrative whose families made money off of [the slave trade],” explains tour co-leader Jalane Schmidt, director of the Memory Project. “We’re connected in every way. We’re not special—we’re part of this narrative.”

On June 19, a 100-person delegation—including high school students, teachers, activists, descendants of enslaved people, and other community members—will fly to Alabama, where Charlottesville’s 2018 civil rights tour culminated. Following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally, Jefferson School Executive Director Dr. Andrea Douglas and Schmidt led a pilgrimage to Montgomery to commemorate the 1898 lynching of John Henry James in Albemarle County. On the 120th anniversary of James’ murder, the group delivered soil from the site of his lynching, land now owned by Farmington Country Club, to the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which features jars of dirt from over 4,000 documented lynching locations. 

“When [participants] came back, they talked at public forums, like the public library, or their Sunday school group, or at work, and in classrooms. There was a ripple effect from that as people talked to their friends, neighbors, co-workers about what they’ve learned,” says Schmidt of the pilgrimage. 

“That is the goal of these tours, and why we want to do it again this summer—to keep that ripple effect going,” she says.

In Alabama, the delegation will visit Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, where four Black girls were killed when it was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. They will also walk across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where over 600 civil rights marchers—led by then 25-year-old activist John Lewis—were brutally attacked by police in 1965. 

The trip also includes a stop in Africatown, home to the descendants of the enslaved people smuggled on the Clotilda, the last last-known slave ship to arrive in the United States in 1860. 

The ship was immediately burned and sunk on the Mobile River to hide the illegal activity, and its remains were not found until 2019. After the Civil War, the Clotilda’s survivors wanted to return to Africa, but didn’t have enough money to do so. Instead, they pooled their wages to purchase land they called Africatown.

Activist Myra Anderson, whose ancestors were enslaved at the University of Virginia, says she is most looking forward to meeting fellow descendants at Africatown, and visiting the wreckage site of Clotilda this summer. From participating in the 2018 pilgrimage, she learned that engaging with such violent, brutal history first-hand is “not easy”—she was often brought to tears—but incredibly eye-opening and life-changing.

“I saw so many parallels between what happened back then and what happened in Charlottesville [in 2017],” says Anderson, reflecting on the 2018 pilgrimage. “There was nothing more powerful than to just have the opportunity to be able to interpret history in the exact places where it happened.” 

“As an activist, it inspired me in so many ways to not take my foot off the gas and stay the course, and understand that all of those who were there before me and the things that they did, they laid the framework,” she says.

Other notable stops on this summer’s trip include the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, one of the few former plantations in the country focused solely on educating visitors about slavery; the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, where the 1955 murder trial of 14-year-old Till took place; and the Lorraine Motel National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The group will also participate in a variety of cultural activities, like a jazz tour of New Orleans, before returning home on June 26.

Thanks to a large number of donors, over two dozen participants have received scholarships that cover the $2,750 price tag. Most of the trip spots have been reserved, but a few remain for people who can pay full price. 

As Charlottesville continues to grapple with its own racist history, Schmidt hopes the trip will help the city reimagine public spaces with ties to slavery and white supremacy—most notably the former sites of the Lee and Jackson statues—and make them welcoming and inclusive of the entire community.

“It’s about learning together as a community, [and] how we fit in with this larger narrative,” she says. “And being able to come back to teach others.”

For more information, or to book a ticket for the tour, go to insiderexpeditions.com/charlottesville-civil-rights-tour.    

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News

In brief: Pipeline rally, Unite the Right legal fees, and more

Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline remain optimistic that construction of the controversial project can be halted. Photo: Mountain Valley Watch

For the win

A sense of hope and victory was strong among the over 200 people who attended a virtual, national rally to stop construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The MVP is a 42-inch, underground natural gas pipeline system that stretches 303 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia. Activists and environmental advocacy groups have expressed opposition to the project since it was first proposed in 2014. 

The rally, called We Believe We Will Win, included speeches from several climate activists and leaders of environmental organizations who shared their reasons for opposing the pipeline and the active roles they have played in the movement. 

According to the project’s website, 94 percent of the pipeline is already complete. Activists, however, say this is a ploy, and some of the most difficult work has yet to be started.

