“Grounds…A Blackcast” is a 10-episode audio show centered around five black professors teaching at a small, private, predominantly white institution in the South. Charlottesville-based actor Will Jones (shown) lends his voice to Ivan Wilson, a scholar of Russian poetry. Photo by Eze Amos
Acting looks a bit different for Will Jones this summer. Instead of being onstage with the Charlottesville Players Guild, he’s sitting at home, in front of a microphone, wearing headphones so he can hear himself and his castmates as they read from their scripts for “Grounds…A Blackcast,” an original 10-episode audio drama.
Some aspects of the craft haven’t changed for Jones. He still gets into character by laughing, sighing, furrowing his brow, smiling broadly, gesticulating wildly, and using his body to affect the emotion in his voice.
And, perhaps most importantly, by voicing one of the five main characters in the podcast created by Leslie Scott-Jones, the Charlottesville-based actor is still making black theater.
Scott-Jones created “Grounds” after considering the history of black life in mainstream entertainment, starting with the controversial “Amos ‘n’ Andy” radio-turned- television program and continuing with sitcoms like “Martin” and others.
These shows tend to “follow the same formula,” says Scott-Jones: the hijinks of the common man and his wife/girlfriend and best friend. Some have broken that mold and center on black women (“Living Single,” “Insecure”), or black college students (“A Different World,” “Dear White People”), but there’s room for more representations of black life.
“Grounds” is about five black professors at a small, private PWI (predominantly white institution) in the South, and the first episode premieres Thursday, June 11, on the Eugene Martin LLC SoundCloud page. Scott-Jones called upon some of her black Ph.D.-holding friends (including locals A.D. Carson and Munier Nazeer) to advise on the scripts. They shared their passion for educating their students and for research, as well as the unique challenges they face in academia, and how that affects their places in black communities. Black academics are often made to feel shut out of both worlds.
“It was the opportunity to write some really wonderful characters,” says Scott-Jones.
There’s Elijah Augustus Wright (played by Doug Spearman), a professor of civil engineering who is up for tenure. A gay man raised in a preacher’s home, he never mentions his family and hasn’t introduced his boyfriend of 10 years to his friends. Early on in the series, he’s accused of trading sexual favors for grades.
Ivan Wilson (voiced by Jones) is a professor of 17th-century Russian literature who met and married his wife while studying in Russia. He reads his own poetry at a local open mic night, and fears the U.S. government is watching him because of his ties to Russia.
Like Ivan, drug design and development professor Khai Muhammed Ali (James J. Johnson) thinks the government’s keeping an eye on him, but for different reasons: He’s a devout Muslim raised by a Black Panther father, and his research focuses on growing and testing cannabis for use in treating various health issues facing black communities.
Ethnomusicologist Kwasi Adofo Sika (Kevin Troy) is an expert on African influences within hip-hop, but he prefers to listen to English punk and The Beatles. Born in Ghana and raised in the U.K., he’s the only professor in this cohort who did not attend an HBCU for any of his degrees.
Parthenia Jacqueline “P.J.” Wiley-Reid (voiced by Scott-Jones), is a tenured professor and chair of the African and African American studies department. She and her husband have two children, and her signature color is red.
This variety is what made Spearman, whose acting credits include roles on “Girlfriends,” “The Hughleys,” “Star Trek: Voyager,” and “Noah’s Arc,” agree to lend his voice. Too often, black male roles are “either some kind of supervillain or superhero,” he says. “We’re very rarely the kind of guys that we are.” Even on shows heralded for their portrayals of black life, “the men are usually there as problems to be overcome, or fixed, or dealt with,” says Spearman, who adds that he struggles to think of any series where “a black guy is the lead and he’s not some kind of extreme” or stereotype. “This is a lot more middle ground,” he says, “a lot more relatable.”
Spearman says that Scott-Jones welcomes collaboration from the actors in order to achieve that relatability. He contributed some dialogue to what he says is “the best scene I’ve had in a long time,” in episode two, a conversation between Elijah and the university’s white president. “It’s full of righteous indignation and truth,” says Spearman. Elijah “[stands] up for himself in a way that I have not had a chance to play before…it’s a guy going up against the homophobic, color-phobic policies of the university.”
Jones valued the chance to make his audience laugh instead of cry for once. His favorite scene is one in which his character, Ivan, meets up with ethnomusicologist Kwasi before a Kendrick Lamar concert. Ivan cracks up and lovingly teases his friend, who is dressed in a white T-shirt and black-and-red plaid pants, saying he looks prepped to pogo at a punk show rather than a rap concert.
“Grounds,” says Spearman, gives black men a voice “in the myriad spectrum that being a black man comes in. We’re not monolithic.”
The show comments on black female experience, too: The inclusion of P.J. as the only female character magnifies “the trap that most black women find themselves in, of having to be mama to everybody, and forgetting they have to mama themselves, too,” says Scott-Jones. But that’s not to say P.J. gets no support from the men. This is “a community of black people that really do honor each other, care for each other.”
And in this moment, as the country continues to protest ongoing police killings of black people, these are necessary things not just to convey, but to uplift, says Scott-Jones.
“Representation matters,” she says. “And the more of the spectrum of blackness that can be shown, the better.”
Former C-VILLE Weekly reporter Erin O'Hare joins other talented music writers for a chat about the state of live performance. Photo courtesy of WTJU.
Hear and there: It’s a question fans around the world are asking: Where does music go from here? As we navigate a reopening while keeping our distance, how do we commune around our favorite musical acts and enjoy concerts again? How do bands practice, record, and tour safely? What is the impact of our complex times on the creative mindset? WTJU’s Radio Talks brings together a lineup of locally connected experts, including Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield and former C-VILLE Weekly reporter Erin O’Hare to discuss where we are today and what we might hear in the future. Zoom required.
Sahara Clemons took inspiration from her mother’s strength of character and community involvement to design a new mural on 10th Street NW. Image: Eze Amos
On the afternoon of the year’s hottest day so far, Sahara Clemons stands at a concrete wall about three times her height, a roll of masking tape around her wrist, a brush in the other hand, cans of paint and a cup of melting bubble tea at her feet.
As she puts the finishing touches on her mural for the Charlottesville Mural Project, Clemons, who grew up in the city and recently finished her first year at the Rhode Island School of Design, periodically steps back to consider her work.
