Author: Elizabeth Derby

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Ascending dreamer: The Mountaintop at Heritage Theatre Festival is one for the heart

Enoch A. King plays Martin Luther King Jr., and Suzette Azariah Gunn is Camae in The Mountaintop at the Ruth Caplin Theatre through August 5.

Fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and several days before the first anniversary of last summer’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, UVA’s Heritage Theatre Festival unveiled its production of The Mountaintop, a play that reimagines the final hours of King’s life and celebrates the humanity of its hero. Written by Katori Hall and debuted in 2009, the story is told anew by masterful director Kathryn Hunter-Williams and presented as a gift: medicine designed to rejuvenate hearts in a hurting community and divided country.

When the lights go down, James Brown is singing. When they go up, we hear rain. It’s April 3, 1968, and the red neon sign of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, glows like a boomerang. Inside Room 306, we see two twin beds, one made up neatly, the other a mess. Crumpled balls of paper dot the carpet; legal pads, pens, ashtrays and coffee pots litter the Art Deco furniture. This is a thinking man’s hotel room.

When King enters, you feel pressure swollen like the humid weight of the storm settle on your shoulders. The tension is high, fraught with dramatic irony, which might be why you laugh so hard when he takes off his shoes, wrinkles his nose and comments aloud about the smell.

Alone with his thoughts, frustrations and persistent cough, the condemned man sheds his pulpit uniform—black suit, brown tie, black shoes—with the resignation of a road warrior. This isn’t the first empty motel room he’s retired to after rekindling hope for a weary and worried audience, but it will be his last. Because the church he exited on this rainy night, the small crowd he complains of to the maid who brings him coffee, was the Mason Temple in Memphis. The speech to which he gave so much energy will come to be known as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” a prophetic charge to his people to press on to the promised land, the mountaintop King saw in his dreams, even if he should not make it there with them. He would be shot and killed just 31 hours after delivering it.

So here we are in the motel, trapped between prophesy and martyrdom, listening to the leader of the American civil rights movement urinate (behind closed doors) while we wait for him to die. It’s a testament to the creativity of the playwright and the fine work of this production that nervous tension need only carry us so far. Soon enough the story morphs, unlocking deeper dimensions of attention, rousing us from trainwreck-stupors and absorbing our whole hearts.

Enoch A. King, who plays MLK, brings remarkable range and his own spin to the iconic character. Though his bearing, oratorical skills and mustache evoke an eerie likeness to King, he never attempts to carbon copy him. Instead, he makes him accessible, shifting from tenacity to flirtation to paranoia to bombast, sometimes on a dime. Most remarkable is the way he deepens as the show progresses. By the time he delivers his final speech, you would swear MLK himself was onstage.

Suzette Azariah Gunn’s Camae, a housekeeper tasked with attending to King during her first day on the job, is a seemingly inadvertent companion for his final night on earth. Gunn delivers a powerful performance, matching King’s fiery sermons with her own passionate arguments on changing the world. She, too, is larger than life somehow, speaking on behalf of society: sharing Black Panther beliefs, roasting King’s “bougie“ assumptions, referring to God as a “she” with steadfast conviction, and ultimately carrying a secret set to redeem us all.

Credit goes to Hunter-Williams, scenic designer Raul Abrego, lighting designer Latrice Lovett and sound designer Michael Rasbury for the show’s captivating portrayal of an ordinary world that teeters on the edge of something extraordinary. The whole experience is elevated (and ultimately transformed) by light shifts, clever sets and the explosions of thunder that set King shaking. When the show crescendos, thanks in large part to the crew, it leaves us light years from where we began.

I’m loathe to give away the play’s significant surprises but suffice to say, I cried for none of the expected reasons but because, at the same instant Katori’s plot shed its literal trappings, my mind and heart woke up.

This production is delivered in such a time and place and way that you leave the theater changed. It’s hard to know if you’ve traveled forward or backward in time or simply deeper into yourself, awake and aware and alive, like King himself, until the very end.

Reflecting on the personal costs and challenges of his work, lamenting the misunderstandings he perceives in his followers, King asks in a grief-soaked voice, “Why me?” When Camae rejoins “Why not you?” his answer is ready: “Because I’m just a man.”

The message is clear: No one who changes the world is born with the suprahuman ability to do so. To fight for equality, and keep on fighting, is a brave choice made by flawed humans, and no one is absolved from the responsibility of making that decision.

For evil, as Camae reminds us, is not a who but a what. And 50 years later, the world remains as beautiful and as ugly as King knew it to be. It would appear the mountaintop was never a destination nor permanent citadel but rather a possibility, available in every moment for those who choose to go there.

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Jeremy and Allyson Taylor’s environmental art approach

See “Growers: New Works by Jeremy & Allyson Taylor” now through July 1 at Studio IX. Courtesy of the artist

When it comes to visual art (paintings in particular), you can’t throw a rock without hitting a pastoral fantasy. Which may be why local artists Jeremy and Allyson Taylor’s reverence for nature comes as such a surprise. 