“They want you to believe that it’s inevitable and we’re here to say it’s not,” said Joshua Vana, director of ARTivism Virginia and MC of the event.

Crystal Cavalier-Keck, co-founder of Seven Directions of Service, spoke about her role in advocating against a key air compressor station for MVP. In December, a state regulatory board denied a permit for the compressor station in a 6-1 vote as a result of efforts from Cavalier-Keck and other Black and indigenous activists. 

“We keep sending out postcards, phone calls, doing stuff, because we might be small, but we are mighty,” she says. “We can accomplish anything if we do it together in unity.” 

In January, a federal court stopped the MVP from crossing into the Jefferson National Forest. A week later, the same court invalidated another permit. 

Speakers including Karenna Gore, the daughter of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, told stories of their own experiences joining the movement, many of which were sparked by a desire to protect future generations. The MVP has led to the destruction of sacred ancestral sites along its trail, displaced indigenous communities, and disrupted the connection between the land and the people who live there. 

The speakers on the call were all certain about ultimate victory in this fight. 

“People are tired of the landscape being torn up and the waterways and the property being seized,” says Gore. “They want it to seem inevitable and all-powerful, a goliath of a project…But guess who will win. We will win.” 

Money woes

Sanctions are still piling up against one of the neo-Nazi co-defendants in the Sines v. Kessler lawsuit.

According to The Daily Progress, federal Judge Norman K. Moon added $18,000 to the amount due from Robert “Azzmador” Ray for attorneys’ fees and out-of-pocket expenses. Ray disappeared after coming to Charlottesville for the torch rally at the Rotunda on August 11 and the Unite the Right rally the next day. He didn’t show up for the November trial, and is considered a fugitive on a criminal warrant stemming from the torch rally and a bench warrant for contempt of court in 2020.

Robert “Azzmador” Ray is among the Unite the Right planners who continue to rack up legal fees. Photo: Youtube

The lawsuit sought to hold the Unite the Right planners, including Ray, responsible for the carnage inflicted that weekend. At trial, the jury was instructed that they could view Ray’s absence in an adverse light, and found him liable for $700,000. 

According to the Progress, plaintiffs asked the court for nearly $26,000 for attorneys’ fees and expenses. Moon arrived at $18,000 by reducing the hourly rate charged by plaintiffs attorneys and the number of hours they claimed.

In brief

Bottoms up

To-go margaritas, Long Islands, and other boozy libations are here to stay—for now. Last week, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed legislation extending Virginia’s takeout cocktails policy until July 1, 2024, in an effort to support the state’s struggling bars and restaurants as they recover from pandemic losses. It remains unclear if Virginia will join the 18 other states—plus Washington, D.C.—that have permanently legalized to-go and delivery alcohol sales.

Due time

This week, the City of Charlottesville resumed utility cutoffs for past-due accounts, after pausing all service disconnections at the beginning of the pandemic. Customers who are behind on their utility bills are encouraged to call (970-3211) or email (cvilleutilities@charlottesville.gov) Utility Billing to set up a payment plan as soon as possible.

Stage exit

Crozet native Kenedi Anderson has dropped out of this season of “American Idol,” just after making it to the competition’s Top 24. In an Instagram post on Monday evening, the 18-year-old Western Albemarle High School student shared that she was unable to continue on the show “for personal reasons.” She thanked her supporters and said it was “one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make, but I know it’s necessary.” Host Ryan Seacrest made the announcement during Monday night’s show, following Anderson’s previously recorded performance of Christina Perri’s “Human.”  Anderson had secured her spot in the final group of contestants last week with a duet of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” and a solo performance of Bruno Mars’ “Talking to the Moon.” 

Bills, bills, bills

More than $2,400—that’s how much the Virginia Department of Transportation billed Lake Monticello residents Charles and Carolyn Westrater for removing a pine tree that fell on their car while they were driving on Route 53 last month, according to the Fluvanna Review. The uprooted tree trapped the elderly couple inside their 2014 Toyota Avalon until help arrived, and blocked both lanes on the road near Hillridge Drive. They are now awaiting a verdict from the state attorney general’s office, the only agency that can dismiss the exorbitant charges.

