Author: Sarah Lawson

Sarah has lived in Charlottesville since 2002 - long enough to consider herself a local. In addition to graduating from UVa and co-founding The Bridge Film Series, she has worn a variety of hats including book designer, documentary film curator, animal caretaker, and popcorn maker. The opinions here are completely her own and unassociated with her work at Piedmont Council for the Arts (PCA). Sarah's interests include public art, experimental films, travel, and design.

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Arts

Teacher and artist Ryan Trott loosens up the creative process

Simultaneously an artist and a teacher, Ryan Trott reminds us all that art can’t be contained in a classroom but should be shared throughout our city. Photo credit: Amanda Finn

The day after Labor Day, Ryan Trott will return to the classrooms and hallways where he teaches art to local elementary school students. Under his guidance, they’ll learn about masterworks and fine art techniques; he’ll lead them in exercises to spur imagination and develop creativity. And when asked how he spent his summer vacation, Trott will give them a glimpse into what it means to live life as an artist.

Whether snapping shots of colorful, abstract patterns to post to Instagram, recording a song and editing a music video, or making a drawing over a cup of coffee, Trott is an artist. He structures life to allow him to keep one foot in the creation of aesthetically engaging work and the other foot in the cultivation of artistic experimentation and playfulness. Which is to say, he makes great art and inspires other people to want to make great art.

With an undergraduate background in visual art and music production, Trott lived as a working artist and musician in New York City before pursuing his Master’s in Art Education at the City College of New York. “I realized I was really looking for a creatively fulfilling (semi-traditional) career,” he said. “I really connect to the young creative spirit and love working with children.” 

Landing in central Virginia post-graduation, Trott took a job at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. Reflecting on the time spent working with executive director Matthew Slaats, Trott said, “He has so much faith in making realistic positive change in a community and using the arts in an open way.” Trott is also skilled at this type of inclusivity, encouraging others to participate in art, whether they’re his students, friends, or complete strangers.

Though The Bridge job came to an end when he was offered his current teaching position, Trott remains an active presence at the local arts nonprofit and recently started a new program there, titled Free Draw. Consider it a monthly invitation to let your creative quirks hang out while chatting with other doodlers, emerging artists, and folks who just like the smell of colored pencils.

“Free Draw came about as a way to keep an instructional art idea going in a more loose, open environment, with adult artists,” said Trott. “It connects to the idea that anyone can create art; the activities that we do are open and creatively encouraging and supportive.” The next Free Draw takes place on Thursday, August 28 at 7pm.

At the first Free Draw in July, the space was filled with tables, scrap paper and sketchbooks, and an array of crayons, markers, and pencils. A group of curious participants filled the room and took part in Trott’s creative ice breakers and collaborative drawing projects. “As an artist, I am very interested in supporting and encouraging the art of others as well as my own work,” said Trott. “I love setting up projects and seeing what people come up with. It is really just as much fun for me to write projects as it is to draw or paint right now.” Artistic talent an afterthought, the focus of Free Draw is on the creation of a welcoming and supportive environment for people to make art. 

Trott is also part of the second annual Community Supported Art (CSA) program through The Bridge. Modeled on farm-to-table CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), the program provides subscribers with limited-edition works from each of the selected artists—six works of art in total—plus a chance to meet the artists.

For his part, Trott will design a limited-edition activity book with creative projects for adults or children to make with easy-to-find materials. One of Trott’s drawings will accompany each activity and he hopes the book will inspire others to create art. “The project connects to my belief that anyone can make art (and be an artist) in their daily life, and that the creative spirit is something that everyone should make an effort to exercise.”

In addition to Trott, the featured artists in this year’s CSA are Zoe Cohen, Warren Craghead, Lily Erb, Joy Meyer, and Michael Powell. Subscriptions include handmade mugs crafted by Cohen, among other works. Craghead is a mixed media artist who will assemble a book of drawings related to Charlottesville walking paths and The Bridge’s upcoming Walk the City project. Drawing on her experience as a printmaker and sculptor, Erb will produce steel sculptures exploring natural forms. An abstract painter, Meyer will produce paper-based paintings with embroidered accents. Powell is a digital artist and sculptor who will incorporate these skills in the creation of figurative models from digitally manipulated images.

Thirty CSA subscriptions will be available beginning September 1 at $400 each. The fee supports The Bridge and provides participating artists with a stipend to cover time and materials and provides a rare opportunity for the micro-financing of limited-edition artwork by local artists.

As the CSA launches and his Free Draw program takes off, Ryan Trott remains dedicated to his goal for the new school year, saying that “I want to keep pushing things further into interesting territory, showing the students that art is really all around us and can affect every part of life.”

What was the last art project you made? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

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Author Sheri Reynolds lets her characters work it out

Drawing on experience, Sheri Reynolds brings Southern culture to life on the pages of her novels. Publicity photo.

As C’ville residents, we often hear, “Charlottesville has changed so much since I moved here.” Some see this as a positive, others less so. Either way (and regardless of how long you’ve lived here) it’s likely that we all have indeed witnessed some evolution.

Recent development has obviously changed the landscape of familiar areas including McIntire Park and West Main Street. On top of that, the constant ebb and flow of the University community ensures that a migratory pattern is carved lightly into the bricks and mortar of daily life. Every few years, the collective cry goes up: “Everyone is moving away!” To be fair, it’s often true that students move away when they complete their degree. But this constant development and turnover pushes us, as a city, to embrace change and find value in the new. It allows Charlottesville to be, at once, a small college town in the South and something more.