“I definitely go to the grotesque,” Allyson says, “because I find it really beautiful and interesting. And sometimes disgusting and funny.”

As an example, she points to a drawing from “Growers,” her latest collaborative exhibition with her husband. “There’s a woman who’s drawn from behind, and she has this really big butt. All of these mushrooms and turkey tail fungus are growing out from her bottom. I think they’re really beautiful, but it’s also an image of stagnation. Like if you were to stand still for too long, you would start to grow things.”

Jeremy, too, draws pieces that highlight how humans and nature interact, using humor and absurdity to treat heavy subjects with relative lightness. 

“[The exhibition has] three or four pieces of mine where animals have consumed toys, human parts or people,” he says. “I have one drawing where a deer is jumping over a pile of junk: a Jack-o’-lantern, a zombie head, a bomb, a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ lunch box, a Nike shoe. It’s the idea that we generate all of this stuff and nature will persevere. It’s continually fighting back. In my mind, it’s a peaceful way of fighting back, but nature isn’t always so gentle.”

The Taylors know a thing or two about the ways of nature. Over the years, they’ve grown copious amounts of pigments, fibers and other materials for their art-making. At one point, they managed a 3,000-square-foot garden right in the middle of Belmont.

“The inks in our drawings are made with walnut ink that we make ourselves. You harvest the walnuts and boil them,” Jeremy says. “Occasionally we’ll make paper from the flax that we grow. Last year we grew cotton, too.”

“We grow pigments in our garden, indigo and rose madder and safflower, and then we use them to dye fabric,” Allyson says. “It’s so woven into everything. We grow our pigments right next to our food and herbs, and it’s just a part of life. Our daughter definitely identifies more plants than most adults because she’s been in the garden since she was in a little sling on our backs.”

“The other part of the work that’s not dyed is recycled. There’s a quilt in the show that has a chenille blanket we altered to make it look like the ocean. There are a few found objects,” Jeremy says. “Our process is very rigorous and oriented towards doing everything as sustainably as possible.”

But just to be clear, the Taylors aren’t preaching at you. 

“There’s genuine love for animals and nature and the experiences we’ve had making our work,” Allyson says. “But we were born in the ’70s. We were born into better living through chemicals. We drive a car. We had a kid and doubled all the weird plastic things that came into our lives. We’re trying to do our best, but we don’t live in a tree in the woods. We’re commenting from within.”

When they met 16 years ago, at a graduate program at UNC Chapel Hill, Jeremy was already making environmental art and exploring sustainable ways to make art materials. His thesis focused on the impact that humans and industrialization have had on animals and the planet. (Even now, his artwork largely features prey animals like birds and rabbits and deer.)

Allyson, whose studio was across the hall from Jeremy’s classroom, made clothing at the time. She became intrigued by Jeremy’s research into making his own ink and paint. 

“When I was an undergrad, one of my professors got sick from traditional art-making materials. He literally couldn’t be around certain things, so I learned a lot about non-toxic materials,” Allyson says. “After meeting Jeremy, I decided that I don’t want to use poisonous pigments or things that I can’t wash down the sink. I don’t want to worry about harming the water, or animals, or in the future harming a kid.”

As artists, the pair’s collaboration began by sharing skills—pattern-making for Jeremy, sewing for Allyson—and they were married within a year of meeting one another. Then they began making a collaborative body of work independent from their personal art portfolios. 

The Taylors’ current Gallery IX exhibition includes 101 pieces of art. It’s the first time the couple has shown all of their pictorial quilts in one place.

“When we first put them all up, I felt really emotional about them,” Allyson says. “I saw all of the handwork that we put into them—many, many hours of hand sewing and embroidery—and I saw all of those plants we grew. I saw years of gardens, years of dyeing fabric and making thread, and putting it all to use in these images of people communing with animals or nature. It’s really exciting.”

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The Charlottesville Women’s Choir sings for all

The Charlottesville Women’s Choir presents new songs about justice, and one about food fads called “Dinner,” on Sunday at The Haven. Donations at the door will benefit International Neighbors Charlottesville. Photo by Martyn Kyle

In the wake of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Amanda Korman knew what she needed to do. Sing.

At a local vigil, Korman sang songs of solidarity, mourning and protest alongside fellow members of the Charlottesville Women’s Choir “to say we do not want this violence in our country. We want to stand up for the rights of all people to be safe to gather together,” she says.

“We were able to add music to the chorus of everyone in Charlottesville who gathered to speak up in solidarity with the Florida community and the LGBTQ and Latino communities across the country that were in pain,” says Korman.

Charlottesville Women’s Choir
The Haven
June 3

Founded in 1984 with the mission of “singing for peace and justice,” the Charlottesville Women’s Choir is a local force for good. The self-directed, volunteer-based choir acts as an avenue for women from all walks of life to gather, giving voice and energy to the promotion of social justice through music.

“Women’s choirs in particular have a very rich history of being involved with social change,” Korman says. “I think it was in the ’60s and ’70s that women’s choirs became a space for making social change with a particular blend of feminism, civil rights and gay rights. Since then, we’re continually expanding the umbrella to make sure we’re thinking of justice for all.