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Culture Food & Drink

Pizza pi

Giovanni Sestito credits his Italian heritage and a background in math for his mastery of Vita Nova’s perfect pizza. Photo: Eze Amos

“Fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil—that is the perfect pizza!” 

Giovanni Sestito, owner of Vita Nova Pizza and Pasta Bar, sings the praises of the Caprese’s toppings. “When you look at it, it’s lively, it’s inviting. It’s flavorful, but it’s simple,” he says. Thanks to that compelling combo, the Caprese has remained a staple on Sestito’s menu throughout the years. “That never goes away,” says Sestito. “That stays.”

The same could be said for Vita Nova. The pizza joint has been serving slices, calzones, pasta, salads, and tiramisu on the Downtown Mall for the past 25 years—more than half of the pedestrian mall’s entire existence. Now, due to building renovations, the restaurant has moved for the first time, directly across the mall to a bright corner location with a stylish interior.

Sestito is a quiet and unassuming man, an Italian immigrant in his 70s, devoted to pizza, but also a math major who speaks four languages. He says  Dante’s La Vita Nuova inspired the name of his restaurant (it means “new life” in Latin). The name was significant in other ways too—when he opened Vita Nova, Sestito was embarking on a new life, as a recent arrival to the United States. 

Vita Nova Pizza and Pasta Bar recently moved into a new space across the street from its old location. Photo: Eze Amos.

Sestito was 11 in 1954, when his family emigrated from Calabria, Italy, to San Juan, Argentina, joining a wave of Italians seeking better opportunities in South America post-World War II. Sestito grew up in Argentina, and made a living teaching math. Then, in the early 1980s, he won a scholarship to study at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where he earned a master’s degree in math. From Canada, Sestito followed his two brothers to the United States.

In Massachusetts, his career moved in a new direction, and with the help of his brother, Sestito opened his first restaurant. When his brother moved south, Sestito did too, and arrived in Charlottesville in 1997. He bought Sylvia’s Pizza on the Downtown Mall, and changed the name to Vita Nova in 2006. 

How does a math major learn to run a pizza place? “By reading and the force of stubbornness,” laughs Sestito. He quickly became a pizza nerd who’s not afraid to do his research—he once called the General Mills hotline to get the nitty-gritty on a certain kind of flour. 

Other things, however, you learn on the job, such as the quirks of the American palate. “One of my first experiences running the store,” Sestito remembers, “this guy came in and said, ‘I want a pizza with everything.’” To Sestito, this was ridiculous. “I told him, ‘We have 72 toppings. Are you sure you want everything?’” 

“In Italy, they don’t expect more than two or three toppings on their pizza,” he says. Beyond the harmony of flavors, this ensures the dough rises properly in the oven, without getting too weighed down. But try telling Americans that.

Another early lesson came while working on the Downtown Mall during Fridays After Five. “It was surreal,” says Sestito. “There were double lines, for two, three, four hours. It was nonstop!” 

As hectic as it was, he misses those days. “The Downtown Mall was the heart of the city,” he says. What he sees today isn’t the same. “The people on the Downtown Mall need support. The backbone of the American economy is small business, but they have been the hardest hit by the pandemic and online shopping.” 

For Sestito, the key is thinking globally and shopping locally. “A small store on the Downtown Mall pays taxes to the city,” explains Sestito, so if you want your city to thrive, “you have to spend your money where you live.” 

The pizzamaker experienced the power of community during the pandemic. With his lunch crowds disappearing due to online work, he seriously considered shutting down. But longtime Vita Nova customers were not about to let that happen. Sestito was astounded by the outpouring of support. “So many people asked me to stay,” he says. “And to stay on the mall, not anywhere else. That expression of solidarity really makes you rethink, so I decided to give this another chance.” 

He’s grateful he stayed open, though it was not without hardships. Vito Nova went from a staff of seven employees to just two, and Sestito had to make the unexpected move to its new location. A typical week for him involves going into the shop every day, often working from 8 in the morning to 10 at night.

