When it’s cold outside, you need extra motivation to get the blood pumping. Boston’s reggae-rock outfit The Elovaters do just that with uplifting tropical sounds that warm your soul and get you moving. Fans of acts like Slightly Stoopid and Sublime find plenty to love from this East Coast group channeling the island culture. Expect dub-inspired echo effects, an emphasis on the upbeat, and a lot of references to herbal refreshments.
Thursday1/9. $32, 7pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
The Blue Ridge Irish Music School presents a double-feature screening of Absolutely Irish and The Tunnel from local filmmakers Paul and Ellen Wagner. The first film brings together standout stars of the traditional Irish music scene for a concert held in the intimate Irish Arts Center of New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. The latter explores the history of the Blue Ridge Railroad Tunnel at Rockfish Gap, built by Irish immigrants in the 1850s. The evening includes a discussion of the Blue Ridge Tunnel project by Kevin Donleavy.
The Charlottesville High School musical theater ensemble brings a student-directed production of A Chorus Line to area audiences. Spotlighting an array of Broadway dancers auditioning for roles in the eponymous chorus line, the action builds across a bare stage. The personalities of potential performers are on full view as the cast of would-be stars describe life events that drew them to dance. Directed by CHS senior Murray Susen, these January performances precede a trip to Charlottesville sister city Besançon, France, where the troupe will mount additional shows this spring.
Friday 1/10–Sunday 1/12. $15, times vary. Charlottesville High School’s Black Box Theater, 1400 Melbourne Rd. theatrechs.weebly.com
Paula Whyman will discuss "Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop" at New Dominion Bookshop on January 11. Supplied photo.
In Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, Paula Whyman recounts her attempts to restore the ecosystem of a mountain that she and her husband bought. “I’ve been working on the mountain restoration for nearly four years now, since we bought the land in early 2021,” says Whyman. “I started work on the book several months after I started the meadow project.”
Situated near the Rappahannock River at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the land will feel familiar to local readers through Whyman’s descriptions of towering white oaks, black cherry trees, Albemarle pippins, and blackberries, as well as kudzu, autumn olive, and trees of heaven. It’s a place full of butterflies and bumblebees but also ticks and wasps.
But, how does one buy a mountain? After decades in the D.C. suburbs, Whyman and her husband decided to retire to the country. So they shopped around and bought the mountain much as anyone would buy any real estate. Their 200-plus acres of land encompass a roughly 1,400-foot mountain, full of neglected farmland and pastures, overgrown meadows, and forests along its slopes.
A different book might have interrogated the privilege of being able to buy a mountain or the potentially colonial impulse to do so, but Whyman eschews this in favor of meditating on what it means to own the land at all. “It still feels to me like a ridiculous and foreign concept, to own something like a mountaintop,” writes Whyman. “Where does such ownership begin and end? Do I own the soil and the rocks and the mosses? The toads by the pond, and the dung beetles, too?” These are questions she continues to chew on throughout the book.
Laying the groundwork for her land conservation and restoration project, Whyman writes, “I was driven by the particular goal of establishing a native meadow wherever we ended up—a neat, organized, narrowly defined project.” However, she is quickly disabused of the idea that this is a simple undertaking or one that she will have control over—or indeed one that will even involve planting a meadow.
Indeed, Whyman recruits a laundry list of experts, from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes program, and the Virginia Department of Forestry, to independent arborists and restoration contractors as well as a wildlife biologist and a forester. She hopes that these professionals will help her select the “correct” way to rehabilitate the land she has purchased. Along the way, Whyman gains valuable perspectives and ultimately discovers that there is not one right way to proceed, but countless considerations and perspectives to weave together. She also learns about the risks of disturbing an ecosystem, the hard way—unintentionally creating opportunities for chaos to flourish as she attempts to fix a variety of aspects of the land, from erosion to invasive plants. As she gains this firsthand experience, the tone of the book changes, from at times inelegant self-deprecating humor to a more thoughtful approach, reflecting on lessons learned.
Supplied photo.