In addition to being part of this tradition, CWC supports activism through song choice. By choosing songs with poignant lyrics that are easy for groups to learn, disparate voices come together and energize people for difficult fights.

Over the last 34 years, the choir has grown from four to 40 members. Singers, from teenagers to retirees, come from all over Charlottesville and the surrounding communities, and many members have been in the choir since the ’80s and ’90s.

Korman, who works at the Women’s Initiative, joined CWC because she loves to sing in groups. “Our choir is about bringing the gift of music to the community, but it’s also a very meaningful social group for all the members,” she says. “We provide a lot of support and friendship to one another.”

That sense of community-within-the-community is partly intentional. Led by music director Karen Beiber, CWC operates by consensus. The group encourages every member to speak up about which events and songs the choir performs. Past events and venues include the International Day of Peace, Sojourners United Church of Christ and the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Every spring, CWC performs a benefit concert for local organizations. Past recipients have been the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build and Shelter for Help in Emergency. Keeping with tradition, this year’s performance will benefit International Neighbors Charlottesville, an all-volunteer organization that helps refugees settle in the community.

This year’s concert, held on a Sunday afternoon, is meant to be a space for adults and children alike to have fun, let loose and sing along while feeling solidarity within the community.

“We’re living in very trying times where more people in our own country don’t feel safe, where women’s rights, immigrants’ rights and civil rights are being questioned anew,” Korman says. “A lot of the songs that we sing [in this concert] speak to the need, to the importance of equal rights for everyone, particularly because of the time that we’re living in and the news cycle that we’re experiencing every day.”

One song in particular stands out. “Signs,” written by Ruth Huber, pays homage to the power of women’s voices as a collective. With lyrics inspired by messages from signs at the 2017 Women’s March, the song talks about the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and protecting and representing the rights of immigrants, Native Americans and First Peoples, and lesbian, gay and trans people.

“This song tries to be really expansive while honoring the particular power of a women- led effort,” Korman says. “It names communities whose rights are being threatened and who, when we come together in solidarity, have so much power.”

Even the music hints at feminine power. “I am a soprano one which is the highest of all of the voices. We’re the stratospheric singers,” Korman says. “In this song, we sing a very high A note and, to me, being able to sing this high A represents being able to reach beyond what you think is possible, to hit notes that maybe only a woman could hit.” Some men could hit this note as well, but you take my point.”

In the end, Korman says, her hope for the concert is the same as that of the CWC: galvanizing people to take action in the community. “My hope is that you come away energized and ready to make positive change in Charlottesville.”

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Motherhood is at the center of Studio IX’s May exhibition

“Leaking Madonna” by elin o’Hara slavick is on display in “Mother Mother” at Studio IX through May 27. The opening reception is on Friday, May 4. Courtesy of the artist

When you imagine a mother, what do you picture?

A woman up to her elbows in soapy dishwasher with a baby strapped to her chest or a toddler clinging to her ankle? A woman who wheels and deals like a boss until she sprints off to daycare? Or do you think of your own mother? The mothers you know? Our universal longing for mother-love?

“It’s different for everybody,” says Ashley Florence, the curator of the group show “Mother Mother” at Studio IX. “We can’t limit ourselves into thinking that the idea of ‘mother’ says dirty dishes and screaming child. Because it’s just so much bigger than that.”

As a Charlottesville-based photographer, Florence sees the theme come up often in her work. “Not necessarily just motherhood, but my mother, and being mothered, and what is transmitted through that relationship. It’s something all of us, men and women alike, have experienced.”

But the subject, she says, feels fairly taboo in the art world. Unless it’s rendered in a smart enough way, “the basic experience of motherhood, or the mother in its everyday-ness,” she says, tends to get ignored.

The oversight prompted Florence to conceive a group show featuring female artists in her network, and so “Mother Mother” was born.

Fourteen women explore the idea of mother across a range of mediums, from sculpture, painting and illustration to photography, video, performance and collage. Contributors include Lenka Clayton, Sarah Boyts Yoder, elin o’Hara slavick, Jina Valentine, Tracy Spencer Stonestreet, Laura Dillon Rogers, Lisa Ryan, Allyson Mellberg Taylor, Meredith McKown, Ashley Florence, Sage Latane Hastert, Amanda Monroe Finn, Holly Bass and Jamila Felton.

“These artists have really approached it in so many intelligent and sensitive ways. There’s this tenderness, and connection, and humanity, but there’s also tenacity, and split personality, and there’s violence when it goes wrong,” Florence says. “The commonality really is the polarity and the vastness, because it’s not an identifiable, nameable, easy-to-talk-about-able subject.”

The experience of motherhood ranges as widely as the show’s themes.

Nervous limitation is the center of Clayton’s video project, which follows her in different environments. She lets her son walk away from her until she gets nervous, then runs after him and literally measures the distance she can be from him.

In “The Split,” Boyts Yoder explores the everyday duality of being a mother. “You have the person that you were before you had kids. That person doesn’t go away,” Florence says. “Then you have the person that you are with your kids. You’re split between personalities, split between feelings and split between pure joy and pure terror at the same time.”