But pizzamaking is something he loves. He waxes poetic on the finer points of pizza toppings, and gets a dreamy look in his eye when weighing in on the thin-crust/thick-crust debate. What’s more, the business feels like family. Luis, the guy most likely ringing you up at Vita Nova, has worked with Sestito for 29 years. 

When asked about his plans for the future, Sestito laughs. “My father didn’t retire till he was 85, so I still have a few years in me,” he says, as he gestures fondly to the new space. “I plan on being here for a while.”

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Arts Culture

I, robot

A nostalgic look at the pop art icon keeps fans guessing in “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Photo: Netflix.

Whether you love or hate Andy Warhol’s work, his impact on the arts as a provocateur, businessman, and impresario is immeasurable. Andrew Rossi’s six-part Netflix series “The Andy Warhol Diaries” sets out to pierce the façade its subject presented to the media. The series gives a fairly nuanced portrait of the godfather of pop art through new and archival interviews with Warhol, his co-workers, friends, and critics. Along the way, it explores Warhol’s era(s) almost as much as it does its subject.

The first three episodes follow Andrew Warhola, Jr. from his early years as an awkward Pittsburgh kid, through his initial New York graphic design career, into his ascension to art superstar, offering fascinating details, like how the Russian Orthodox iconography of his youth influenced his style. The bulk of the story revolves around the period from 1976-1987, when Warhol dictated his activities to writer Pat Hackett. What began as daily accounting by phone became full-fledged diaries, which were published posthumously in 1989.

Therein lies the series’ biggest flaw. Extrapolating on Warhol’s statement “I want to be a machine,” Rossi has an A.I. recreation of the artist’s voice reading his diary entries in a clumsy simulation of his trademark monotone. This synthetic Warhol is gimmicky and off-putting, mispronouncing words robotically like a GPS, and ending its sentences in a clipped, computerized way. The series is clearly attempting to transcend Warhol’s mythic status and humanize him, but this artificial speech undermines a fair amount of those worthwhile efforts. And probably the other biggest problem here is a string of unnecessary dramatizations of Warhol’s private moments, his face always obscured. These precious, stagey vignettes resemble reenactments from an “Unsolved Mysteries” rerun.

That aside, “The Andy Warhol Diaries” is engaging overall. The interviews with his co-workers and others are generally informative, funny, and revealing. Standouts include Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello and director John Waters, who praises Warhol as a trailblazer in underground cinema. In terms of presenting Warhol’s humanness and emotionality, the series is particularly poignant when it examines Warhol’s asexual pose and his secretive romantic life—or lack thereof—with his various companions like Jed Johnson and Jon Gould. And despite the obvious veneration of Warhol, Rossi deserves credit for including quotes from the brilliant art critic Robert Hughes, arguably Warhol’s sternest detractor, who once called him “one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life . . . because he had nothing to say.”

Archival footage of Warhol-era Manhattan and his studio, The Factory, is memorable, including excursions into Studio 54 and the thriving ’70s gay bar scene. The music is well-curated by period, including Sparks’ “The Number One Song in Heaven” and The Skatt Bros.’ “Walk the Night.”  But Nat King Cole crooning “Nature Boy” over the opening credits is an odd choice, even if it’s used there ironically.        

Was Warhol a ridiculous charlatan or an artistic powerhouse—or both? Was he a deep soul, or, as Truman Capote described him, a “Sphinx without a secret”? “The Andy Warhol Diaries” doesn’t definitively answer questions like these, nor should it be expected to. But it does partially succeed in revealing facets of Warhol that the artist himself seldom, if ever, would.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries”

Six-part series
Streaming (Netflix)

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Arts Culture

Playing their part

Garcia Peoples will play Charlottesville as a five-piece band that includes guitarist Tom Malach (foreground).The ensemble has relied on a flexibility that informs not just its open-ended compositions, but also the availability of its members. Photo: Mayuko Fujino.

By Dave Cantor

Early in Garcia Peoples’ run, there was a four-year break between albums. It’s an almost unthinkable span of time in the digital age, but it was spent devising material for a clutch of future albums that includes five studio efforts and several live recordings.

It’s an avalanche of music, one that revels in song-focused pieces, as well as extended improvisational flourishes, positioning the New York band at a surprising crossroad, one where a punky DIY ethos runs into a jammy musical premise.