This “something more” is frequently what we write about here, and it’s important to remember that Charlottesville has had to evolve significantly to achieve this state of existence. Local photographer Stacey Evans demonstrated this evolution in her “Charlottesville Then & Now” project with UVA Magazine. And with his prolific collection of historic photographs, Ed Roseberry reminds us of what Charlottesville used to be. There are countless other local examples, and these stories of growth are true in most cities.

An upcoming event at local nonprofit WriterHouse seeks to explore how this physical evolution can be an important element for writers to use in their own lives and in the creation of characters on the page. Entitled “Growing Up on the Page: How Characters and Their Writers Evolve,” the event features Virginia-based author Sheri Reynolds interviewed by Susan Gregg Gilmore. Both are women writers from the South. Together, they provide a forum to learn more about the strategies for taking risks in writing and the merits of imbuing characters with the freedom to evolve and grow.

As the author of six novels (including The Rapture of Canaan, which was featured in Oprah’s Book Club), Sheri Reynolds has a knack for fleshing out characters from the South. She admitted that “the places I live find their ways into the landscapes of my novels. My early ones were located in South Carolina, and my most recent novels have taken place on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.” When describing Southern characters, there’s always the temptation to pile on cultural stereotypes just as you would pile real whipped cream on a fresh slice of pecan pie or throw empty Budweiser cans into your pickup truck. Ahem.

Reynolds tactfully avoids these clichés and creates characters that breathe from within the pages. Whether it’s Tessa getting abandoned by her mom in the The Firefly Cloak, a stowaway named Hellcat in The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb, or the scalding burns rained down on Finch in A Gracious Plenty, the sundry trials are but challenges to overcome, pushing characters to grow. By placing unexpected and challenging circumstances in the paths of her characters, Reynolds’ storytelling feels like we’re experiencing the events as they happen in real time.

Some writers create a sense of predetermination in their work: even if you don’t know where it’s going, it feels like the writer is leading you down a path that he or she planned out from page one. Instead, Reynolds’ writing gives the reader the impression that she allowed characters to determine their own actions as each book progressed. She takes the time (sometimes lots of time) to create characters who are dense and realistic, and then has respect enough for the strengths of these people to let them guide the action. 

When speaking about the next book she’s working on, Reynolds related, “I only have 50 pages of notes and sketchy scenes, so it will be years before this one is finished. The entire story takes place between the time she topples and the time the ambulance gets there (if it ever arrives—I’m not sure yet if it comes).” If it ever arrives. Characters will be pushed in unknown ways and make unpredictable decisions before that part of the narrative, so Reynolds herself is still tracking the course of the next story she’s trying to tell. A lot of writers employ similar methods of allowing the story to evolve and take its own course rather than setting out with an end goal in sight. Reynolds does this in a unique way that gives a concerted push for characters to grow over the course of a book, evolving the narrative as they do so.

In the same way that she lets her characters react to and push the narrative in unexpected directions, she also takes risks in her work and allows it to adapt to outside forces. Discussing her draft of Orabelle’s Wheelbarrow, Reynolds remembered that, “when I turned it in, my editor said it was ‘too theatrical’ for fiction. When I got over the despair of having a big book rejected, I decided to actually use that story to learn to write a play.” The resulting work won Reynolds the Women’s Playwrights’ Initiative playwriting competition in 2005. Until then, she’d never written a single play. This adaptive quality pushes Reynolds, as a writer, to embrace change and find value in taking risks. It allows her to be, at once, a writer with deep roots in the South and something more.

Off the page, she also finds ways to push herself and evolve her craft. With dual careers as a writer and creative writing professor at Old Dominion University, Reynolds said that “the two feel mostly like separate worlds. But certainly they influence one another. In classes, I find ways to articulate what I do intuitively in my writing.” It is this experience, intuition, and wisdom that Reynolds will bring to WriterHouse on August 15.

Which writers or books have influenced you to change?

Tell us about it at www.c-ville.com.

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Puppets for grown ups and Shakespeare on the move

Heritage Theater Festival’s production of Avenue Q tackles racism, political correctness, homosexuality, and other social issues through candid humor and puppets. Publicity photo

As the month of August arrives, everything slows down a bit. Outside, we drown in the humid air, dense as an ocean wave pushing against flesh. There’s little to do but laze away in air-conditioning or spend hours floating in the cool waters of a swimming pool. It’s the time of year when I used to haunt the movie theater, its dark and frigid stadia never more appealing. This summer though, two local theater productions provide even better options. Offerings by both the Heritage Theatre Festival and the Hamner Theater offer laugh-filled escapes from the heat.

The Heritage Theatre Festival has been an annual highlight of the UVA arts scene since 1974. Every summer, talented directors, actors, and production staff travel to Charlottesville to create a season of plays. Serving as UVA’s professional theatre, Heritage is led by Artistic Director Bob Chapel, who has been with the festival since 1987. In the course of his career, he has produced more than 200 productions, directed more than 120, and acted in countless others across the country. Chapel also notably provided the genesis for UVA’s Arts Dollars program, which allows students to attend local arts events for no cost.