In a different video, queer mother Spencer Stonestreet demonstrates the burden of being expected to be a traditional Southern woman. Her work features a mother dragging furniture and housewares for three miles through a southern landscape.

“There’s heaviness that is present in some of the work, but there’s also lightness,” Florence says. “It comes around the whole idea of mother, that there’s this weight we bear, and there’s the lightness of being.”

A mother herself, the curator of the show identifies with many of the feelings expressed by the artists. “Once you become a mother, you realize that a lot of your fears and a lot of your hopes are exactly the same as everybody else’s. You’re really having a lot of the same feelings as the next person.”

However, her contribution to “Mother Mother” doesn’t focus on her own motherhood. Instead, she’s showing work about her mother: two chromogenic prints with etched glass, each with a piece of writing on it. The first reads: “I told mommy I’m going to have a black baby when I grow up.” On the second: “She said just wait for your grandfather to die.”

“For me, that piece is about my innocence being interrupted by racism and racist thought,” Florence says. “How language is part of that, and how we transmit ideas into our children’s minds through our mouths and our language.”

Dillon Rogers also hints at the subtle influence of mothers with a series of photographs that overlay images of herself and her children. The subjects are nude, though “you can’t really see much of anything except the form,” Florence says.

“In one image, [Rogers’] body is totally in focus and very present. In the other one, she’s like a mist. And it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s totally it. When you think of the growing relationship you had with your mother, she was a person, but she also wasn’t.

“Because mothers are human, but they’re also not human. They’re something more than that.”

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Reading from inspiration at New Dominion Bookshop

Hear Jeffery Renard Allen (above) and Angie Hogan read from their work during the Charlottesville Reading Series at New Dominion Bookshop on Friday. Submitted photos

As a kid in grade school, Angie Hogan began writing poetry for the same reason her peers wrote in a diary or passed notes in class: She wanted privacy.

“I felt the need to express myself, but I didn’t want to express myself straightforwardly,” she says. “I was definitely writing things that were extreme metaphors. Not to go so far as to say coded and secret—but kind of.”

Now a multi-award-winning poet with an MFA from UVA’s creative writing program, Hogan pauses as she thinks back.

“They were bad,” she says with a laugh. “They were really bad mixed metaphors. Lots of stuff about the natural world, but also ships and rocks and things, and always protective in some way. You know, ‘I’m strong as a rock,’ or ‘The shipwreck can’t destroy me.’”

Perhaps that’s why, years later, she points to confidence and calculated risk-taking as some of her biggest lessons learned.

“Having Rita Dove as a mentor [at UVA] helped a lot with that, actually,” Hogan says. “One time she defended my work to a critical male, to a somewhat haphazard response to one of my poems that I put in the workshop, and that really taught me how to stand up for my own work.”

By the time she graduated, Hogan knew how an audience would respond to her work. “I could make my own decisions about whether I was going to revise the poem based on that or whether I’d just as soon take the risk and do what I wanted.”

While her first manuscript involved “a lot of autobiographical things” but “plenty of fiction too,” ranging on topics like identity, performance, role playing and multiple selves, she says her recent work is different.

“It’s more historically informed, layered in terms of other people’s thinking over the course of history,” says Hogan. “…The risk here is that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m writing from what I’m trying to understand, as opposed to just writing what I know.”

Sharing Hogan’s appetite for historical exploration is Jeffery Renard Allen, the celebrated author of two poetry collections, two works of fiction, one collection of short stories and countless essays, who spends his days teaching at the college level, most recently as a professor with UVA’s creative writing program.

The writers, both of whom will read from their newest work in this month’s Charlottesville Reading Series, share more than their interest in reference material.

Like Hogan, who grew up in Tennessee and learned to love words because her father constantly read children’s books out loud to her, Allen began to write because he loved to read as a child.

“When I was 8 or 9 I started trying to write stories that were based on the stories that I read,” he says. “From a young age I saw myself as a writer, something I would like to do as a career someday, even if I didn’t really know what that meant.”

Educated in Chicago public schools, and the first in his family to attend college, Allen says he feels fortunate to have teachers who supported him along the way.

“In the very first writing workshop I took, I wrote a terrible story, but the professor pointed out one word and one sentence, and he said something like, ‘That’s the way a writer uses language,’” says Allen. That single boost of confidence was so tremendous, that he began to take writing seriously.

He went on to receive his Ph.D. in English (creative writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago, then he taught by invitation at writing programs around the globe and co-founded a writing conference in Ghana. He says he spends a lot of time talking about inspiration, how writers think and exist in the world.

“I don’t feel that a writer has to be a public figure, to be a political voice or a social voice,” he says. “Writing might be the only medium of art that allows this type of empathy, this ability to be in someone else’s shoes. As writers, we show something about our common humanity, despite whatever kinds of cultural, racial or gender differences and sexual differences might separate us or distinguish us.”