The group’s latest album, Dodging Dues (No Quarter Records), was recorded and released just ahead of the pandemic’s descent, disallowing the ensemble from plying its trade on concert stages. And after all that time away from performance, Garcia Peoples had to refamiliarize itself with the music and establish new meaning for it within the context of the world we’re now inhabiting.

“You think you know something,” guitarist Tom Malach says over the phone from his home in Queens after a gig in Philadelphia. “Even just playing today, new ideas happen with the songs after not playing them for a bit. We’re the kind of band to still be reworking songs from our first album when we’re playing live.”

Those live settings have provided a chance for a batch of hobbyists, armed with recording gear, to capture the troupe in the wild. On archive.org, more than 30 live sets by the group sit alongside thousands of Grateful Dead recordings and audio rescued from decaying 78 RPM slabs and cylinder recordings.

“The fact that someone would want to come out to the show and document it for others, that’s an awesome thing for us,” Malach says. “We put in a good amount of work to make sure different things are happening every night and each performance is unique.”

The ensemble’s undergone some personnel shifts, with members moving to Chicago and back to New York a few times, and then spreading out across the region. They’ve performed as everything from a trio to a sextet; on Friday at The Southern, they’ll appear as a quintet.

Dodging Dues reflects a copacetic contingent of players, and perhaps includes a summation of the band, sonically and philosophically. On “Tough Freaks,” where “maggots turn to flies” and gardens are properly tended, the band’s looking for “an escape from everyday drudgery, dodging the dues that life wants you to pay at any given moment,” Malach writes via email. The tune comes at an ambling gait, weaving guitar lines with colorful keys and a momentous chorus, where common folly is critiqued and a desire to embrace dreams emerges in full blossom.

A few tracks in, spacey, electrified folk underscores the breezy progression of “Cassandra,” where it seems as if the figure from Greek mythology is being asked for help. And album-closer “Fill Your Cup” has a spiritual connection to Antipodean punks The Saints—both in its riffy guitar and growling vocals.

Despite forays into aggressive sounds, an earlier tour saw Garcia Peoples opening for Grateful Shred, a Dead cover band. “That tour was awesome,” says the guitarist. “They’re really good dudes and they’re fantastic musicians, and they interpret the music really well. …I was having a blast. Number one, you get to go out and do your thing, and then you get to relax after being the opener and listen to some good jams.” 

It was a turn that belied the group’s earliest days, which found them playing basement shows in and around New Jersey, where Malach grew up.

“We’re closer to that than the jam world,” he says, while acknowledging the impact of the Dead’s blueprint—how they went about the business of being a band, and how members approached and thought about music.

That Malach’s father Bob, who appears on Garcia Peoples’ expansive 2019 One Step Behind, was a professional musician likely informed his conception of music and writing for an ensemble.

Beginning in the mid-’70s, reedist Bob performed with folks like Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, The Stylistics, The O’Jays, and Stanley Clarke. The younger Malach says his childhood home wasn’t a place where musicians came to hang out, but his father forged close relationships with a wide swath of the folks he played with. Malach called late jazz drummer Alphonse Mouzon, “Uncle Alphonse.”

“I think I found a healthy medium,” Malach says about watching the travails of a professional musician, then turning toward performance himself. “My dad was always like, ‘Don’t do the music thing. Play music and learn music, because it’s good and fun, and good for the world. But it’s tough to be a musician.’”

That heady lesson imparted by Malach’s father might not actually have set in, though: After getting off the phone, the guitarist and his cohort were set to woodshed new ideas in preparation for more time on the road and in the studio.

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Arts Culture

Pick: Shovels & Rope

Shovels & Rope perform at The Jefferson Theater on April 13. Photo: Ryan McKellar.

Domino effect: After months of nonstop touring, Americana folk act Shovels & Rope was ready to slow things down on its latest album, Manticore. Then COVID-19 stalled the music industry, and the husband-and-wife duo decided to revisit and expand the songs that were originally intended to include nothing but acoustic guitar and piano. The result is a record that’s deeply personal yet universally relatable, with songs that take a raw look at the human experience, social justice, homelessness, parental love, marital strife, and more. There’s even an ode to James Dean in the opener “Domino,” a foot-tapping, fast-moving song about the actor’s ghost and America’s reaction to his death.