As much as Bad Naturalist is a tale of Whyman’s efforts to improve the land, it is also a personal chronicle that brings attention to, and vocabulary for, her new surroundings. She invites the reader to join her in learning the names of unfamiliar native flora and fauna throughout the book, from broomsedge and spotted knapweed to purple panic grass and grasshopper sparrows. “The more I paid attention to what was right around me, the more interested and curious I became, and the more I could see how every creature and plant are connected,” recalls Whyman. “There are so many of these interconnections, I’ll never run out of new ones to discover, and that to me is inspiring.” She also digs into invasive plant legislation in Virginia: Indigenous practices of intentional burning to support healthy ecosystems, carbon sequestration, and habitat fragmentation, among other research topics to build her knowledge as a budding conservationist.
“My advice to aspiring conservationists or naturalists would be to start by looking closely at the natural world wherever you find yourself, and see what you’re drawn to, where your passion lies,” says Whyman. “If it’s birds, start watching them, and you’ll notice things you might not have noticed before. Maybe try to find out what one thing you could do, one thing you could plant, to attract more birds where you live. Maybe there’s a park where you live that could use some TLC, and volunteers for such an effort might be welcome.”
As for her own mountain and the TLC needed there, Whyman reflects, “I wanted the book to read like a well-shaped story, and that required some discipline [but] … nature doesn’t stop, of course; the mountain keeps changing.” Indeed, she has two new conservation and land stewardship projects underway. “I now have two American kestrel nest boxes in the meadow, thanks to the folks at the Grassland Bird Initiative,” says Whyman. “They are studying kestrels to try and increase the population and to find out what’s behind their decline in this area. So, this winter, I’m keeping an eye out for kestrels that might be scoping out those boxes for nesting in the spring. I’m also waiting for a prescribed burn on two large fields that I have not burned before. It will be a big experiment to see what grows there afterwards.”
Elvira Clayton’s “Knotted History” is featured in “That Feels Good! Labor as Pleasure” at Second Street Gallery through January 24. Supplied photo.
“That Feels Good! Labor as Pleasure” at Second Street Gallery brings together 10 artists working in a variety of media and styles whose work shares a labor-intensive, often repetitive, approach. For curator Francisco Donoso, the repetitions and effort yield not just interesting artwork, but also pleasure for the artist creating it.
Donoso cites as inspiration adrienne maree brown’s [sic] philosophy laid out in her book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Fiber artists in particular are known for this, and several are represented at Second Street.
John Fifield-Perez’s striking weavings, “Shift/Phase 02,” woven with double weave blocks, and “Pink/Pinch 01,” woven with the lampas technique, present markedly different styles. Resembling traditional weaving, “Shift/Phase 02” is unmistakably contemporary with its almost day-glo colors, bold geometric design, and the numerous yarn ends left dangling. A form of brocade, lampas weaving features two layers that are woven simultaneously. The artist’s interest in the lampas technique derives from its association with Los Angeles artist Diedrick Brackens, whose work explores queer identity. “I first saw modern lampas weave in Brackens’ tapestries,” says Fifield-Perez. “So it holds a connotation of contemporary queer weaving traditions for me.”
Elvira Clayton addresses the legacies of enslavement in her ongoing “Cotton and Rice Project,” which centers on an 1859 Savannah, Georgia, slave auction, one of the largest in history, in which 436 men, women, and children were sold. Her sculptures “Black People” and “Knotted History” feature bits of cloth tangled up with twigs, rice, cotton bolls, sequins, and wire—the fragmentary traces of the enslaved—and convey with their snarls the chaos and heartache endured.
A multimedia piece featuring crochet, a vintage clock radio, and sound, Kathleen Granados’ “Distant (B Sides)” explores familial history, memory, and identity. Granados augments cassette tapes her late father made as a young man with music she chose, cobbling together an intergalactic oldies radio show that resonates outward into space. The clock radio and cabinet reference a domestic setting. Clad in hand-crocheted black yarn, the cabinet both emerges from and recedes back into the surrounding crocheted cosmos. Different stitches arranged in a vortex shape suggests the universe expanding beyond the cabinet. The amorphous shape and the way the bottom part drapes onto the floor underscores this feeling of expansion. Granados dots this inky swathe with a smattering of reflective appliqués to suggest distant stars.