This year, the festival mixes things up a bit with a season full of musicals, slapstick, and farce. Onstage at the Ruth Caplin Theatre, the production of Avenue Q is already a hit. The play brings back director and choreographer Renee Dobson, who has performed in two and directed five Heritage Theatre Festival productions since 2001. This production of Avenue Q features a live band, award-winning script, and plenty of puppets. But don’t think for a moment that it’s kid-friendly.

Rather, Avenue Q is foul-mouthed in a way that’s endearingly honest and entertaining—but certainly only for adults. The play spent years on Broadway and won the rare Tony Triple Crown (Best Musical, Best Score, and Best Book). Based on a book by Jeff Whitty, it’s a coming-of-age story that depicts a recent college graduate’s fervor and frustrations as he moves to New York City and struggles to find meaning or purpose in life. Hilarious, right? Actually, yes. It certainly doesn’t disappoint on the laughs.

But wait, where do the puppets come in? Since the narrative makes no distinction between characters played by humans and those that are puppets, the play requires a suspension of disbelief. Dobson relates that “The show makes you think about what some of your favorite childhood characters might be like when they get older. There is something about puppets that just takes you back to your childhood.” These puppets have sex though, and aren’t afraid to be caught cussing. Described by The New Yorker as a “combination of ‘The Real World’ and ‘Sesame Street,’” Avenue Q is the extra serving of satire that your summer needs. Catch a performance of it a through August 2.

If you’re looking for something a bit more family-friendly, the Hamner Theater Summer Shakespeare Tour returns this year to present a local production of Much Ado About Nothing. In the hopes of bringing the Bard to as many people as possible, the Hamner opted to perform in public parks this year—a change from winery venues in the past two years. On afternoons and evenings in August, you can enjoy free performances of the play in Tonsler, Belmont, and Washington Parks.

A funny and accessible work, Much Ado About Nothing offers a great way to rid children—or reluctant spouses—of Shakespeare fears. The play was written in prose and provides an easy-to-follow narrative. Further, it’s on the more upbeat end of Shakespeare’s spectrum, ending with happy reunions and marriages rather than deaths. There are plenty of eavesdroppers, schemes, and disguises along the way too, mixed with hilarious hijinks aplenty.

Co-directed by mother-daughter team Carol and Boomie Pedersen, this production also asks the audience to suspend disbelief—albeit in a different way than is required by Avenue Q. To maintain the mobility and flexibility required for outdoor, transitory performances, this Much Ado About Nothing set includes little more than a clothesline. It’s a well-conceived accommodation, allowing the play’s narrative to be situated in the front garden of the house where the characters are gathered.

Though Boomie was born and raised in New York City, she’s made her home in Charlottesville since 1995 and co-founded the nonprofit Hamner Theater a decade after that. She currently serves as the theater’s artistic and managing director. The actors are all from the Charlottesville area and local musician Tanya Kae Man will performs original music alongside members of the cast. It’s a homegrown production that provides a great excuse to enjoy a cool summer evening outside.

So, pack a picnic, unfurl a blanket, and let the lightning bugs keep you company during a performance—or two—of Much Ado About Nothing. For info visit www.hamnertheater.com.

Where do you escape the summer heat? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

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Mark Tomasko works to preserve the art of engraving

Researcher Mark Tomasko’s presentation promises to be a veritable treasury of engraving samples including this note on The State Bank of Michigan (circa 1859-1864) produced by American Bank Note Company. Image courtesy of Rare Book School.

I’ll be honest, I was an avid coin collector as a kid, but it was never about the art. The intricacy of the designs on coins or the colors of ink used on bills are often an afterthought.

For me collecting was about rarity. I wanted to be the only person in town with a 1944 steel wheat penny, but the texture of those wheat fronds never much caught my eye. As an adult, I collect bills and coins from every country I visit, mostly for the memories—and the unspoken hope that I’ll return someday with some spare change to get me started on my next adventure.

Mark Tomasko also collects money, but when he looks at a bill his interest is driven by artistry, technique, and historical context. Tomasko is a writer and researcher with a specific interest in bank note engraving. He is also the author of The Feel of Steel: The Art and History of Bank-Note Engraving in the United States. On July 7, as part of the 2014 Rare Book School Summer Lecture Series at UVA, Tomasko will give a talk on the topic.

It’s perhaps simplest to think of a bank note as any form of paper money. However, the engraving process for bank notes has also been used for other items in need of security, such as stock and bond certificates and stamps. Paper securities are rarely used today, though, and U.S. stamps are generally no longer engraved, which really just leaves bank notes as the primary use for this type of engraving.

Tomasko’s interest in bank note engraving was originally piqued by a simple gift. “I collected coins when I was young and then, when I got a little older, I became interested in paper currency, and later my grandmother gave me some shares in the Marmon Motor Car Company, which opened my eyes to the largest format for bank note engraving, stocks and bonds,” he said. Influenced by this, Tomasko’s work concentrates on documenting the individual artists and companies as well as the processes involved.

These processes are primarily intaglio printing and the engraving needed for it. Intaglio printing refers to the technique in which an image is carved into a surface to be printed. This is undertaken with a steel tool, called a burin, used to carve into a steel plate through a process called etching. The surface is covered with and subsequently wiped of ink. A sheet of damp paper is then put on the plate and fed through high-pressure rollers to press the paper against the carved areas, picking up the ink, and thereby creating a raised print. The result is a highly tactile piece of art.