A larger-than-life black woman reclines across the full width of the wall, her face illuminated by the warm, intense, orange-pink light radiating from a lightning bolt she holds above her. She has the air of a goddess, powerful and at rest.
Clemons found inspiration for the piece in her mother, Eboni Bugg. Bugg, who currently serves as director of programs for the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, is a licensed clinical social worker, a family reunification advocate, and a yoga instructor who has worked to make mental health resources more available and accessible to women of color in the area. “She has shown me a lot” about what it takes to become a leader in a very racially polarized community such as Charlottesville, says Clemons. “That really affected me.”
While the mural isn’t an exact likeness, Clemons says it is most certainly a representation of her mother’s essence.
Sahara Clemons’ mural. Staff photo
She drew inspiration from the lightning bolt tattoo on Bugg’s wrist. “She talks about it as empowerment…and empowerment in the ability to rest,” says Clemons. “Life is tiring for a black woman, and we don’t always get that luxury [of rest], whether or not we are in a leadership position. There’s [always] a level at which we are having to uphold some sort of position, some sort of level of expectation that sometimes goes beyond our capability.”
To complement the lightning bolt, Clemons incorporated clouds (“they are about contemplation…rising above, heaven, the ethereal”) and light. A golden yellow halo circles the woman’s head and a sun emanates from the earring on her earlobe. Her dress looks as though it is composed of beams of light.
“I don’t usually put [the sun] in all of my work, but it’s specific to black women, to black girl magic,” says Clemons, and depicting that in this work was important to her. “There is a lot of invisibility that happens with black women, in Charlottesville and in general, that I wanted to combat,” she says.
This mural would be a powerful statement anywhere in the city, but its location—on the border of West Main Street and the historically black and now quickly gentrifying 10th and Page neighborhood—amplifies its message.
Above the mural is the recently built Standard apartment complex, which offers “lavish amenities” for UVA students. To its right, the new Tenth Street Warehouses retail development. Across the parking lot from the mural is the Westhaven public housing community, built in the 1960s to house (mostly black) people whose homes in the Vinegar Hill and Gospel Hill neighborhoods were razed by the city in the name of “urban renewal.”
Clemons didn’t select the site, but it’s significant to her. She and Bugg once lived in the neighborhood, and this afternoon, looking at the landscape around her, she can’t help but acknowledge how much it’s changed.
She designed the mural a month ago, and says the image has taken on new meaning in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer, and the resulting protests against racial injustice.
“It’s different now. It’s challenging to think about it in terms of police brutality and what that’s doing to the black community,” she says. “I hope that what this does is…present something different in terms of what’s happening within the black community.”
“I’m reminding [people] that there’s strength happening as well.”
Alan Goffinski’s Pizzas of Charlottesville album—12 lighthearted jingles for a dozen local pizza spots—comes out Friday, June 5. Photo by Eze Amos
At any given time, at least 20 percent of Alan Goffinski’s headspace is occupied by pizza.
“Pizza’s the best,” he says. It’s his favorite food, and he has no qualms about admitting it: “If anyone tells you [their favorite food is] anything else, they’re lying.”
“Pizza’s there for the best times,” Goffinski continues sincerely, not an ounce of cheese in his voice. “That’s what makes it so important. It’s the meal you eat with your buds. It’s a celebration meal.”
His reverence and enthusiasm for the pie inspired Pizzas of Charlottesville, an album of 12 jingles for local pizza places out this Friday on Bandcamp.com.
Goffinski is perhaps best known as the director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, but he’s a musician, too. In the early 2000s, he toured and made a couple records with indie rock band The 1997, and this past December, in collaboration with a few other local musicians, released Smells Like Music, an album of 20 goofy-sweet children’s songs under the moniker Little Skunks.
So Goffinski’s been in “a playful songwriting headspace,” and with local pies of all kinds always on his mind, he says the jingles “developed organically.”
“The idea was that this would be my love letter to pizza, and to local business,” says Goffinski, who chose to focus the ditties on area spots (i.e., non-national chains) that serve primarily pizza and that might knead a little boost right now: Vita Nova, Lampo, Christian’s, Belmont Pizza, and the like.
Each jingle reflects a restaurant’s individual style, says Goffinski, and none “could easily be swapped out for the others without some rearranging. If your pizza restaurant has a brick oven pizza, I’m mentioning the brick oven. Or if you make a particularly large pizza, I’m going to maybe mention that.” (He definitely mentions that.)
Goffinski will donate Pizzas of Charlottesville proceeds to the Charlottesville Restaurant Community Fund, and he’s working with local artist and Burnley-Moran Elementary art teacher Ryan Trott on some merch, too, just in case the jingles catch on with fellow pizza-lovin’ locals.
That’s the purpose of a good jingle, he says: they’re short, simple, slightly repetitive. “They’re all deliberately a little obnoxiously catchy, the kind of thing that maybe you wish wasn’t stuck in your head, but because it is, you embrace it, smile, and curse my name when you’re falling asleep at night.”
Goffinski emphasizes that none of these jingles have been officially sanctioned by the restaurants they celebrate, but some seem to be on board with the idea. “I have no expectation that any of these pizza places are going to use these jingles in any way, shape, or form…especially if they’re trying to maintain any sort of air of professionalism,” he says with a half-self-conscious laugh. “But I would invite them to!”
Goffinski might eat some of these pies more than others, but each has its merits, he says, and he loves them all. “There’s no such thing as bad pizza. Even bad pizza is good pizza.”
This Saturday night, local musician and HIV/AIDS educator Shawn Decker celebrates 30 years since his Make-A-Wish Foundation "wish" with a Facebook Live concert.
Shawn Decker remembers the first time he heard Depeche Mode. He was 12 or 13, and getting a ride home from his friend’s brother when he noticed the music coming out of the car stereo.
“What is this?!” he asked.The vulnerability of the lyrics, the mood of the new wave/synth-pop sound—itwas unlike anything he’d heard before. Depeche Mode became his favorite band.
Thirty years ago, on June 6, 1990, Decker met Depeche Mode after a show at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. It was a turning point in his life, and he plans to commemorate the occasion sometime next month with a virtual party on Facebook Live.
What Decker’s really celebrating isn’t the fact that he got to meet his favorite band when he was 14, but that he’s alive to mark the occasion.