Wednesday 4/13. $30-35, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com

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Arts Culture

Pick: It Shoulda Been You

Four County Players perform It Shoulda Been You on April 15 and 16. Supplied photo.

I OBJECT!: Bridezillas, groomzillas, there’s nothing like good ol’ fashioned wedding drama to anchor a comedy plot. Get your fix at Four County Player’s It Shoulda Been You, a musical that takes place over the course of a wedding day where everything that can go wrong, does. The 90-minute show from central Virginia’s longest continuously operating community theater is full of outrageous antics, fun twists, and plenty of laughs.

Friday 4/15 & Saturday 4/16. $10-18, 8pm. Four County Players, 5256 Governor Barbour St., Barboursville. fourcp.org

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News

Building blocks

“Mix and Match” from the University of Arkansas. Photo: Tom Daly
By Matt Dhillon

There is a moment when our things stop being our things and begin their new life as trash. It is the frighteningly casual act of throwing something away. Once it is trash, it is forgotten, discarded, and buried, but we know that our wastefulness is catching up with us.

It’s a problem that is being discussed in many disciplines, but UVA’s School of Architecture recently brought the issue to the sidewalks and lawns of Grounds with its Biomaterials Building Exposition. The completion of five installations under the direction of architect-scholars from Penn State University, Cornell University, University of Arkansas, Rice University, and Kansas State University addresses sustainability, decay, permanence, and alternative building strategies in the ways that we inhabit space.

Organized by Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann, assistant professors at the UVA School of Architecture, the exposition seeks to display innovations in biomaterials and their potential for construction. The organizers say the construction industry has been slow to recognize its responsibility in climate shifts and even slower to respond. 

“In the current building culture, the life­ span of buildings is rapidly decreasing,” says designer Jonathan Dessi-Olive, from Kansas State University. He pointed to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which was built in 1992 and demolished in 2017. 

“The building was thrown away much like you would throw away a paper cup. And this is something that’s happening all over the world,” he says. 

The EPA reported that in 2018 the United States produced over 600 million tons of debris from construction and demolition activities for buildings, roads, bridges, and other structures. The majority of this waste was relatively permanent material, such as concrete, asphalt, and steel.

The five installations in the BBE offer alternatives that use biological systems in ways that are both practical and conceptual. 

“To think about structural materials that aren’t concrete and steel is really the focus of the work,” MacDonald says.

Wood

From fire to log cabin to timber frame to wood frame (which makes up the majority of homes in the U.S. today), wood has been an essential and available form of shelter. But the same EPA report found that almost 41 million tons of wood debris was generated in 2018, with about 70 percent ending up in landfills.

“Mix and Match,” from the University of Arkansas, proposes salvaging that waste. The project recycles the odds and ends of scrap wood by using lap joints to stitch together the lengths desired. Lap joints are always supported from behind by solid wood, and cross pieces reinforce the structure, resulting in a Lego-block-like composition of cubed frames. Also in Lego-block fashion, the project focuses more on assembly than the final structure. The boards can be disassembled and reassembled in new configurations, using the lap joints to fasten the pieces into a different shape.

The millions of tons of wood wasted each year is only a fraction of the wood wasted in logging, selecting the best trees, and milling them into the shapes used for building. “Unlog,” from Cornell University, makes use of the natural curve and forks of trees.

“As a building material, we encounter wood as a 2×4 or plywood or other standardized dimensions, but as we all know wood comes from trees that are non-standard,” says Sasa Zivkovic, one of the designers of “Unlog.”

The installation is made from six logs cut in accordion style zigzags so the logs can be unfolded into a wall. The logs are arranged into a serpentine A-frame that challenges the boxy geometries traditionally imposed on wood. 

“La Parete Fungina” from Kansas State University (left) and “MycoCreate 2.0” from Penn State University (right). Photos: Tom Daly

Decay 

Our concern is typically for how to preserve a structure and not how it will decompose, even though decay is inevitable. Rice University’s “From Wood to Tree” explores incorporating decomposition into the design. Contrasting the gravity and grandeur of monuments, the installation plucks at the temporary nature of our time here.