According to Tomasko, “Before the Civil War, almost every bank could issue its own notes, so there was a great variety.” Counterfeiting was a large concern, as it remains today, and engraving and intaglio printing processes were an attempt to combat this and ensure authenticity of value. At that time, close to 2,000 state banks across the country had issued almost 7,000 separate types of bills, making it nearly impossible to detect fakes.

In the recent past, there’s been a decline in the art of engraving. “America was the leader in this art until the mid-20th century,” said Tomasko, and the American Bank Note Company provided bank notes to countries around the world. Technological advancements and global politics have taken a toll. 

Digital design allows for currency that’s faster and cheaper to produce, more detailed and easier to differentiate between denominations, and more effectively able to incorporate features such as 3-D security ribbons, color-shifting inks, and embedded security thread. And all of this leads to paper money that is difficult, but not impossible, to counterfeit.

The traditional skills of an engraver are difficult to master, and take a significant amount of time to create by hand. Tomasko believes that “intaglio will survive on bank notes, but the hand work of picture engraving is the challenge.” The craft has always been taught through apprenticeships, which are time-intensive and rigorous.

Despite the ubiquity of coin collecting as a hobby, bank notes don’t have the same accessibility. Though the term numismatics is frequently used to refer to the study and collection of coins, it applies to all currency, including bank notes. However, even within numismatic groups, bank notes often get short-changed.

It’s a simple endeavor to find an upcoming coin show (the 2014 Charlottesville Coin Show will take place on August 23 at the Elks Lodge) or browse online slideshows of historic coins. It can be difficult, though, to find similar resources for bank notes.

The National Numismatic Collection is part of the Smithsonian Institution and is the world’s largest collection of currency, with more then 1.1 million pieces of paper currency. However, it’s rare that a significant portion of this collection is on public display. The Museum of American Finance in Manhattan is a better bet, with a viewable collection of bank notes and other artifacts related to money and banking in the United States. 

Many bank notes are visually compelling, with a wide assortment of colors and artistry involved. Tomasko’s own collection is extensive and diverse, but aesthetic appeal isn’t always the attraction. “Many people usually find it interesting because it’s related to money,” Tomasko said.

Mark Tomasko’s Rare Book School talk begins at 5:30pm in the auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library on July 7.

What do you collect? Tell us below.

 

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Young filmmaker Sam Gorman returns to Light House as mentor

The music video for the song, “Want Me Close,” was produced in a week and focuses on the concept of “hallucinating from chicken wings,” an idea that came out of a brainstorming session with Dwight Howard Johnson band members. Courtesy of the artist

It’s going to be an exciting summer at Light House Studio. The local youth filmmaking nonprofit’s website redesign is up and running, and they have a new location for their summer workshops while the City Center for Contemporary Arts—also home to Live Arts and Second Street Gallery—undergoes renovations. Inside the studio, a group of Light House students has been working on a series of short videos in partnership with the UVA Department of Neurology to help teens better cope with treatment of neurological disorders such as epilepsy, while other students have been selected for filmmaking awards at festivals around the country.

One of these award-winners is Sam Gorman, who stands out as a filmmaker to watch among Light House students.

Gorman began making films when he was 8 years old, when it was little more than a game he’d play with friends. When others lost interest and moved on to another game, Gorman kept at it, and in eighth grade he began enrolling in hands-on Light House workshops.

Despite taking almost everything offered by Light House, Gorman’s the first to admit that the one that was the toughest sell was narrative filmmaking. Feeling unfulfilled after the first two times he took the class, Gorman almost didn’t take a third round. Then, Light House Program Director Jason Robinson encouraged him to try after he graduated from Nelson County High School. Though some Light House students become filmmaking mentors after graduating high school, Gorman’s August birthday meant that he was still under 18 that summer and only eligible to take classes. He ended up taking the narrative filmmaking class, and out of it came something far greater than he could have imagined—a short film entitled Space Girl.

Working with fellow students Daniel McCrystal, Madeline Hunter, and Si Affron, as well as Robinson and other Light House staff and mentors including Aidan Keith-Hynes, Gorman set out to make a short film for the class. According to Robinson, “Half of them wanted to make a movie about a girl and her grandmother and the other half wanted to do something about outer space…and I said, ‘that’s the same movie.’” The result is Space Girl, a film approximately seven minutes long, with a healthy dose of special effects, outer space adventures, and a surprise ending.

From planning to post-production, Space Girl took two weeks to complete. Primarily told in flashbacks without any voiceover narration, the film shares the story of a grandmother’s outer space adventures, as told to her granddaughter. As for the surprise ending, you’ll just have to watch it yourself.

When student films are completed, they are submitted to film festivals around the world. Space Girl was well-recieved as one of 29 student films from around the country accepted to the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival Future Filmmakers Showcase. The short film was also a finalist for FutureWave in the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival, the William & Mary Global Film Festival, and the Competitive Shorts Program in the Virginia Student Film Festival.

It’s easy to see the influence of one of Gorman’s filmmaker heroes, Joss Whedon, in Space Girl. The special effects and off-kilter humor parallel what you find in Firefly or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, to name a few. More surprisingly, Gorman noted that he’s primarily influenced by Whedon’s “dialogue and self-awareness and how he messes with genre to do something new.”

Related to this is Gorman’s idea of “cardboard sci-fi,” which refers to the genre’s openness to self-deprecating humor, whether it’s purposeful use of cardboard spaceships, stop-motion animation, or a person dressed in a Godzilla costume.