He finds himself concerned with questions of family and levels of reality. Though he often uses historical subject matter as source material, “I’m drawn to doing stories that somehow broaden our sense of reality, of possibility,” he says.

“There’s a lot that’s said about African-American boys or people in terms of their feelings of being limited, but truth to tell, as a kid, I always believed that I could do anything. I never saw race as a barrier, even though I lived in a segregated city like Chicago. I really feel that reading encouraged me to believe that I could go any place and that I could think about anything and that I could do anything. I think I still feel that way.”

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Review: Hand to God is a joyful romp through the dark

Virginia Wawner and Julian Sanchez star in the engaging and enjoyable Hand to God, at Lives Arts through May 6. Photo by Martyn Kyle

In case you forgot why people still put on pants and leave the house in order to partake in live theater (as opposed to Netflix-ing their way to human-sized sinkholes on the couch), allow Live Arts’ production of Hand to God to spell it out for you.

Full-frontal nudity! Cursing in church! Legit cigarette smoking! Blood spray so realistic the front row gets splash guards—and all of this, thanks to hand puppets.

Yes, Hand to God is a wild ride. And holy cannoli, it is fun.

Lest you think such debauchery comes across as gratuitous, trust me when I say it doesn’t. This show is equal parts sincere and self-aware; its wicked humor streaks across a deep and loving heart. And thanks to powerful direction, supreme casting and clever stage, lighting and prop design, it’s one of the most enjoyable and engaging shows I’ve seen in a very long time.

And okay, maybe it’s a little gratuitous—but I’m a nerd who hates excess violence and jump-scare movies, and I absolutely loved it.

Set in a church basement in sleepy Cypress, Texas, Robert Askins’ Tony-nominated comedy follows the rapid devolution of a teenage puppet club, spearheaded by Margery, a recent widow whose idle hands (and misfit son Jason) need some work to do.

Gifted space and materials by Pastor Greg, who carries a not-so-secret torch for his congregant-in-mourning (and whose profession of passion made me laugh out loud), Margery attempts to corral three local teens into rehearsals of a puppet performance for the church.

There’s Timmy, the James Dean-inspired bully with an alcoholic mother and a hidden crush. There’s Jessica, the girl-next-door who bravely (and hilariously) takes matters into her own hands when the situation demands it. There’s Jason, whose underwhelming mustache, overlarge button-down and stammering peacemaker attitude suppress myriad frustrations, including a desire for Jessica, anger at Timmy, obedience to his mother and grief about his dead father.

And then there’s Tyrone, a mop-haired puppet fixed on Jason’s right arm, who takes on a life of his own. Acting as Jason’s expletive-spitting id and/or supernatural conduit, Tyrone eventually reveals himself as the devil incarnate (by possession or proxy, we’re still not sure). Spilling “hidden knowledge” as light bulbs flicker overhead, Tyrone unveils the darkness each character hides, and instigates chaos in their lives. As he insists, in soliloquy and furious lecture, the devil is merely an idea, a scapegoat, a label slapped on natural human impulses—the ones we fear or fail to understand.

In this age of social condemnation, it’s a theme that will hit home for most people. For Cristan Keighley, the director of Live Arts’ production, it hits even closer.

“Hand to God is intensely and eerily personal to me,” he writes in the director’s note in the show’s Playbill. “The Bible used on opening night is my own, from my teen years, largely spent in a church that was a 20-minute drive from the playwright’s own.”

Keighley shares a glimpse of the pain inflicted by his experience at that church, including pointed condemnation by a pastor distinctly lacking moral high ground. This show presents the moral high ground as, itself, the problem—therefore lampooning what many hold sacred and rejecting tribal alliances that smother individuality and our habit of demonizing desire and heartfelt emotion—so much of that which makes us human. Because, as the director writes, “This play is about love, as most things are.”

That love is subtle, a current beneath the madness, yet rendered masterfully, and I suspect Keighley’s talent and heart are the reasons for it.

As Timmy, Evan Post is brooding and overeager, and you can’t help feeling sorry for him, no matter what he says Jessica smells like. Gwyneth Sholar brings warmth and lightness to Jessica, infusing the character with an echo of laughter that gives audience members permission to not take this whole thing so seriously. James Sanford is pitch-perfect as Pastor Greg, offering a painful blend of desperation, good intentions and intimate creepiness. As Margery, Virginia Wawner brings us along as she turns from pearls and polished hairdos to sadomasochistic underbelly. When she screams with the authentic fury of a strung-out, frustrated mom, you believe her.

One word about Julian Sanchez, the actor who Jekyll-and-Hydes as Jason and Tyrone: wow.

His performance literally made my jaw drop. His portrayal of Tyrone was so captivating, I consistently forgot the puppet/devil was being animated by the hand and voice box next to him.

Word on the street is it took prop master Kerry Moran 174 hours to create the puppets used in the show, so I have to give them their due, because they look great, they go through the wringer and Tyrone feels like a legitimate member of the cast.

All in all, Live Arts’ production of Hand to God is fun and crazy, and really well done. So put on your pants, go out to the theater and sit there side-by-side in the dark—for the glory of it.