Made with four frames of different kinds of wood, the structure is intentionally gouged to expose the interior to the environment and encourage fungal growth. The frames are penetrated by nearby trees undermining the wall in its classical embodiment of separation between ourselves and the environment, inside and outside, human and non-human spaces.

Mycelium

It is in decay that some architects have found a novel, organic building material. A growing wave of builders are using the roots of mushrooms to grow bricks on agricultural waste. The mycelium can be grown into any shape as long as one has the form to mold the substrate. The pieces are then glued together through myco-welding, which occurs as the mycelium of one piece grows into the mycelium of another.

“MycoCreate,” from Penn State, works with the compressive strength of mycelium to build an arched, hut-shaped structure relying only on the compressive strength of its several columns. The structure’s weblike shape invites asymmetry, which opposes the ordered shapes of traditional buildings and gives an organic feel to the installation.

Kansas State’s “La Parete Fungina” investigates further the process of myco-welding. Currently, most mycelium structures are grown in parts and fired to stop the fungal growth. Designer Dessi-Olive sees this as a limitation because the parts can only be as big as is manageable in the oven, which compromises the strength of the myco-weld.

This installation, made of myco-welded bricks, reflects and distorts the form of the serpentine walls found on Grounds, positioning mycelium as a masonry alternative to concrete. And this wall is alive. The spongy, mottled-gray bricks have an aged stone appearance, but the living, reishi heart is apparent when you see the mushroom caps sprouting on the base.

However, living in a mushroom house is still a long way off. The material is lightweight and has strong insulative and acoustic properties, but its load-bearing capacity is pretty low. Though, as the architects remind us, a building is a system composed of many different materials working together.

MacDonald and Schumann are impressed with the potential they see. “It’s important to remember that these are proof of concept of primarily one material system in each of these installations. In reality buildings are much more complex than that,” Schumann says.

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News

Bridging divides

“What I learned from the conversation is don’t be afraid to have the conversations that we thought were tough,” says UVA student Marquis Rice (left), who participated in One Small Step with Diana Moreno. Supplied photo

Political polarization in the U.S. is extreme. People watch cable news networks that confirm their existing biases; Facebook offers an “unfriend” option, which encourages ideological homogeneity on feeds. A program at UVA, open to the entire Charlottesville community, aims to break down those barriers, one conversation at a time.

“We’re really trying to get out there and provide a space for people to do something that is challenging and that asks them to be vulnerable and brave,” says Samyuktha Mahadevan, program manager for One Small Step, a national nonprofit that launched at UVA’s Democracy Initiative in October. The program pairs two people from different political, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds in a 45-minute mediated conversation. Six months after it began, more than 50 conversations have taken place, and the experience gets high marks from previous participants.

“What I learned from the conversation is don’t be afraid to have the conversations that we thought were tough. They can actually be very easy if we’re open-minded to the experience and understand the story that is presented to you instead of being closed off and judgmental,” says Marquis Rice, a self-identified conservative Army veteran who is now earning his undergraduate degree at UVA.

He was partnered in a One Small Step conversation with another UVA student who identifies as progressive.

She told me how her family were immigrants….Their American dream is you can literally come over to America and create any kind of future you want as long as you work hard enough. I had to agree with her on that.”

Albemarle County resident Lisa Medders says she signed up for One Small Step after feeling dismayed by attacks on democracy, including the January 6 insurrection. The program seemed “like a good way to channel my need to do something in a way that I could feasibly do right now.”

Medders, who is pro-democracy, progressive, and liberal, says her priority is protecting voting rights. She was matched with a conservative woman who grew up in a rural, tight-knit family.

“We shared a love of family and community,” Medders says. “The big thing we shared was wanting to help others. She now works for an organization that helps people in crisis, so we have service in common.”

Medders says the two disagreed over the meaning of the word “constitutionalist” and the process of amending the country’s founding document.