“I like this idea of memory enduring throughout space,” says Granados. “I think of how radio waves, once they’re broadcast, continue to travel through the cosmos. There’s no sound in space, but I like to imagine that if that sound ever reached a distant place that it could be heard. It plays into this idea that these moments we share with our loved ones endure. That’s the impetus behind making the piece talk.”
Joyful and eye-popping, Max Colby’s maximalist creations reference the glittery excess of drag and celebrate nonconformity. Erect, yet soft, the sculptures incorporate both masculine and feminine attributes. “As she engages in this laborious time-consuming process of stitching and making and stuffing, Colby, who is a trans woman, is thinking about the way gender is binaried and the way that nature is perceived and understood and filtered through,” Donoso says.
Nicole Yi Messier and Victoria Manganiello’s art collective, Craftwork, combines traditional craft with state-of-the-art technologies to produce sumptuous textiles that, though machine-made, are based on algorithms derived from plants. So while the weaving is high tech, the patterns are natural and the dyes, which come from organic and inorganic materials including plants, minerals, and fungi, are both synthetic and natural.
There’s no question that Fidencio Fifield-Perez’s woven paper strips rolled over with lithography ink—“Salmon Colored Kid 1” and “Salmon Colored Kid 2”—are made through a painstakingly laborious process. The elegant restraint and stillness created by Fidencio, John Fifield-Perez’s husband, are emblematic of classic minimalism, but here, the weaving also references the handwoven mats of the artist’s native Mexico.
“Vessel Aflame” and “Wild Urn” reveal much about Sarah Boyts Yoder’s oeuvre. Both monotypes, the works compositionally resemble each other thanks to the outline of a vase—one of Yoder’s recurring symbols—that appears in both. These recognizable shapes also disrupt the abstraction, creating an interesting tension between nonobjective and representational.
With its staccato brushstrokes, Richard Yu-Tang Lee’s series “Rain in a Burning Garden” conveys the visual and auditory effects of rain. The allover repetitive nature of the brushstrokes suggests the unrelentingness of a downpour. Glitter adds a rain-slicked quality to the paint, while the title inserts a sense of trepidation.
Laura Josephine Snyder’s nonobjective work appears infused with symbolism. This quality together with its natural pigments, curious forms, and repeated lines recalls Hilma af Klint’s curious paintings and also the cartological quality of Aboriginal artwork. “The diver’s legs (to the sea)” is a mysterious and intense piece, thanks to the two “eyes” that stare out at the viewer.
In the Dové Gallery, Richmond-based Hannah Diomataris shows us another level of labor-intensive repetition with her “Sticker Work.” Using recycled bar codes from stores and libraries, which she cuts into tiny, uniform pieces, Diomataris creates complex arrangements of patterns that awe us with their beauty even as they rattle us with their obsessive attention to detail.
Three Notch’d Road Baroque Ensemble extends the holiday season with the sounds of an Italian Christmas during performances in Staunton, Greenwood, and Keswick. Twelfth Night in Italy brings together the music of Corelli, Flecha, Monteverdi, Pandolfi, Scarlatti, and Vivaldi under guest Artistic Director Peter Walker. Hear shepherds’ carols and folk music, as well as art music in the pastoral style, with featured soprano Addy Sterrett. Each performance includes a pre-concert talk by Walker.
Friday 1/3–Sunday 1/5. $30, times and locations vary. tnrbaroque.org
Take in the tale of New York City socialite Holly Golightly and her romantic escapades with a Breakfast at Tiffany’s Brunch. Revel in the swinging early-’60s styles in Truman Capote’s classic adapted for the screen, starring the often-imitated-but-never-replicated Academy Award-winner Audrey Hepburn. Choose from an array of movie-themed brunch specials and cocktails to pair with the screening, and ruminate on the mores of a bygone era: Is marrying for money or love the right move? Do pets need names? Who thought casting Mickey Rooney was a good idea?
“Holy Wright: Vanity,” curated by Hannah Cattarin and M. Jordan Love, remains on view through January 5. Staff photo.