While the spaceships and laser guns in Space Girl are impressive and convincing, Gorman’s other work sometimes takes a more playful approach to digital effects. In 2013, Gorman created an off-the-wall, chicken wing-inspired music video for the local band Dwight Howard Johnson.

In the video, two characters dig into a plate of chicken wings before leaping into a hallucinatory reverie bursting at the seams with chicken wings of all sizes. The purposefully outdated digital effects throughout are amplified by transferring the digital video to VHS in post-production, adding the grainy feeling of something taped off of MTV in the 1990s. One of Gorman’s favorite scenes depicts chicken wings growing out of the two characters’ shoulder blades before they fly away.

The video recently won Best Music Video at the 2014 CineYouth Chicago International Film Festival, which showcases work by filmmakers 21 years old and younger from around the world. It was also a finalist for the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, the Pendragwn Youth Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and the competitive shorts program in the Virginia Student Film Festival.

Gorman has just completed his first year at SUNY Purchase and is returning to Light House this summer to mentor student filmmakers who hope to follow a similar path and share what he’s learned with local youth who are taking part in the numerous summer camp workshops.

“I like to be able to push kids to work on developing character,” Gorman said.

Ironically, his one disappointment is that the only Light House workshop he’s not mentoring this summer is narrative filmmaking. The days when he dreaded a third session of that very workshop are clearly behind him, and the future holds great promise. 

What local films have you seen recently? Tell us in the comments section below.

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Your Friend and Weird Mob turn up the heat at the Tea Bazaar

With critical praise and best list accolades piling up, Taryn Blake Miller is Your Friend when she performs at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Friday. Photo credit: Shawn Brackbill

When the galleries close up after First Friday and you’ve had your fill of early summertime patios, climb the stairs to the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar for some hot live music.

Heat rises, and it tends to feel like summer for 10 months out of the year in the Tea House. This is triply true when people pack in to see a band play. Wooden floors creak with anticipation and sweat drips from one and all.

When the band climbs onstage, the tone and pitch of the evening shift. The thickness of the air lingers, but the room fills with a calm ecstasy. The intimacy of the venue ensures that everyone in the room feels the music deep within their muscles and tendons, rather than ears alone. Time and again, this phenomenon takes place, but some performers are more decidedly suited to it. The touring musician Your Friend is one of them.

Your Friend is the performance name of Lawrence, Kansas resident, Taryn Blake Miller, who recently released her debut EP, Jekyll/Hyde. Recordings of Miller’s songs are dreamlike and minimal, with her guitar and vocals weaving through the drums, keyboards, and bass that provide a meatier momentum to the gentle sounds. Her voice warbles in a way, almost lilting, but is essentially honest, vulnerable, and haunting. The effect is beautiful.

Miller is a self-taught musician who listens and experiments widely in a variety of genres. She moved to Lawrence for its charm as a city and ended up studying linguistics at the University of Kansas. She also plays in a variety of other bands, works in a record store, and is part of the Whatever Forever cassette tape collective and SeedCo Studios, a DIY makerspace.

Your Friend signed to Domino Records in early 2014, and Miller has since experienced an explosion of appreciation for her musical creations. She played at this year’s SXSW festival, opened for Real Estate and other bands that she used to only watch from the audience, and was even listed as one of Spin Magazine’s “5 Best New Artists for April ’14.”

Miller’s live performances are typically more bare bones than the recorded tracks, and this show promises looped vocals and contemplative guitars washing over the June heat. As the ceiling fans whirl overhead, local band Weird Mob will provide a counterpoint with its cheerful pop music sensibilities.

Weird Mob is made up of Charlottesville transplants Dave Gibson on guitar and keyboards, Renée Reighart on bass, Adam Brock on drums, Bryan Hoffa on guitar, and Kris Hough on keyboards. Vocals are provided by everyone except honorary band member Lily, a shy hound dog. Gibson and Reighart are married and formed the band as an outgrowth of their Hibernator Gigs record label and production company. The couple further stretches their creative muscles by producing music videos for a variety of local bands, past and present, including Borrowed Beams of Light, Invisible Hand, and Left & Right.

According to Gibson, “Charlottesville has played a pretty big role in shaping the music of Weird Mob. We actually took kind of a musical hiatus while we were in grad school and living in cities that were either too big [Los Angeles] or too small [Bowling Green] to really feel like we could be part of any music scene. As soon as we moved here in 2007, we knew it was the right time to start something up again.”

Though they’ve played locally often enough that you might already know what they sound like, when asked to complete a Mad Libs challenge about the band, Gibson and Reighart came up with the following: Weird Mob is like a tornado that is flopping wildly around the basement. The band’s music is like a breeze or a thought—sometimes even one that’s bonkers—but certainly not morose. You can expect to hear egregious thuds and see lots of legkicks at the show.

I think you’ll agree that their answers are silly, but with unique phrasing. So too, the music. Weird Mob’s debut album, They’re A Weird Mob, was released in 2013. Its songs are full of synth riffs, smart but playful lyrics, and a well-developed vocabulary of musical stylings. When performing live, the band’s energy and dynamism are contagious. Gibson noted, “We’re preparing to record our first full length album, Wizards, which we hope to release in the fall. This record will be more influenced by the live incarnation of the band, in that it’s a little more jammy than our first EP.”

As the final chords fade to silence, the musicians will pack up their gear as the crowd disperses into the early-June night. Outside, the slight chill serves as a reminder that the dog days of summer are still weeks away and there will be plenty of other ways to revel in—or escape—the heat.