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‘Feminine Likeness’ explores two sides of the canvas

Paul Trebilcock’s “Mia Sposa, 1929” is on exhibit in “Feminine Likeness: Portraits of Women by American Artists, 1809-1950” at The Fralin Museum of Art through April 29. Courtesy of The Fralin Museum of Art

Standing in The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, surrounded by paintings from across the 19th and 20th centuries, you notice something about the passage of time in the museum’s current exhibition, “Feminine Likeness: Portraits of Women by American Artists, 1809-1950.” There’s a subtle shift as years slip by, a transformation in the representation of femininity and codes of womanhood.

But if the work makes it seem that artists do the representing, you’re only seeing half the story. “It was always a give and take between artists and the people being painted,” says curator Jennifer Camp. “A lot of these portraits reflect the self-representation of the sitter as much as the representation or painting by the artist.”

In other words, the faces of women on display don’t belong exclusively to those who wield the brush. It’s a dialogue that echoes changing norms on both sides of the canvas.

Camp, who is the Barringer-Lindner Curatorial Fellow at The Fralin and a Ph.D. candidate in history of American art and architecture at UVA, sees the collection as an opportunity for viewers to consider how they present themselves to the world “via imagery, or art, or even something as silly as the selfie,” she says.

Camp has long been fascinated by 20th- century American art, which stands at the nexus of social and visual experimentation.

“When you study American art, one of the first things you learn about is the Armory Show, which was a huge exhibition in New York that upended the art world and created all sorts of scandals,” she says. “It was where people were first introduced to cubism as well as other avant-garde movements.”

Camp’s interest in the shifts of social and cultural expectations, as well as visual language used by artists, led to the concept of “Feminine Likeness.”

As part of her fellowship, Camp was tasked with putting together an exhibition that draws from The Fralin’s collection. Under the mentorship of former curator Rebecca Schoenthal, she developed a show that features portrait painters such as Thomas Sully, Rembrandt Peale, George Luks and others. Through changes in fashion, accessories, facial expression and pose, the images on view reveal changes in expectations for women themselves.

“In the 19th century, only the very wealthiest people could typically afford [portraits],” says Camp. “Portraiture was very much about the accurate likeness, about conveying status and wealth. …Mather Brown shows a woman holding a letter. Letter writing was a sign of decorum as well as education.

“In the 20th century, you see a shift towards a brighter pallet, looser brush strokes, some more inventive posing. Henry Glintenkamp, the 1920s artist who has the final portrait of the show, depicts an older woman sort of staring off into the distance, surrounded by these small vignettes that seem to be depicting scenes from her life. It’s done in the very sort of cubist manner, with jagged lines, harsh angles, deep shadows and kind of distorted proportions. He’s less interested in straightforward naturalism and more interested in the inner character of this woman, in her feelings and emotions.”

Camp sees this shift as a response not only to the growing accessibility of photography, which rendered exact likenesses with ease, but women’s changing status in society. In the 1920s, she points out, women had recently gained the right to vote, and flappers were considered much more liberated than their mothers and grandmothers.

“The audience response to art can tell you a lot about whether the culture at large is ready for that idea,” Camp says. “It’s interesting to think about whether or not art can actually be a vehicle for social change. Why or why not?”

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Arts

Poet Patricia Asuncion gathers a sea of sisters

See Patricia Asuncion with the Persister Poets & Other Nasty Women on March 17 at The Bridge PAI. Photo by Eze Amos

When writer and Charlottesville resident Patricia Asuncion took to the streets of Washington, D.C., during the 2017 Women’s March, her protest felt eerily familiar.

“When I was first divorced in the 1970s, I had no credit. I had no bank accounts. I had nothing in my name. I didn’t even have the first name Patricia. I was Mrs. John Doe,” says Asuncion. “It took me a long time to recover from that. Fifty-plus years later, things are still the same.”

She cites a study where, she says, the majority of women polled felt “they needed to have their husband’s last name in marriage as a display of love and devotion and submission,” says Asuncion. “I was flabbergasted.”

A poet and short story author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, vox poetica and elsewhere, Asuncion says, the term ‘nasty woman’ is a reclamation of her right to be here.

“I don’t care what the name is,” she says. “Call me nasty. Call me something worse than that. I am going to speak up and I’m going to insist that I have a place, and it’s on equal footing with men in the United States or anywhere else.”

With so many women running for office in 2018, Asuncion says she feels “a bit more hopeful our voice is going to count.” That hope sparked her desire to make a space for more women’s voices in Charlottesville, and it culminated in a series at The Bridge PAI, where Asuncion is a board member.

The events coincide with Women’s History Month and feature performances by an all-female improv troupe and the Charlottesville Women’s Choir, a talk with transgender activist Mia Mason and a menstruation celebration, spanning mediums as diverse as the participants themselves.

When she put out the call for participants, Asuncion heard from Courtney LeBlanc, a fellow contributor to Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. It sparked an idea—and LeBlanc became the first poet to headline a mid-month poetry reading, Persister Poets & Other Nasty Women.