With three series of black-and-white photographs depicting various aspects of the human form, “Holly Wright: Vanity” brings themes of corporeality, communication, and mortality into focus. Wright, who taught photography at UVA for 16 years and helped build the university’s museum collection of photo-based works, presents lyrical and contemplative images in her first solo show at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.
In the “Vanity” series, Wright offers tightly cropped closeups of her own hands. The photos depict fragmented forms in soft focus. Ridges of fingerprints and folds of flesh allude to the haptic—to touching and being touched. In the “Poetry” series, Wright brings forth a study of the mouth of her Pulitzer Prize-winning husband. Composed in the tradition of photographer Eadweard Muybridge to show sequential motion, more tightly cropped images create a visual rhythm within the picture plane and the installation itself. Where the “Vanity” series is installed in a straight line, creating a syncopated kind of visual rhythm, “Poetry” is installed at varying heights, in mimicry of the rise and fall of human speech. We see the shape of the mouth change, illustrating an expression of words that are absent. In place of the sonic reality of the poetry, the viewer is prompted to fill in the gaps.
Wright’s “Final Portraits” series represents the most affective and impactful works in the exhibition. Alluding to funerary scenes, the set of eight portraits asks how each sitter would face death as captured in the act of an imagined final photograph. The viewer is immediately implicated in the series through scale. Presented in life-size prints, the subjects stare out at the audience, acknowledging that death will come for us all, and asking how each of us will face it. The images are simultaneously arresting and somewhat comforting. The subjects express palpable aspects of agency, even in the face of the inevitable. Apparel, adornments, and postures all speak to how we see ourselves, and how we want to be remembered when we’re gone.
Staff photo.
Of the eight images included in “Final Portraits,” four feature couples—including the artist and her husband—underscoring that some will greet the end alone, and others together. The youngest subject, Wright’s son, shown grasping a repeating rifle with a hunting knife and hatchet affixed to a belt at his waist, conveys a kind of subdued surprise. A young woman in cowboy boots expresses a form of defiance, arms crossed, eyeing the camera lens suspiciously. The backgrounds of the portraits include grass, asphalt, and bedding, conjuring connections to earthen soil, artificial rigidity, and the comforts of home.
The series presents ruminations on mortality, but also of time, appearance, and what it means to inhabit a body, if even for a brief time. Good art can make us think, feel, confront uncomfortable truths, or turn away—Wright’s work asks all of this from the viewer, presenting an exercise in ephemeral awareness as we enter a new year.
Botanical Fare Restaurant 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Recent Landscapes in Oil,” paintings by Randy Baskerville, presented by the BozART Fine Art Collective. January 6–March 3.
Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. In the micro gallery, “Still Life with Uncertainty,” paintings by Richmond-based artist Sally Bowring. Through February. In the Great Halls of Vault Virginia, “Kinship,” an editorial photographer’s collection of photos from the march on Washington and New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Through March. Both shows open January 4.
Sally Bowring at Chroma Projects.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. Floral paintings by Saylor Swift Denney and glass marbles, beads, and sculpture by Carol Sorber. January 18–February 28.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. The annual studio sale, offering select works at lower prices in support of Virginia artists. January 3–31. First Fridays reception with artists 4–6pm.
The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies” features an immersive multichannel video installation. Through January 26, 2025. “Structures,” a selection of 20th- and 21st-century works exploring the ways that art can speak to or question the formal, physical, environmental, social, and institutional structures of our world. Through July 20, 2025. “Celebration” features works by five African American artists highlighting the ways these artists honor history, culture, and heritage through various media. “Vanity,” black and white photography by longtime UVA arts instructor Holly Wright. “Conversations in Color,” new print acquisitions curated by M. Jordan Love. All shows run through January 5, 2025 unless otherwise noted.
The Gallery at Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Journey from Grief to Art to Growth,” works by Colleen Rosenberry. January 3–February 2. Opening reception January 3, 5–7pm. Artist talk January 23, 5–6pm.
Colleen Rosenberry at Studio IX.
Hello Comics 211A W. Main St, Downtown Mall. “Picture Show,” a cash and carry show of original drawings and digital prints by Todd Webb. Through January 8, 2025. Additional works available at Hello Comics Uptown location.