Your Friend performs with Weird Mob on June 6 at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar at 9pm. Admission is $5.

Where do you escape the heat of summer? Tell us in the comments section below.

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Charlottesville’s newest race is a splash for the arts

Between last week’s Discovery Dash, the annual Ten Miler, the Women’s and Men’s Four Milers, and many others, Charlottesville is hardly in need of another running event. However, need and desire are different beasts—and this is a town that’s addicted to the runner’s high.

To satisfy this craving, there’s a new 5K that aims to give participants something a bit more artistic than your average endorphin rush. On May 25, the organizers of the new Ix Art Park will host the first Rainbow Rush 5K.

What makes this race different from all the others? Well, it’s less of a race and more of an opportunity for community members to come together to walk, jog, or run around the neighborhoods surrounding the Ix property, located near the intersection of Second Street SE and Monticello Avenue. Rather than focusing on the typically competitive nature of running events, the Rainbow Rush is designed to unite people in the common cause of supporting further development of the Ix Art Park and the local arts community.

Oh, and anyone who participates will cross the finish line dripping, not with sweat, but with paint.

Modeled after similar events from around the globe, such as The Color Run, Rainbow Rush offers the unique opportunity to combine art and athleticism. Along the race path, participants will be sprayed, doused, splattered, and eventually covered in paints of every color. But don’t worry: it’s all environmentally- and health-conscious tempera paint. The colors will be bright, and everyone is encouraged to wear white clothing so that the vibrant mix of hues will create unique pieces of wearable art for all to enjoy. “It’s like a rainbow threw up on you,” said Brian Wimer, one of the organizers of the Ix Art Park.

If you’ve ever seen photographs from Holi celebrations around the world, you have an idea of what the Rainbow Rush might look like. A traditional Hindu religious festival that’s become popular as a non-religious celebration as well, Holi is a springtime event also known as the festival of colors. Each year, people fill the streets in celebration with the goal of covering one another in bright hues. Revelers and innocent passersby alike are decorated with powdered dyes and doused with colored water erupting from filled balloons or water pistols. Photographs from international media always provide stunning slideshows of celebrations in India, Nepal, and elsewhere, featuring clouds of colorful dust rising to cover crowds already ornately decorated with paints and powders. Holi festivities take place around the vernal equinox in March and have already come and gone this year. Luckily, the Rainbow Rush 5K offers a local equivalent—and there’s still time to take part.

For would-be runners like myself, the Holi aspects of the Rainbow Rush sound like a great distraction from what might otherwise be a grueling feat. For more experienced runners, perhaps it’s just a way to keep things interesting and distinguish from the next race. Similar to the Danger Zombies 5K Run (also organized by Wimer), the Rainbow Rush 5K brings irreverence and creativity to the racecourse.

In a runner’s world, this type of race is known as a “non-traditional running event.” According to Running USA, these events “have attracted a loyal audience of fitness-
minded people who just want to have fun, enjoy the camaraderie of others and focus more on the social, team-building aspect rather than serious competition. The goal of these non-traditional running events is simple: to create a unique, doable experience beyond just running and crossing the finish line. In fact, about 60 percent of The Color Run entrants have never even run a 5K.”

Whether you’ve never run in a past event or are already registered to participate in a variety of races this year, I challenge you to use this statistic as an inspiration. Whiten your whites, Charlottesville, and lace up that old pair of sneakers resting idly in the laundry room. Quicken your pulse, dye your duds, and support a new arts initiative at the Ix.

The official opening of the Ix Art Park coincides with the Rainbow Rush 5K and there will be bands and a picnic following the race. Everyone is welcome to join the festivities and get a peek at the sculptural and interactive artworks installed on the Ix property. Running shoes and paint-streaked clothes are optional.

The Rainbow Rush 5K begins in front of the graffiti wall at the Ix property at 1pm on May 25, and all proceeds benefit the Ix Art Park. For more details go to rainbowrush5k.com.

Where do you run? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

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Arts

Artists-in-residence offer a different kind of mapmaking

Using cartography as an art form connects our personal story to a public one and allows us to visualize our own historical perspective in The Garage’s “Memory Mapping” project. Publicity image.

Recent construction has changed the ways a lot of us navigate Charlottesville. For some, it’s physically changed the mechanism by which we travel: a commuter who used to savor the peaceful walk to work might now ride a bike just to get past all the noise and dust more quickly. Or perhaps it’s only changed the routes we use to get places: “Well, if you get off before the Park Street exit and then take the side streets…” Either way, our mental maps have shifted. 

If you’re like me, though, your personal routes and maps are constantly evolving. The longer I live here, the more landmarks change, places accumulate memories, and side streets reveal themselves. The warehouse with windows full of geraniums is now a successful barbershop. A house that was a point of fascination for me years ago has come to be known as the house of a good friend’s parents now. You get the idea.

As part of the New City Arts artist-in-residence program, Laura Snyder and Mara Sprafkin have been working with guests and staff at The Haven to create hand-drawn mental maps. Thus far, the project has resulted in the creation of approximately 30 maps, each representing one person’s perspective and memories related to Charlottesville.

As a resident or visitor in a place, we all develop these mental maps to give our lives a spatial and geographic reality but also meaning, past and present. To translate these landmarks and routes of our lives into a writing or drawing is to share them with others. Which is basically what any map does, though this type of mental mapping is much less standardized than, say, a Rand McNally atlas shoved into your glove compartment.