The event’s other poets include Amelia Williams, who encapsulates her poetry in eco-friendly art installations on land threatened by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline; Cynthia Atkins, a professor and Pushcart Prize nominee who writes about mental health, among other issues; and Mary Carroll-Hackett, also a professor, whose “spin on women’s issues from a Southern poverty perspective…blew me away,” says the organizer. Asuncion will share work that includes a poetic overview of the history of the women’s movement.

Throughout her life, Asuncion has seen the written word as a tool for freedom. “I grew up in inner city Chicago, and I was the only one in my family to finish high school, let alone college,” she says. “I grew up with seven boy cousins and they were sucked into the gangs, etc., but public education was my ticket out of the city.”

Beyond writing, her passion lies with diversity. “I’ve always had a special place for street kids because I was one,” she says. And she points out, “Women’s issues are also an issue of diversity. It’s all related: poverty, second-rate, second-class citizens, immigrants.

Through events like Persister Poets, Asuncion hopes to create a sense of place for others.

“My hope for women is that they will feel safe among this sea of sisters to speak up, and to take a stand, and not take a backseat to things that are concerning them,” she says. “For the general population, I want them to hear women. What they say has importance. What they say should be listened to. And actions should be taken towards equality, once and for all.”

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Arts

Designer Annie Temmink coaxes ‘Beasts!’ to life

Join Annie Temmink and other artists for DIY crafting and a special performance at the opening of “Beasts!” on March 2. By Martyn Kyle

After years spent living abroad and around the U.S., Annie Temmink thought something was missing from her native Charlottesville.

“I miss really great dancing and really wild visual clothing and adornment,” she says. “They’re rich opportunities for people to have moments of unbridled, creative expression, and they’re really critical for connection, and happiness, and all the things that most people want.”

As an internationally awarded sculptor and costume designer, Temmink is tackling the problem head-on by collaborating with other local artists to build “more wild and outrageous experiences in Charlottesville.”

The revolution begins with “Beasts!,” a show about imagining and creating wild creatures, on display in March at The Bridge PAI and featuring pieces in Temmink’s trademark style—architectural costumes with kinetic elements—developed around the idea of making creatures she hadn’t seen before.

“I didn’t set out to create a particular narrative,” she says. Rather, the works take on life once they are created, especially once they are worn.

In addition to soaking up the visuals and musical performances by Weird Mob and Free Idea at the “Beasts!” opening, visitors can try their hand at creating their own work. “I work with common household items like cardboard, construction scraps and cast-off materials, and I think that adds to the fun,” Temmink says.

Her wearables center on elaborate headdresses that sweep up, down or out, spanning the wearer’s crown, shoulders or entire body. From dangling mobiles to fanning coronas to glittering starbursts made of spoons, her concepts begin with everyday items and go big.

“The first time you look at a spoon, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this,’” she says. But her willingness to explore—to look at a spoon over and over again, to get inspired by ice crystals and plant geometry, to arrange and rearrange shapes with pleasing emotional qualities until something clicks—evolves into works that are larger than life.

Growing up in an artistic family—her father is a carpenter and her mom runs City Clay—Temmink always made things by hand. In college, she studied sculpture and realized she wanted to do something beyond “make this thing that sits on the wall.”

After college, she became a Watson Fellow, receiving $25,000 and 12 months to pursue a research topic outside the U.S. “I made adornment and costumes and textiles in Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania, Indonesia, Japan and India,” she explains. “Seeing how adornment is celebrated in other cultures gave me the link that costume is sort of like sculpture but way more fun.”

Once back in Charlottesville, she got a job working in carpentry and rented a studio space where she made costumes after work and on weekends. “It was definitely one of those jumping off the deep end moments,” she says. But Temmink was committed to going outside her comfort zone, to showing up to the work and being disciplined about creation.

In 2016, she produced a fashion show for the Maker Faire and began making giant hats. From there, she started getting commissions for theaters and private clients, including a fireproof Donald Trump wig for a fire ballet opera company and bedazzled shorts for Ke$ha, and for numerous fashion shows along the East Coast.

Most recently, Temmink’s work was featured at the World of Wearable Art in Wellington, New Zealand. “It’s like the Olympics of costumes,” she says. “The most amazing things you’ve ever seen are on display in this hybrid of fashion and theater and runway.

The organization found her work on Instagram, invited her to submit it, and her creation went on to win the award for Best New Entrant.

“It’s really as simple as staring doubt in the face, and saying, ‘Look, I hear you, but I’m not going to go with that. I’m really going to be courageous and explore this idea, even if it’s crazy, or it’s not profitable,” Temmink says. “…because there’s something about it that’s really important.’”

The beasts in “Beasts!” originate from that very same place. “The concept came from thinking a lot about the blocks that come up in a creative practice. To me, a beast is a thing that has a positive side to it, but it might look overwhelming at first.”

And of course, she says, it’s also huge fun to make a giant creature.