Decker was diagnosed with HIV, which he’d contracted through a blood transfusion, in 1987. He was 11 years old, and doctors gave him about two years to live. Meeting the band was Decker’s Make-A-Wish Foundation “wish.” He was ecstatic to meet Depeche Mode, but says it meant “coming to terms with the fact that I was eligible for it.”
In 1990, Shawn Decker (front left, in the patterned shirt) was fighting HIV and facing a frighteningly uncertain future. He met Depeche Mode (below) through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and will soon host a virtual concert to celebrate the 30 precious years since that night. Photo courtesy subject
But it also gave him something to strive for, he says. He remembers thinking “maybe there was some transfer of magic” when he shook the hand of keyboardist and primary songwriter Martin Gore, and maybe there was: Those 15 minutes with the band made him think that music was something he could pursue.
That same summer, while on vacation at Myrtle Beach, Decker and his best friend bought what he describes as some “rock outfits” and staged a photo shoot on the beach with the water coming in behind them. Publicity pics for when their own band hit it big. For the first time since his diagnosis, Decker allowed himself to envision the future.
Ten years later, thanks to his mom’s persistence in getting her son good medical care, and to breakthroughs in HIV treatments that came just as Decker’s health really started to decline, he was writing and performing his own new wave and synth-pop songs. Many were about living with HIV—making the decision to talk about that “remains the biggest moment in my life,” says Decker. He’d begun traveling the country with his girlfriend (now wife), Gwenn Barringer, speaking to auditoriums full of young people about HIV/AIDS and sexual health.
“Life is interesting like that,” says Decker, talking by Zoom from his music room, where he’s been hosting the virtual music series Shawn’s Ongoing Spacejam during the shutdown. “Sometimes you catch some magic in another way. I never thought I’d be open about [having] HIV,” he says.
Decker turns 45 in July, and now he’s asking, “What am I going to do for another 45 years?” He hopes he’ll be an old man, one who wears plaid pants all the time. But who knows, Decker says with a smile and a shrug. It’s like Depeche Mode sings on “Nothing,” from 1987’s Music for the Masses: “Life / Is full of surprises.”
June 3, 5:08pm: This story has been updated to reflect Decker’s choice to postpone the Facebook Live concert he’d originally scheduled for this Saturday, June 6. Instead, he’ll wait until July.
At 25, Blue O’Connell discovered she had partial hearing loss, but remained committed to a life as a musician. She’s just released Seven Songs of Solace, a multimedia songbook filled with both traditional and original music intended to bolster resilience. Photo by Amy and Jackson Smith
When Blue O’Connell sings an old song, she feels a strong connection to the past, to the person who wrote that song and all the people who’ve sung it before her.
“I often tell people…if you read a history book about [a] time, it was probably written by someone who didn’t live through that time,” says O’Connell. But in singing a song written during a certain period, there’s a sort of alchemy of time, space, and empathy that allows the singer to connect not just with a narrative, but with human experience and to lives and voices not always included in history books.
As we make our way through this latest historic moment, O’Connell’s looking to music as a means of comfort and hope, and she knows she’s not alone in that. She recently released Seven Songs of Solace, a songbook complete with sheet music, guitar tablature, and recordings of some of her own songs plus arrangements of traditional and popular tunes from different eras and places—seven songs that have resonated with O’Connell as she’s experienced longing, loss, grief, pain, peace, and resilience throughout her own life.
When O’Connell was a 25-year-old musician living and working in Chicago, afriend invited her over to hear his latest piano composition. She sat in the room with him for a while, waiting for the piece to begin. “When are you going to play it?” she asked.
Her friend paused. “I did.”
O’Connell hadn’t heard a single note. She’d lost the ability to hear certain frequencies, particularly higher ones, but she didn’t let that stop her from making music and writing songs. She moved to Charlottesville in 1989, and throughout the 1990s performed at Live Arts, The Prism Coffeehouse, First Night Virginia, and elsewhere, and was a folk music DJ at WTJU 91.1FM.
After September 11, 2001, O’Connell read a newspaper article about how people were coping with the tragedy. Some talked about “a song that gave voice to feelings they didn’t have, or validated their experience. Some said they went to a concert,” remembers O’Connell. Up until that moment, she’d understood the significance of music—she was a musician playing regular gigs after all—but those stories made her understand just how important, how personal, it is to so many people.
Soon after, an ad in a music magazine for a certified music practitioner program caught her eye. The training happened to be at Martha Jefferson Hospital, and O’Connell signed up right away. In 2003, she completed an internship at UVA hospital and was hired there as a musician-in-residence, playing for ICU patients as well as local nursing home residents.
In 2009, at age 50, O’Connell received a cochlear implant and started undergoing various therapies of her own to learn how to hear again. Hearing some of those frequencies, those notes, for the first time in many years was difficult, says O’Connell. But she persisted.
Playing therapeutic music, “in a lot of ways, is the opposite of what a [music] performer does,” says O’Connell. Performers aspire to entertain an audience, keep them engaged, excited, awake; therapeutic musicians aim to calm a listener to the point of relaxation, even slumber.
In the ICU, she plays unrecognizable music to avoid causing uncomfortable or painful memories that a person might associate with a particular song. Nursing home sets can be a bit more upbeat, and she fields requests to conjure happy memories and movement.
O’Connell imbues sensitivity and reassurance into Seven Songs of Solace, on the traditional songs she’s chosen—like “Shenandoah,” with its melody relating a “sense of longing and love,” and “Ode to Joy,” which Beethoven wrote after he went deaf—and in her originals.
She composed “Acceptance (for Mom)” after her mother died. O’Connell folded the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) into the music, which transforms as the song progresses. When she considered what “denial” might sound like, she thought of an Irish jig. “I know when I’m in denial, I dance around,” she says with a laugh.
“Choose the Sky” came about as O’Connell drove alone on a highway in Arizona. “I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice I was driving in the most beautiful place you could imagine.” The lyrics came after the music, and for O’Connell, the song is about stability, how the sky is always present and yet always changing.
“For me, that’s a metaphor for what’s going on now, about finding something that will sustain you, and knowing it’s going to be okay.”
When the pandemic broke in March, O’Connell’s full-time hospital and nursing home work was “suspended indefinitely.” She misses it, but she’s still got the music, and in sharing her songbook, she’s finding some solace of her own.