IX Art Park 522 Second St. SE. “The Looking Glass,” an immersive art space featuring a whimsical enchanted forest and kaleidoscopic cave. Ongoing.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. Part two of “Shifting Ground: Prints by Indigenous Australian Artists from the Basil Hall Editions Workshop Proofs Collection,” curated by Jessyca Hutchens, featuring work by 22 Indigenous Australian artists. “Milpa: Stop-motion animation by Spinifex artists,” animated films. Both shows run through March 2.
Milpa, Spinifex Arts Project at Kluge-Ruhe.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “Pride Overcomes Prejudice,” exploring the history of peoples of African descent in Charlottesville. Ongoing.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Womanhood,” photographs by Benita Mayo. In the First and Second Floor Galleries, the “New Member Show,” featuring works by 18 artists recently selected for membership. In the Associate Gallery, “New Work,” featuring artwork from associate members. First Fridays reception 5:30–7:30pm.
Benita Mayo at McGuffey Art Center.
New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. In the Welcome Gallery, “Of the Earth,” abstract landscape paintings and works on paper by Christen Yates and wall-hung sculptures by Jacqui Stewart Lindstrom. Through January 16.
Phaeton Gallery 114 Old Preston Ave. In the Lobby Gallery, “The Living Canvas,” a new series of oil paintings that explore the human body and the dynamic movement of muscles by Julia Hebert. January 3–February 2. First Fridays reception 5–7:30pm.
Julia Hebert at Phaeton Gallery.
The PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. “Process=Progress: Peeking Behind the Curtain of Creativity.” Through January 18.
Ruffin Gallery UVA Grounds, Ruffin Hall, 179 Culbreth Rd. “A Continuous Storyline: Four Decades of UVA Painters,” curated by Megan Marlatt. Featuring paintings and sculpture by John Arnold, David Askew, Gina Beavers, Jackson Casady, Tori Cherry, Maggie King Johns, Matt Kleberg, and Phượng Duyên Hải Nguyễn. January 6–February 14. Exhibition reception and retirement celebration for Megan Marlatt January 31, 5–7pm.
Gina Beavers at Ruffin Gallery.
Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “That Feels Good! Labor as Pleasure,” an interdisciplinary group show of local and national artists curated by Francisco Donoso. In the Dové Gallery, “Hannah Diomataris: Sticker Work,” handcut sticker compositions by Richmond-based artist Hannah Diomataris. Both shows run through January 24. Artists in Conversation talk with Hannah Diomataris and Leigh Suggs, January 18, 10:30–11:30am.
Hannah Diomataris at Second Street Gallery.
Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Direct Sow,” interdisciplinary works by Visible Records studio members Morgan Ashcom, Rebecca Belt, Anna Hogg, Jeremy Jean-Jacques, Sean Lopez, Will May, Kweisi Morris, Phượng-Duyên Hải Nguyễn, bryan ortiz, Peter Russell, Anik Sparman, Jackson Taylor, Maria Villanueva, Natasha Woods, and Elena Yu. Through January 25.
bryan ortiz at Visible Records.
Waxwing Art Works 416 W. Main St., inside the Main Street Market Building. “The Drawing Show,” featuring works in graphite, ink, and charcoal by Baylor Fuller, Marni Maree, Amy Shawley Paquette, Joe Sheridan, Coleman Simmons, Dana Wheeles, and others. January 9–February 8. Opening reception January 9, 5–7pm. Free drawing media demonstration, January 24, 2–4pm.
If you don’t get enough rockin’ around the Christmas tree on the 25th, head to the 17th Annual XMAS JAM. Spun out of the Charlottesville Music Showcase, a weekly series featuring prominent local performers—begun at Orbit Billiards on the Corner way back when—this seasonal gig continues to shine a light on some of C’ville’s brightest musical stars. Hosts Tucker Rogers and BJ Pendleton emcee the evening with appearances by Richelle Claiborne, John D’earth, Jay Pun, Jen Tal, and many more special guests.
Friday 12/27. $15–20, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