“The point of all of it is a joyful expression,” she says. “To make me laugh, to make other people laugh. As we get older there’s less and less room for that, or it doesn’t come up because we take things so seriously. I think it’s important to create your own joy. And there’s nothing more fun than making these wild creatures and getting to see how they come to life.”

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Arts

Budding artists learn in the spotlight

Live Arts’ education series recently offered a production of Peter Pan. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was performed as part of Four County Players’ summer camp in 2015. Photo by Linda Hogan photography

When I was a tween writing “X-Files” fan fiction, I never suspected my interest in storytelling would lead to an actual career as a writer. But then I enrolled in the creative writing program at a performing arts high school—and discovered my creative power.

Dozens of local arts organizations offer Charlottesville children and teens opportunities to unlock their potential. From classes to summer camps to year-round workshops, the vast majority also provide financial support in the form of reduced costs, scholarships and free programming. Area arts organization leaders share what motivates kids to get involved in the arts—and why it really matters.

Light House Studio

“Children and teens are not afraid to make mistakes,” says Deanna Gould, executive director of Light House Studio. “They understand the importance of learning from the process. As long as you establish a safe environment for young people to express themselves, they readily share ideas and are not afraid to take creative risks.”

As the only dedicated youth film center in Virginia, Light House Studio teaches approximately 150 workshops to 1,200 students from 70 schools every year. Many student films are accepted to national festivals and even win awards, including a Peabody, a Gold World Medal at the New York Festivals World’s Best TV & Films and a CINE Golden Eagle.

Gould explains that while older students recognize the potential for building their college and professional résumé through Light House, that isn’t the only goal.

“Our objectives [include] encouraging self-expression [and] giving disadvantaged youth an opportunity to express their diverse perspectives,” she says. “By giving young people a voice, we are empowering them to become leaders and influence change.”

Four County Players

“When you have high expectations, kids and teens will excel and often outperform adults,” says Four County Players board of directors member Tres Wells. “Children and teens seem more willing to try and put themselves out there.”

Four County Players offers two summer camps, one that focuses on production of a single youth-focused show, and another that offers multiple classes on topics like singing, dancing and improvisation, as well as a Friday showcase of student work. During the school year, young people participate in regular-season programming. A youth director program has produced two full-scale productions run by teens. And even the board of directors includes a youth director position “to represent the youth voice.”

According to Wells, teens and kids have a natural love of the theater because, he explains, they bond more quickly than adults.

“You just can’t explain the feeling of opening night after months of hard work and rehearsal,” he says. “The sense of pride and accomplishment with the thunderous applause of the opening night crowd is like nothing else.”

Music Resource Center

At the Music Resource Center, students in grades six to 12 stay motivated by a points system that rewards members for accomplishments like taking a lesson or recording an album.

According to Membership Coordinator Ike Anderson, the MRC gives tweens and teens access to musical instruments, studio equipment, artist support and lessons on topics like digital music composition, audio engineering, radio, songwriting and dance, regardless of their musical experience.

“Everything done here can start at a beginner’s level,” says Anderson. “We’ve had a bunch of students graduate and join performing arts colleges.” Others go on to become recording artists, radio DJs, directors, instructors and choreographers.

“Students aren’t just getting guitar lessons and a bag of chips,” Anderson says. “It is the vision of Music Resource Center to create a vibrant community through vibrant teens. When you walk through our facility, you can feel that excitement and electricity.”

Live Arts

“We create a lot of performances that involve young performers and crew members,” says Mike Long, director of education at Live Arts. “When they are given the chance and the training, they are every bit as capable of making great theater as adults.”

In addition to casting school-age actors, Live Arts offers a mentor/apprentice program as well as a chance for teens to write, devise and perform their own original plays every fall. In the summer, students ages 4 to 20 participate in theater camps and productions, including Broadway musicals and Shakespeare plays.

He sees kids and teens who are drawn to theater as a way to make friends become part of a theater community. “Many young people have been doing shows and camps at Live Arts for years, and when they get older it is common for previous campers to become Live Arts theater camp counselors and adult volunteers.”

The Paramount Theater

Thanks to youth education programming at the Paramount, more than 158,000 students and teachers have taken field trips downtown to experience live theatrical and musical work as audience members since 2004.

While the Paramount provides study guides, Standards of Learning connections and lectures, Education and Outreach Manager Cathy von Storch says feedback from local teachers reveals an impact beyond academics to include social and cultural enrichment.

“It’s the overall experience of getting outside their comfort zone, learning manners and theater etiquette, being in public in a historic space with kids from all districts,” she says.

“You bring an entire grade level together, from students whose parents bring them to shows all the time to those who only watch TV together as a family,” von Storch says. “But on that day, during that one hour at the Paramount, everyone shares the experience.”

For students who want to have informed conversations, she says, “it levels the playing field.” Much like the arts themselves.

Choose your role

Four County Players
fourcp.org/education

Light House Studio
lighthousestudio.org; lighthouse studio.org/summer-film-academy- 2018

Live Arts
livearts.org; summeratlivearts.org

Music Resource Center
musicresourcecenter.org or drop by the studio for a tour

The Paramount

theparamount.net/education