Bowerbird Bakeshop’s Earl Vallery and Maria Niechwiadowicz feel fortunate that they’ve been able to move out of a rented kitchen and into their new space at the Tenth Street Warehouses. Photo by John Robinson
Bowerbird Bakeshop debuted at Charlottesville City Market’s annual holiday market in late 2017, at a shared table on a side row that got little foot traffic.
Pastry chef Earl Vallery had just moved to town after helping launch Whisk bakery in Richmond, and before that, teaching at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas. He had about $300 and the desire to have a bakery of his very own.
That cold Saturday morning, Vallery put up a homemade cardboard sign and covered his half of the booth with signature treats: matcha mint cookies, chocolate vortex cookies, and imaginatively flavored French macarons. He hoped that, eventually, Bowerbird might have enough of a following to warrant a bricks-and-mortar shop, complete with a kitchen, small eat-in area, and pastry cases packed with all sorts of delights.
It didn’t take long. After finding investors and raising money via a GoFundMe earlier this year, Bowerbird—now a team of three—is moving from its rented kitchen at Trinity Episcopal Church’s Bread & Roses space to the Tenth Street Warehouses.
It’s an odd time to open a bakery, acknowledges Vallery as he sits in the nearly finished space, light bouncing off of the metal appliances and the pristine glass pastry case. But the ball was already rolling when the pandemic hit: the lease was signed, the equipment ordered, and Vallery, who also received a small Paycheck Protection Program loan, couldn’t back out.
Instead, he adjusted. Bowerbird currently participates in the contactless Saturday market and delivers online orders direct to customers’ doors on Saturday mornings. With sales down and the bakery not opening to eat-in customers right away, Vallery couldn’t hire the staff he’d planned for, so he and his business partner and pastry assistant Maria Niechwiadowicz are tackling all the bakes and sales…in addition to finishing the bakery build-out.
“It’s tiring, figuring out all these ways to reinvent yourself,” says Vallery, who knows other small business owners share that fatigue. But he hesitates to complain, expressing his gratitude for his customers (and his understanding landlord). “I’m grateful we have something.”
Niechwiadowicz shares those feelings. But “sometimes it feels a little unfair that restaurants and long-standing businesses in Charlottesville are closing [and] we are opening,” she says. She is optimistic, though, about what Bowerbird can offer by maintaining ties with the Bread & Roses food ministry (Niechwiadowicz served as the program’s kitchen manager until recently), donating to other nonprofits like City of Promise, and partnering with local farms and food makers.
Even when the shop opens, Bowerbird will continue to participate in the City Market. “That’s our bread and butter,” says Vallery.
In addition to the macarons, cookies, galettes, and savory nest egg muffins that marketgoers have come to love, there will be cakes, custards, Danishes, and more. Vallery also promises breakfast items like smoked salmon on an everything croissant.
He may struggle sometimes to celebrate the occasion because “what we make, it could be considered a luxury,” but when Vallery talks about the feeling he gets from baking, his voice brightens, and he repeats, “I’m just so grateful.”
Leslie Scott-Jones says the tarot can tell us what we need to know. Learn how to listen by taking her online course, Demystify Tarot, beginning on May 20. For more information, go to thebridgepai.org.
A few years ago, Leslie Scott-Jones was wandering around the Aquarian Bookshop on West Main Street in Richmond, looking for lavender incense. Walking by a table of tarot card decks, she received a message from one of her maternal great-grandmothers: “That one.”
Scott-Jones stopped—she’d learned to listen to these messages when she received them—looked at the table, and asked, “Which one?”
“That one, down there.” On the bottom shelf were two decks, and Scott-Jones felt guided to one of them, the Dreams of Gaia deck.
She’d felt a connection to spirits since she started having déjà vu when she was about 6 years old, but this was her first tarot deck, and the timing seemed appropriate—she’d recently begun hearing from more and more of her ancestors and had started consciously tuning in to this aspect of herself. Tarot was another way she could focus on those messages.
For those who are curious about their own connections to spirits, Scott-Jones leads a Demystify Tarot course online via The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative that includes four two-hour sessions, held on consecutive Wednesdays. Courses start on May 20, June 17, and July 15.
Leslie Scott-Jones is an intuitive reader, which means she uses her mediumship when she reads tarot cards for herself and others. Photo by Sanjay Suchak
Scott-Jones is perhaps best known in town as an activist, a theater artist, and a musician (she’s artistic director of the Charlottesville Players Guild and sings in the Eugene Martin Band, among other groups), but she’s also a reader and a medium who has studied Spiritualism and psychic sciences at Arthur Findlay College in England.
But those who sign up for the course don’t need to have any sort of pre-existing (or rather, pre-acknowledged) connection to the metaphysical. “Anyone can learn to read tarot,” says Scott-Jones. “If you feel yourself called to do it, you can do it.”
While tarot reading is sometimes treated like hokum, or a magic trick, akin to gazing into a crystal ball to tell the future, Scott-Jones says the practice is just another way of accessing spirituality, like prayer or meditation. “People think about metaphysical things as ‘other,’” she says. “They think about it as something that they can’t do, or [that] they have to be initiated into. The truth is that everyone has it. Some people might call it something different, but every one of us has a connection to spirit, and it’s up to us how well we work that muscle. That’s really all it is—it’s working the muscle, it’s learning how they [the spirits] communicate with you, what it means when they show you certain things, and learning to listen to that still, quiet voice. Along that journey, you discover things that you never would have known,” including how many other people have their own highly personal connections to the metaphysical, whether it’s through religion or other belief systems.
“Whatever you believe about ‘the other side,’ let’s call it, tarot is a way to connect to those energies,” says Scott-Jones, and understanding the tarot deck—where it comes from, what each card means, and how to follow one’s intuition during a reading—is the warm-up to the exercise.
Much like the four-suited standard decks currently used to play poker, spades, bridge, and other games, tarot cards were originally used for parlor games, specifically, a bridge-like game called tarocchi, which was popular among Italian nobles (who had leisure time) in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Variations of the game and its cards spread throughout Europe over the next few centuries, and by the late 18th century, when Spiritualism became trendy in western Europe and the United States, people were using tarot cards—which are full of imagery and symbolism—in cartomancy, or divination via cards, a practice much, much older than the tarot deck itself.
Interest in the metaphysical, in astrology and in tarot in particular, is again on the rise, says Scott-Jones, and as a result, artists and readers are creating all sorts of tarot decks. While each deck differs slightly in design and outlook, most are based on the 78-card Rider-Waite deck, initially available in 1909 and mass-produced in the U.S. throughout the 20th century. (This is the one you likely see in your mind’s eye when envisioning tarot cards.)