Technology has made personalized mapping more public. Whenever you geotag an image or social media post, you’re adding a landmark to your map. Over time, these digital imprints form a holistic map of our individual worlds—favorite coffee shops and bars, where we choose to vacation, and memorable distractions from a routine. However, Snyder and Sprafkin would like you to try a more hands-on approach.

Cartography can show the social, political, and lived realities of a place. Maps can fulfill purposes beyond navigating and accurate representation. A map on a 1976 cover of The New Yorker is a great example. The hand-drawn Saul Steinberg map pokes fun at New Yorkers’ narcissism by equating the length of a single Manhattan block to the rest of the United States. It charts the mental longitude of a population rather than the literal latitude of our nation.

Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti also re-imagined uses for cartography with large, embroidered world maps such as his “Mappa del Mondo.” Produced between 1971-1994, these works focused on the ever-evolving geopolitical nature of nations by filling in shapes of countries with the design of the corresponding national flags at a specific moment in time. These maps don’t describe location, they describe power.

A Charlottesville native, Snyder holds a masters in visual arts from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She has shown her work internationally in galleries, museums, and independent art spaces. A Brooklyn transplant, Sprafkin received her master of fine arts degree from Columbia University and has also exhibited extensively.

Snyder and Sprafkin’s current project grew out of one that Snyder completed in the historic neighborhood of Getsemaní in Cartagena in 2012. As Snyder explains, “I got interested in critical cartography, and was involved in a community mapping project while living in Colombia that allowed me to better grasp the power of maps and the idea of using maps to generate dialogue between community members about shared spaces. The mapmaking was a crucial part of documenting and making visible the memories and history associated with the neighborhood and the deep ties that the inhabitants had to it.”

All of the community memory maps that the artists collect during the Charlottesville project will be displayed in an exhibit at The WVTF and Radio IQ Gallery, with an opening reception on June 6. By presenting the diverse maps together in one place, the artists hope to help create a greater sense of understanding of Charlottesville and the people who are our neighbors.

The public is invited to participate in the mapping project by attending the free community mapping event at The Garage on May 9 from 5-7pm. And don’t worry about honing your cartography skills in advance. Sprafkin assures that “participants only need to show up with their own memories.”

For those interested in the artist residency program hosted by New City Arts and The Haven, new applications will be accepted through June 7. More details are available at www.newcityarts.org.

What’s on your map?

Tell us about it below.

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Arts

A once-in-a-lifetime evening of experimental cinema at the Bridge

Media artist Jason Robinson (pictured) will team with Nathan Halverson for the live performance of an experimental cinema piece in Screensavers 001 at the Bridge on Saturday. Photo: Publicity photo.

It’s been almost a year since Vinegar Hill Theatre closed its doors, and we’re still months away from the promised renaissance of the Violet Crown Cinemas, so it’s hard to know where to watch a movie in Charlottesville these days. I’m talking about a movie that’s neither mainstream nor blockbuster; one that experiments with and expands our definition of movie-going.

Institutions such as the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, Alliance Française, and many others host semi-regular movie screenings. Aspiring film- and video-makers are mentored each day by the staff and volunteers at Light House Studio. The annual Virginia Film Festival and UVA’s student film club, Offscreen, host screenings for students and community members alike. And on and on. So, the question remains: In a city with such a substantial interest in the movies, why is it so hard to see something that’s avant-garde but not art house, perceptual rather than documentary? Let’s call this broad category of films “experimental cinema.” It’s not a perfect term, but you’ll find that that’s fairly appropriate.

Unlike a romantic comedy or an apocalyptic action movie, experimental cinema doesn’t have a seamless storyline that your best friend can predict long before the characters finally kiss or the world implodes. Often it doesn’t even have a story or characters at all and it can be abstract, visually disjointed, non-narrative, and aurally unique. At its best, experimental cinema is an incredibly creative, personal, and engaging experience. The diversity of techniques and styles are unending but can be briefly represented by the films of Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Su Friedrich, and even Charlottesville’s own Kevin Everson, who recently screened his work at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

However, if you want to view and experience experimental cinema, where should you go? Ordinarily, that would mean watching digital versions of some of these films online or making a trip to Richmond, Washington, D.C., or even New York. On April 26th, though, the answer to that question is simply The Bridge PAI. Screensavers 001: A Night of Experimental Audio Visual Performances will take place that evening, featuring collaborative film, video, and audio performances.

Wait, performances? That’s right, for one night only, Charlottesville will be treated to the creation of audio and visual experiments that are improvised and edited as you watch. The performances will feature the collaborative work of three sets of artists: Jason Robinson and Nathan Halverson; Taka Suzuki, Ryan Maguire, and Jon Bellona; and Greg Nachmanovitch and Will Bollinger.

Robinson and Halverson worked together on the film Summertime Flies, earning them the 2011 Screengrab New Media Arts Prize. Both are media artists focusing in sound and video, often incorporating field recordings and live performances into their work. Halverson also teaches media arts at the University of South Carolina while Robinson is the Program Director for Charlottesville’s Light House Studio.

Suzuki is a Charlottesville-based artist who was recently awarded UVA’s Aunspaugh Fellowship to continue his work in film, video, and photography. His work has been screened and exhibited internationally. Maguire and Bellona are both current Ph.D. students in composition and computer technologies at the UVA Center for Computer Music. They recently performed as part of the New Music Ensemble during the McIntire Department of Music’s “A Night of New Music” at Old Cabell Hall.