“She was very worried about how easy it was to amend and didn’t like judges legislating from the bench,” Medders says, noting the woman used phrases Medders has often heard on Fox News. “I think the constitution is an amazing document, and it’s difficult to amend,” she adds. She emphasized the good that has come from constitutional amendments, including an end to slavery and the expansion of voting rights. She says her conversation partner agreed to consider a different viewpoint.

“I didn’t change my belief,” Medders says, “but I once again was pleasantly proven wrong by what my past assumptions have been. She was lovely. Where we could have gone into an argument, we didn’t. That’s not why either of us were there.”

Mahadevan says One Small Step is based on something called “contact theory,” and the idea is that a connection created through an authentic conversation can plant seeds of positivity on a larger scale.

“It’s the idea that, you know, given multiple interactions between people from different groups, so to speak, it can lead to more positive feelings and an ability to work together better,” she says.

A One Small Step workshop takes place April 21 at Common House as part of the Tom Tom Festival. For more information on upcoming events, or to sign up for a conversation, visit onesmallstep.virginia.edu.

Courteney Stuart is host of Charlottesville Right Now on WINA. You can hear her interview with Samyuktha Mahadevan at wina.com 

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Complicated legacy

William Lewis’ new book looks at the restoration of Montpelier, and how it became a visual record of both James Madison and the people who were enslaved on his estate. Supplied photo

Timing is everything, and that can certainly be said of Montpelier Foundation co-founder William Lewis’ new book, which traces the history and extensive renovation of the fourth U.S. president’s former home. Montpelier Transformed: A Monument to James Madison and Its Enslaved Community was published Monday, April 11, amid an ongoing controversy over a power-sharing agreement between the foundation and the Montpelier Descendants Committee.

“My hope is that as people read this, they’ll be aware that Montpelier has always been a foundation that was very interested in having descendants be key members of the board,” Lewis says. 

Lewis, a retired environmental attorney, began volunteering at Montpelier in the late 1990s after he and his wife bought a nearby property in Gordonsville. His book covers Dolley Madison’s sale of the property in 1844, the Dupont era from 1901-1983, and a legal battle with Dupont heirs that ended with the sale of the property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1987. A decade later, Lewis helped form the new Montpelier Foundation and negotiate the foundation’s lease of the property from the National Trust.

He describes the foundation’s work at Montpelier over the next 20 years as an “impossible dream realized.”

With millions of dollars from philanthropists, the foundation completed a $25 million renovation of the home, built a $9 million visitors center and gallery, as well as The Center for the Constitution in the first decade. It also created a new entryway to the property and renovated a former slave cabin.

The foundation’s original mission, Lewis says, was to present for historic education the life and legacy of James Madison, who is primarily known as the father of the Constitution and the architect of the Bill of Rights.

Lewis says the foundation also wanted to illuminate the less-publicized aspect of Madison’s legacy. 

“He owned hundreds of slaves,” Lewis says. “Those slaves were never freed by Madison, even at his death. So the focus of the foundation has been to tell the story and educate the public on the Constitution and Bill of Rights and also present the tragedy of slavery and recreate the slave community.”

To that end, Lewis says, “the second decade was focused on educating about the tragedy of slavery and recreating the slave community that was adjacent to Madison’s home.”

For years, Montpelier has won praise for its unflinching depictions of the lives of enslaved workers who built and operated the presidential estate. That reputation has been marred in recent weeks after the foundation board reversed a decision to achieve “structural parity” with the Montpelier Descendants Committee. The foundation’s late-March vote revoking the MDC’s sole right to recommend descendants to the board sparked national news coverage and criticism from the National Trust and other organizations.

Lewis says he has not been involved with the foundation board’s recent decisions, and has been pained to see the conflict.

“I’d worked for a long time to try to build a relationship with descendants,” he says. “The idea there would be additional descendants [on the board] seemed a wonderful thing.”

Lewis believes any descendant should be eligible to serve on the board. He hopes his book will contribute to the conversations about Montpelier’s place in history and that the foundation and the MDC will resolve their dispute.

“I hope it will result in more representation for descendants on the board,” he says, “and there’s no reason why that won’t be true.”

Courteney Stuart is the host of “Charlottesville Right Now” on WINA.