Like the Rider-Waite, most modern tarot decks include a major arcana (trump cards like The Fool, The Magician, Death, etc.), and a minor arcana comprised of four suits (such as pentacles, wands, swords, cups) of numbered cards. Each trump card, each suit, each number, has its own meaning, and Scott-Jones will spend the first three classes explaining them. The fourth week is reserved for the court cards, which can be a bit more difficult to read because their specificity offers up a lot of room for interpretation, and that can be intimidating for a beginning reader.
When individual cards are pulled together in a reading, they take on new meaning, and learning to decipher the combination of cards that comes up in each unique reading takes not just the knowledge Scott-Jones hopes to impart, but time, practice, and courage.
“You need to be open to ingesting the information, and you have to be brave enough to share the insights” gathered from the cards, she says, and that’s especially challenging when the cards are telling you something you don’t want to hear. “The cards are there to tell you what you need to know.”
“It’s not magic. There is no right or wrong. There is no good or bad. It is what it is. It’s a tool to use to navigate your life.”
“If a reader is doing it right, it should feel like a therapy session,” says Scott-Jones, who emphasizes that interpreting cards is always a very personal thing, and folks must learn to read for themselves before reading for others. “It should feel like you’re getting some sort of insight into who you are, who you want to be.”
Diarrhea Planet got rowdy at The Southern in April 2015. Photo by Tom Daly
Remember live music? Us, too.
There’s reason to be extra grateful for recorded music right now (and for all the artists streaming sets into our living rooms), but it’s not the same as packing into a whatever-sized room with a bunch of other people to hear some tunes played just for you. Sweating, swaying, swooning, swirling, swilling a beverage while the band plays (we better not catch you talking)…it’s an experience that’s on hold during social distancing. It’s just too risky.
We can’t convene in our favorite venues right now, and won’t for a while still, but we sure can wax poetic about when we could. Some pretty rad bands have played some pretty rad shows in Charlottesville, and local folks have these stories to prove it (and others, like City Councilor Sena Magill, have the cool, hard proof: outrageous memorabilia).
Scroll down for an update on local venues.
What’s your favorite show memory? Tell us in the comments.
Diarrhea Planet
The Southern Café & Music Hall, April 2015
When Diarrhea Planet (RIP) was on, no band mixed respect for the grandeur of rock with tongue-in-cheek jibes at the ridiculousness of “maximum rock ‘n’ roll” like they did. —Charlie Sallwasser
Toots and the Maytals
Starr Hill, early 1990s
Starr Hill was a 400 [-person capacity] club on West Main. There were maybe 600 people in attendance and, as Toots found out when he held his mike out to urge people to sing along, everybody there knew every single word to every song they played. I went downstairs for a drink and the floor was literally moving up and down eight or nine inches in each direction. It was his A-list band—the guys he records with—and they were so stoked that the crowd really knew the material. —Charlie Pastorfield
Against Me!
Champion Brewing Company, October 2016
Lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out in a Trump mask to sing “Baby, I’m an Anarchist.” —Nolan Stout
My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr.
Trax, February 1992
It was “immersive” and that’s an understatement. MBV was feel-it-in-your-spine loud and I am convinced that most of my current high-frequency hearing loss can be traced to that show. Then they turned on the strobe light and left it on for the duration of “To Here Knows When,” which felt like an hour [ed. note: the recorded version is 5:32]. The crowd, the bone-rattling, the sound, the blinding light all simultaneously induced euphoria and claustrophobia. It was honestly the greatest show of my life. I don’t remember the Dinosaur Jr. set at all. —Mike Furlough
A Tribute to Roland Wiggins
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, September 2019
Hands down, the Roland Wiggins tribute. I had to watch it on Facebook because I was out of town doing a gig, but the surprise performances from his best friend made my heart smile. Super close second fave was [soul-rock musician and theologian] Rev. Sekou at The Festy [2019]. Lawd hammercy…. —Richelle Claiborne
Neutral Milk Hotel
Tokyo Rose, March 1998
Won’t do the Pud (too many to count), so I’ll say [this one]. I bartended downstairs that night; they made everyone very, very, very happy and very hopeful. They stayed at our house. I went to work and then they JAMMED AND STEVE RICHMOND DIDN’T RECORD IT (forgave). —Tyler Magill
Jonathan Richman
The Southern Café & Music Hall, November 2015
Because every Jonathan Richman show is better than every show without Jonathan Richman. #RoadRunner —Siva Vaidhyanathan
Funk and soul act Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings played multiple memorable shows in town before Jones passed away from pancreatic cancer in November 2016. Photo by Jack Looney
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
Satellite Ballroom,
February 2006
The horns! Her voice! The dancing! The being young! —Nell Boeschenstein
Trey Anastasio Band
The Jefferson Theater, February 2010
It was insane. Working with a hero. They rehearsed in the venue the day before, which was a real treat. Basically a private show. We loaded in during a blizzard. Tom Daly snapped one of my all-time favorite photos of me during the show. I was 24 years old and like a kid in a candy shop. —Warren Parker
Muddy Waters
The West Virginian (the basement of The Virginian), 1976
Astonishing electric blues. I wrote a review of the show for the Tandem Evergreen, and got into an argument with the editor, who sniffed that “all the songs were in E.” —Hawkins Dale
Lightning Bolt/ Forcefield
The Pudhaus, 2001
One of the sweatiest, most energetic, and righteous shows I have ever experienced. A room so full that the floor bounced but just an ecstatic feeling. Felt like the building levitated. —Davis Salisbury
The Flaming Lips at The Sprint Pavilion. Photo by Tristan Williams
The Flaming Lips
The Sprint Pavilion, August 2019
Absolute and utter magic. The music. The energy of the crowd. The giant balloons and inflatable robot. I am not the same person I was before. —Emily Cain
University School
The Bridge PAI, March 2017
University School (Peter Bussigel and Travis Thatcher) played a live techno set, did the whole thing wearing crazy animal masks and making hot dogs for everyone while they played. They even had veggie dogs for the vegetarians out there, and everyone was eating and having a great time. Not saying the concert convinced me to move here, but it definitely helped. —Kittie Cooper
Sleater-Kinney
Tokyo Rose, April 1996
I bet a few people mention this one—for those who saw it, many probably remember it as one of the peak music moments of their lives, including me. It was a benefit for the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, right after the album Call the Doctor came out. Curious Digit opened—in honor of the riot grrrl occasion they did Bikini Kill’s “Carnival.” Sleater-Kinney were so glorious, my friend Jeanine (who MC’d the show, repping both SARA and WTJU) threw her bra up onstage, where it landed on Corin’s microphone. She left it dangling there the rest of the show. —Rob Sheffield
Public Enemy
Trax, early 1990s
I was a disaffected undergrad at UVA in the early ’90s when a friend told me Public Enemy was coming to Charlottesville. Why, to burn it down? Nope, to play a show, at Trax. I honestly couldn’t believe it; all I knew about Trax was that Dave Mathews played there all the time. This, was anti-Dave. But it was true, and we got tickets as soon as they became available.