Nachmanovitch is a student filmmaker at Light House Studio and Bollinger is a Richmond-based musician and composer with roots in Charlottesville. Bollinger was also awarded the best bassist award at the 2011 Music Resource Center Battle of the Bands.

Together, these seven artists will create an immersive experimental cinema experience using feedback loops, found footage and VHS tapes, images and video that are responsive to audio, field recordings and drum machines, and even good old fashioned guitars, microphones, and projectors. It’s literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience since the work will be fleeting and improvisational. Even if you preferred to watch this from the comfort of home, you couldn’t. The shared experience of it, the hum of projectors, and the interaction with the performers is all part of this experimental cinema experience.

If we’re lucky, the Screensavers 001 name hints at more experimental cinema events and performances to come. Perhaps the Bridge will even become a regular venue for experimental cinema, as it was during the Bridge Film Series that concluded more than a year ago. For now, to quote performer Jon Bellona, “You and I have the ability to touch and shape the sounds [and images] around us” and movies don’t get much more experiential than that.

Screensavers 001: A Night of Experimental Audio Visual Performances will take place on April 26 at 8pm at The Bridge PAI. Donations will be accepted but the event is free and open to the public.

Where do you watch movies in Charlottesville? Tell us in the comments section below.

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Arts

Daniela Sandler explores activism in urban reinvention

Despite boasting the wide, tree-lined streets of the Jardim America and Jardim Paulista neighborhoods, São Paulo is also home to countless dilapidated tenement buildings, or cortiços, that have the chance to serve as incubators for creative urban interventions.

For many, Brazil conjures images of rain forests, samba dancers, and favelas. It’s also the host country for this year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. A great deal of news coverage has detailed both the construction that has gone into preparations for these global sporting events as well as resulting public demonstrations demanding stronger social infrastructure for residents. This global attention, combined with Brazil’s mix of rural Amazon villages and densely populated cities like São Paulo, makes the country an interesting laboratory in which to re-imagine public space and examine the role it plays in our political and social interactions.

In response to these issues and their global relevance, the UVA School of Architecture is hosting a public talk on April 14 entitled “Empty Space: Popular Demonstrations and Architecture in São Paulo” with Daniela Sandler, a visiting assistant professor of art history, theory, and criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Sandler studied architecture and urbanism at the University of São Paulo and her work often focuses on space- and place-based social inequalities. Her presentation will address urban activism in Brazil but will also draw on work by philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre and social scholar Michel de Certeau, as well as the Occupy movement in the United States and recent protests in Turkey.

Responsible for some of the most popular explorations of contemporary public space, de Certeau and Lefebvre both emphasize the role of the individual in re-imagining and activating public space. They argue that, whether conscious or unconscious, public space is defined through our navigation of everyday routines, including the routes we take to work or even the way we flip through a weekly newspaper such as this. In de Certeau’s book The Practice of Everyday Life, he proposes that something as simple as walking in the city can be a political action—if we let it.

Opting to take a shortcut through a public park rather than following the sidewalk can be a tactical and political response to institutional definitions of place. Curious? Try walking under rather than over the Belmont Bridge and you’ll get a glimpse of what he means. This subtle deviation can change your experience of the bridge and open up a variety of new ways to re-imagine this point of transition.

São Paulo’s Prestes Maia building is a great example. Long abandoned, by the early 2000s the Prestes Maia building had become one of the world’s largest squats, housing an estimated 2,000 people. In 2003, more than 100 artists led an occupation of the building to transform the space into a living artwork that simultaneously acted to bring public awareness to the plight of its occupants. Following mass evictions by the government in 2006, the building has since remained sealed by cinder blocks.

This site demonstrates the potential that lies in re-imagining a space that was originally defined by an outside institution for a different use. Though impermanent, a new social awareness and community engagement became possible when the everyday experience of Prestes Maia was actively reconsidered. A more general example of this is the popular practice of redeveloping warehouse and manufacturing zones into arts and culture districts in the United States and Europe.

According to de Certeau, small actions offer resistance to the increasing prevalence of private space and encourage everyone to become a producer of their own individually lived reality rather than a consumer of the institutionalized norm. By liberating spaces through creative re-use as political occupation, we subvert the rituals defined by institutions in order to contribute to a more public and democratic environment.

Likewise, Lefebvre encouraged people to understand and revolutionize their everyday life through changes in patterns. Space is a means of power and control, defining where you can go and what you can do in the public sphere. Deviating from these definitions can provide a rupture point in which the public can re-imagine everything from mainstream social hierarchy and definitions of citizenship to public safety and the accessibility of public transportation.

Lefebvre’s idea of the “right to the city” influenced the Brazilian federal legislature’s 2001 city statute, which works to protect social uses of public spaces over commercial uses and to integrate participatory management into city planning efforts throughout the country. In practice, the city statute has, among other things, helped São Paulo become a petri dish of sorts for urban reinvention—an interesting perspective to apply to local projects like the Landmark Hotel on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall.

To encourage further exploration of these ideas on a local level, Sandler will share her experiences from São Paulo and share in-depth studies of similar projects to re-imagine public space and interactions.

What public space in Charlottesville would you like to re-imagine? Tell us in the comments section below.