The night of the show we walked over from our place with a Dr. Pepper bottle filled 50/50 with whiskey. Typical undergraduate idiots, not challenging any stereotypes. It was a packed house and the crowd was pretty…energetic? There was a sense that something crazy was about to happen but it was unclear what form it would take: a wild party, maybe a riot. Public Enemy didn’t show for a long time, and the crowd was getting more and more agitated. My friend went to sit down in the back, the whiskey and Dr. Pepper weren’t mixing well.
There was a palpable sense of relief when the announcement was made that PE was in the building and they started setting up. Almost immediately there was another delay, Terminator X’s turntables were messed up somehow getting them onto the stage. Not great; things really started leaning towards riot. There was some pushing, scuffling, a lot of impolite shouting. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the hell out of there when everyone heard the unmistakable sound of Flav shouting, “Yo, Chuck!,” and it was on. Every single person was immediately through the roof. What followed was a two-hour-long sonic assault; angry, political, righteous, and absolutely everything I’d hoped for. Maybe this Charlottesville thing was going to work out after all. When it was all over, I went to find my friend, still passed out sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. I had to wake him up, and he groggily asked what he had missed. Everything.
I learned later that night that another friend had his face slashed somewhere in the pushing and shoving. He stayed for the show and got quite a few stitches later. We all agreed it was worth it, and that he had likely done something to deserve it. —Steve Hoover
Taj Mahal
Trax, late 1980s/early 1990s
He told the audience they were the rudest mofos he’d ever seen and he left the stage. He was right. Maybe not my favorite memory, but one of the more stand-out memories. —Jamie Dyer
Ratatat
The Jefferson Theater, October 2010
Not counting EDM shows, Charlottesville crowds are typically on the more reserved side, but something was in the air that night. It was packed and yet I was able to move freely from bar to stage, dancing from person to person on my way. It felt more like a party where everyone was a friend and Ratatat were the house band. On multiple occasions I’ve recounted the show years later to someone and they’ll light up and say, “I was at that show!” They always agree it was a special one. —Jonathan Teeter
Fugazi
Trax, 1993
I still have the flier from that show. Trax became known as the beginnings of DMB, but they had a pretty stellar run of booking amazing indie bands in the late ’80s and ’90s—Ramones, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Pavement, Replacements, Smithereens, Jesus and Mary Chain, Bob Mould, Superchunk…Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine on the same bill. —Rich Tarbell
Courtesy of Rich Tarbell
Nada Surf and Rogue Wave
Starr Hill, 2006
Used…someone else’s ID…and had my first craft beer at a show. One of my favorite memories. —Allison Kirkner
Memorial Gym, UVA, 1990s
All the dope shows at Mem Gym. Jane’s Addiction…or rap shows put on by UVA in the ’90s. All of James McNew’s Yo La Tengo shows were good, too. —DJ Rob A
Levon Helm
The Paramount Theater, 2008
With an amazing band in tow, from the opening romp of “Ophelia” onward, Levon was the happiest guy in the room and it just trickled down. We were all fortunate to have him in good voice that night. —Michael Clem
Gogol Bordello
Live Arts, 2004
The downstairs stage still had scaffolding and platforms up from whatever production, and the band kept pulling people out of the audience until it felt like there were more people on stage than off it. —Phil “dogfuck” Green
Nik Turner
Champion Brewing Company, October 2017
Nik Turner [of Hawkwind], free, outside, bit o’ rain, C’ville…Skulls split from grinning so much. A perfect storm in every way, and to be there with a novitiate who was gobbling it up like candy made it that much better for me. And it was with Hedersleben to boot. —Kevin McFadin
Phoenix
The Sprint Pavilion, September 2013
I had lived in Charlottesville from 1999-2002 as a recent college grad. I moved back in 2013, driving from Brooklyn in a U-Haul truck with a 2-year-old and a spouse who had never lived here before. It was very hot out, we were in debt, we missed our friends, and our stuff was in boxes in a too-small apartment. We went out for a walk on the Downtown Mall and saw a poster for Phoenix, playing at the Pavilion that night. I asked some people sitting on a bench “Is that Phoenix, the band from France?” They shrugged yes, and a few hours later I drifted over to the Ninth St. bridge, where I stood and watched. (I had no money for admission, and spouse and child were tired and stayed home.) The band played a set of songs I had gotten to know and love in my old home, and from where I stood I saw a sea of smiling faces. On their way offstage the band gave an amused wave to the bridge crowd, and I walked back to the apartment feeling for the first time in a while that it would be possible to make a life here work. —Jake Mooney
Fugazi
Trax, April 1993
-and-
Sleater-Kinney
Tokyo Rose, April 1996
I chose two, which occurred three years and one day apart. Fugazi: The first time I had ever seen them outside of D.C. Brilliant, dynamic and WAY too loud. Turns out it was the first date of a new PA, which left many a fan stone-deaf for a few days. This can be found as part of the Fugazi Live Series. The middle section, tracks 13-21, I would put up against any band, anywhere, ever. Then Sleater-Kinney: One of the very few times I have ever said to a band, “One year from now, you guys are gonna be huge.” I think that creeped out Carrie Brownstein (though I was right). Emotionally overwhelming set, even with the pre- Janet Weiss drummer. —Joe Gross
The Spinners
University Hall
I call this the “phantom concert” because even though I have a pretty reliable memory, I have not been able to find any evidence on Al Gore’s interwebs that this concert happened. But…I keep telling myself that I know it did, because I was there. Just like I “remember” seeing Ike and Tina Turner here in Charlottesville at 2, I’m pretty sure I saw The Spinners at University Hall at 6. Now, there is a record of The Spinners hitting the same stage in 1981, and at that time the two biggest memories from the show I believed I was at wouldn’t have happened:
A very nice man in front of my family volunteered to put me on his shoulders so that the little 6-year-old me could see (in 1981 I was 11 and almost six feet tall).
There was an opener at the show and they played “Easy” by The Commodores, which was a big hit at the time, but 6-year-old me was confused because that wasn’t The Commodores on stage. In 1981, Lionel Richie would be just about out of The Commodores camp so no opener would have played “Easy” to such a rousing reception.
What I “remember” of The Spinners was awesome. I kept saying to my 6-year-old self, “I’ve seen those guys on TV.”
—Ivan Orr
Southern Culture on the Skids
Gravity Lounge, November 2008
I’ve seen SCOTS a few times, but that was by far the best of the shows—long set list, really intimate environment, superb energy level. —Jeff Uphoff
Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires
The Jefferson Theater, May 2014
That month, everything was technicolor. I’d been dumped a few weeks prior and mourned what was really nothing, for too long. The day was warm, the beer was cold, my cat-eye liner was sharp, and my black-and-blush-and-neon-green vintage dress made no sense and perfect sense. (“If you look good, you feel good?”) The band lived up to its name, keeping perfect step while Charles grinned and sang and wailed and wept and spun and sweated buckets in his custom stage suit. Music. What crowd? Music. What ex-boyfriend? Music, music, music. Time to move on. Thank goodness for soul. —Erin O’Hare
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
The Jefferson Theater, December 2009
It was my birthday, and I told her so in line after the (absolutely incredible!) performance while she signed a record. She stopped the line and serenaded me with the most beautiful and simple “Happy Birthday” rendition, and I was never the same. Maybe it was a combination of the venue or her verve or this sense that time stood still, but it became the benchmark against which I’ve measured performances—did it feel like it was just for me? My pantheon of performances have done exactly that. —Adrienne Oliver
“Oh there are so many.”
Oh there are so many. Gwar at Trax, had to be early ‘90s…they ended up graffiting a jacket I had graffitied in art class (I still have it). Jane’s Addiction at Mem Gym, had to be ’90 or ’91. Of course, the Tokyo times with The Pitts, The Eldelry, The Councilors, Hillbilly Werewolf. Dread Zeppelin, they were so much fun. Also going to hear The Band and others at Van Riper’s [Lake Music Festival] in the late ‘80s. The Black Crowes, before they really made it, at Trax. —Sena Magill
Detail of Sena Magill’s GWAR jacket. Photo courtesy of Sena Magill
Ben Folds
The Jefferson Theater, 2012? 2011?
He played Chatroulette and it was the funniest, most engaging show I’ve ever seen. So many people I knew were there, it was practically a party. —Marijean Oldham
The Magic Numbers
Starr Hill, 2006
There are three factors that make up the most memorable kind of concert: One, an intimate venue, two, the surprise factor—going to see a band you know little to nothing about and having your socks knocked off, and three, the magical band-audience feedback loop that manifests when you have a band that has lightning in a bottle, but is too green to know it yet— but the audience understands, and you get to watch the band’s wildest dreams come true in real time. The Magic Numbers gave me all three on a Tuesday night. I am a sucker for a bit of indie-pop perfection, and I heard their single “Love Me Like You” on the radio on my way to work, followed by the announcement that they would be at Starr Hill that night. I immediately changed my plans and it was one of the best concert decisions I’ve ever made. —Miranda Watson
Dave Matthews Band
Scott Stadium, 2001
The stadium had just been renovated and DMB played with Neil Young. I worked for the stadium event staff and got field passes. Also got to kick field goals with Boyd Tinsley during sound check the day before. —David Morris
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Jefferson Theater, 2015
They have been a favorite band since I was a senior in high school in 2003, and I couldn’t believe I actually got the chance to hear them live since they broke up in 1999 and I never thought they’d get back together. It was a school night, and I was beyond stressed from finals and job searching, but for two hours I forgot all of that and was completely enthralled. —Caroline Heylman
Dump/Girl Choir/Sloppy Heads
Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, August 2011
Hats off to Jacob Wolf for booking this show and WJTU for presenting it, but it’s a very special night for me since I put the pieces in motion to make it happen. We got Brooklyn jammers Sloppy Heads and Dump (aka James McNew from Yo La Tengo) from NYC, with Charlottesville’s own mod enthusiasts Girl Choir in between —a Brooklyn/Charlottesville/Brooklyn via Charlottesville sandwich. Tons of great folks came from all over to see a very rare non-NYC set by Dump, which he played with his partner Amy. They covered all the bases and provided a nice mellow-ish counterpoint to the Heads’ shambolic choogling and Girl Choir’s frenetic anthemic. It was quite the magical evening for both music and human interaction. —Dominic DeVito
George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars
Trax, February 1993
The P-Funk legend was well into his 50s, but this cosmic slop raged on into the wee hours—I have never seen such a marathon with such relentless energy. George just gave up the funk for hour after hour, until every pair of hips was sore, except his. After four hours or so, I finally had to admit defeat and drag my weary bones home—but George and crew were still going strong onstage. To this day I still don’t know how much longer the show went on. An inspiration to us all. —Rob Sheffield
Show stopper
When will live music come back?
Charlottesville is really feeling the void left by the lack of live music, and Danny Shea’s got a theory as to why.
Ours is “a remarkable town in regards to support and appetite for live music. We have the luxury of having so much live music per capita, so I think [its absence] is felt more so than in other places,” says Shea, who’s booked music in town for over a decade and currently handles booking, promotion and venue management for The Jefferson Theater and the Southern Café & Music Hall, both owned by Red Light Management.
Local venues have been dark since the second weekend in March, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Everyone is eager to know when we’ll be able to gather again, but the reality is that nobody—not even venue operations folks like Shea—know the date. Though restaurants with outdoor seating will be allowed to reopen with restrictions on Friday, May 15, entertainment venues, including concert halls, must remain closed. And even when they are allowed to open, it may take a while for things to return to normal.
Emily Morrison, executive director of The Front Porch, a nonprofit music school and venue online, says she probably won’t feel comfortable holding classes and performances in the building until 2021 (they’re all online for now). When she does open, Morrison says she won’t fill the space to its 100-person capacity for a while. “If everybody rushes toward each other this summer as restrictions ease in the state, I’m worried we’ll just have this terrible spike, even worse than the one we’ve had in the spring,” she says.
Jeyon Falsini of local booking and management company Magnus Music shares that worry. Falsini books for a number of restaurant-bars in town, including The Whiskey Jar, Moe’s BBQ, Rapture, and Holly’s Diner, and he says that all of these venues will focus on food and drink sales before hosting live music. These spots typically don’t charge a cover, so musicians are paid from the register and/or a tip jar. “You can only have music if the place is packed, to justify paying out of the register,” says Falsini, who, unable to collect booking fees, is currently on unemployment.
And what would shows even be like? Will touring bands want to pile into their vans (even before the pandemic, touring wasn’t the most hygienic thing) riding from city to city where they might be exposed to the virus, and in turn expose their audiences? Will audiences want to go stand in a room with a band that’s been in 10 cities in two weeks? Will fans pay more for a ticket to offset lower capacities? If the venue marks off safe social distancing spaces on the floor with tape, will attendees obey them (especially after a few beers)? Who would enforce mask rules? Can people be trusted to properly wash their hands in the bathrooms?
With safety measures in place, a show just won’t feel the same, says Shea. “The idea of social distancing at a rock show is impossible. It would be so awkward. …Can you imagine being the band on stage? There’d be no energy created at all.”
With so many questions about how to balance entertainment with public health concerns, “we’re just a little bit on our own…and it feels a little scary,” says Morrison.
Shea expects some aspects of what venues have developed—like expertly produced concert streams—will stick with us once the pandemic’s over. “You can’t trick yourself into old ways of pursuing this stuff,” he says. And while he is unsure of whether scheduled shows will actually happen this summer, he’s certain that Charlottesville’s appetite for them will remain.
“‘This Familiar Space’ is two years in the making, and the dozens of works that comprise the show (including this collage) were made by artists here in Charlottesville and in Besançon, France, one of Charlottesville’s Sister Cities. Image courtesy of Stacey Evans
One of the first assignments Stacey Evans gives her photography class is to visit the same place at different times throughout the day, a few days in a row. She tasks her PVCC students with noticing the light, how it’s different minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. If Monday’s morning light is soft, Tuesday’s might be bright, and Wednesday’s might be grayed by rain.
It’s a practical lesson for an art that relies on light not just for composition but for mood, for atmosphere, for meaning. It’s also a rather practical (and sometimes difficult) lesson for life: Change is constant.
Change is also a major theme in Evans’ own photography. She ruminated on it in “Ways of Seeing,” a series of collages from photos shot through train car windows and exhibited at Second Street Gallery in April 2017. It’s present again in Evans’ current SSG exhibition, “This Familiar Space/Cet Espace Familier,” which opened online last week.
“‘This Familiar Space’ is two years in the making, and the dozens of works that comprise the show were made by artists here in Charlottesville and in Besançon, France, one of Charlottesville’s sister cities.
Evans served as artist, producer, and curator for the show, which is divided into four unique, but related, groups of works. Evans planned to mount it on the walls of SSG’s Dové Gallery, until the space closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and she had to envision and execute it for the web.
One of the photos in the “Daily Muse” series. Photo by Stacey Evans
The first segment, “Daily Muse,” is a series of 11 photographs of the same rooftop view in Besançon, taken by Evans on a 2018 Sister Cities Commission trip. Capturing this view from her hotel room became a routine for Evans on the trip, and though the visual perspective is technically the same, none of the photos are. The sky differs, sometimes drastically and sometimes subtly, from image to image, affecting the colors of the building below, the shadows, and the overall tone of the photographs. In the bottom center space of the grid, Evans has written, “This too shall pass,” putting to words what the eyes and the mind have already acknowledged, consciously or not.
Evans expects the text might resonate deeply with viewers right now, as we’re all eager for the pandemic to pass. But, she says, we’re not always so open to change: We like our routines, too. And the set of photographs presented in “Daily Muse” shows how routine and change are not necessarily opposite, but complementary, co-existent. It’s about “understanding that things aren’t permanent. Change does happen, and [you have to be] okay with change, because if you get stuck in your ways, I don’t see that as a good thing,” either.
Another image from “Daily Muse.” Photo by Stacey Evans
Evans’ role shifts a bit in “Look to See.” She made photographs in both Charlottesville and Besançon, and students altered them into collages. She had Charlottesville High School students start a batch, then brought them to Besançon for Lycée Louis Pasteur students to finish; the Louis Pasteur kids started a new set of collages that Evans brought back to Charlottesville to be completed at CHS.
Evans also served in a production role for the third piece, “The Ones We Can Still Save,” a sculpture and video collaboration between Charlottesville-based artist Nina Frances Burke and Besançon-based artist Gabriel Hopson. Each artist gave Evans a small package of materials (the one requirement: that it fit in Evans’ suitcase) for the other to use. Hopson, who is diabetic, sent Burke an insulin pen full of the life-saving medication, something he can easily access (and even spare) thanks to French health care, something that is difficult, sometimes impossible, for people to access in the U.S. health care system. The pen was full but unusable, and Burke embedded it, inaccessible, in a nest-like sculpture. Together with Hopson’s video (we won’t give away all the details), it’s a comment on the differences between the American and French health care systems.
One component of “The Ones We Can Still Save,” a collaboration between Charlottesville artist Nina Frances Burke and Besancon artist Gabriel Hopson. Image courtesy the artists
The fourth piece, “The Light Between,” is a video collage Evans made of both moving and still footage of daily life in Besançon and Charlottesville. It’s full of marked differences (architecture, language) and similarities (going to work, dining al fresco) among life in both places. One of Evans’ favorite juxtapositions is around the 1:40 mark—note the power lines in Charlottesville, and the absence of them, in Besançon.
Across all of the works in “This Familiar Space/Cet Espace Familier” there’s evidence of connection of people across time and space. “That’s always been in the show,” says Evans, though the theme might project a bit more right now.
Recognizing the ways in which we’re all connected—and how our own decisions can affect others—is important, says Evans, who considers herself “a global citizen first and an American second.” That realization can complicate our constant internal, highly personal, negotiation between change and routine, already a delicate balance to strike. For Evans, the secret to staying grounded is looking up, thinking about the ever-shifting sky, and “the umbrella that connects us all,” she says.
