Category: Made In C-VILLE

With culinary delicacies stretched across white linen in the comfortable outdoor space at Belmont’s Southern Crescent restaurant, giddy gastronomes arriving to the first dinner hosted by Taste of Home in 2018 may not have realized the spread was organized by college undergrads.

One of the University of Virginia’s more than 1,000 student clubs and organizations, Taste of Home is still hosting meals four years after its founding by then-UVA student Mayan Braude. Though the journey hasn’t been without its setbacks. 

The club and its rotating cast of 30 or so activist members hosts several annual pop-up dining events around Charlottesville to honor the refugee and immigrant community. So far, Taste of Home has featured feasts by nearly a dozen local chefs and home cooks across 10 dinners, lunches, and takeout services.

“It’s really important to us to kind of create a greater sense of community between the university and the surrounding area, as well as giving voices to different demographics that aren’t really elevated,” says Ella Maufair, a second-year UVA student who serves as one of Taste of Home’s co-coordinators.

Syrian, Afghani, Honduran, Indonesian, Bengali, and Turkish cuisine have all had their place in the spotlight since Taste of Home began hosting meals. Featured chefs have included sisters Jamileh and Khadija Hemmati, who fled hostility in Afghanistan in 2016, and Neta Fitria, who moved to the United States from Indonesia to get married and support her family. The cooks receive all proceeds from Taste of Home meals and consult on planning and pricing to make sure everything’s covered.

“We really do work one-on-one with the partnering chefs all the time,” says Sarah Kim, another club co-coordinator who’s in her fourth year at UVA. “We make sure they approve everything we send out and they approve of the pricing we give the public. Everything we do is for the chef…and we really get to know them as people and as friends. It’s quite humbling.”

After several dinners at locations around town into 2020, Taste of Home was forced to move its pop-ups to spaces on or near Grounds. According to Sarah Kim, another club co-coordinator, the move was driven by accessibility—the pandemic simply closed off many of the organization’s options. Some local restaurants still remain hesitant to host pop-ups.

Taste of Home innovated and expanded its mission during the shutdown, switching to “pick-up dinners” and focusing on refugee advocacy. The group launched the Taste of Home Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund in 2021. The organization has held other events, including a bake sale, and grown its Instagram presence to help expand its reach.

Co-coordinator Layne Johnson says the organization would like to move its events back into the community next spring, when its coordinators hope to host another dinner at Southern Crescent. According to Johnson, the organization continues to grow, and its new members are inevitably students truly passionate about the mission of helping members of the refugee and immigrant community.

As it expands, the nonprofit is focused on securing grant financing through the university and beyond, and contacting more local refugees and immigrants. Taste of Home has so far developed its connections through local religious and other community organizations and is always looking for folks willing to cook for a crowd.

“The main word that comes to mind when I think about Taste of Home is ‘community,’” Johnson says. “It is about bringing people together. We see so many different faces at these events, and to support these local chefs, it feels great.”

Restaurateur and locally renowned musician Jay Pun is 100 percent Thai. But he still thinks a lot about authenticity.

In 2016, Pun traveled to his ancestral home and visited an open-air market in northern Thailand. He was on the hunt for a native lute known as a phin. He’d owned one years before, but it was decorative, nothing authentic.

Pun and his cousins happened upon a local luthier at the market. The Charlottesville native, whose family opened the area’s first Thai restaurant in 1997, bought one of the instruments—essentially a three-stringed guitar—brought it home, and began writing songs. He quickly fell in love with the instrument’s tones and traditions.

“It was similar to the way I think about food,” Pun says. “Even though I am Thai, I didn’t want it to be a gimmick and appropriate the music of another culture.”

Wanting deeply to do the phin justice, Pun researched its history. He took an online class with a Thai phin player, who pointed out the ways Pun naturally brought his Americanized influence to the instrument. He continued to work at it.

Pun formally learned his musicianship at Berklee College of Music. It was there that he also met his wife and other half of the successful world beat duo Morwenna Lasko & Jay Pun. While his family grew its local culinary footprint—they now own Thai Cuisine & Noodle House and Chimm—Pun and his wife produced several albums of their guitar and violin music, and toured around Virginia.

Lasko and Pun are still working on new music, but kids, responsibilities, and the pandemic have conspired to slow them down. And in early 2021, tragedy struck, and it deepened Pun’s love of his own heritage: Eight women of Asian descent were shot and killed while working at a spa in Atlanta. “That was a pinnacle point in my life. I came out as Asian,” Pun says.

Despite being rooted in Thai traditions since birth, Pun says he had largely assimilated to white culture. It was simply what he knew his entire life. But the Atlanta shooting woke him up and made him realize that Charlottesville in many ways doesn’t know its Asian community. Many in the community don’t even know one another.

At Chimm, Pun likes to push palates. While so much of U.S.-based Asian cuisine is watered down for local tastes, he says Charlottesville has embraced many authentic culinary styles.

And with the phin, Pun continues to push his own musical palate. He’s particularly taken with the music of northeastern Thailand. As he begins thinking about the area, its food also springs to his mind. 

“It’s a bit different—it’s very spicy on its own, where a lot of the food in central Thailand is not,” he says. In the northeast, the Thai people often eat with their hands, Pun says, taking handfuls of glutinous rice and using it much as Ethiopian people use injera to scoop up delicacies. It’s a type of cuisine that has only recently started to move West.

When Pun’s family opened their first restaurant a quarter century ago, even the more Americanized version of Thai cuisine was considered adventurous. 

And while the States might not be ready for traditional phin music, the time may come for that, as well. 

“It’s cheesy, but it’s true—there’s a beauty that comes from the way music and food bring people together,” Pun says. “Look at any culture: blues coming from enslaved people and singing about what they’re eating and about being in the kitchen. Music and food are completely entangled.”

Tucked away in a quaint little storefront in Gordonsville is Folkling, an oasis of vintage clothing, heritage textiles, and American-made goods. Folkling is a sustainable venture dedicated to finding old things new homes, creating quality goods with makers, and taking life slow. The mastermind behind it all is Leney Breeden. 

Breeden grew up in the Fan District in Richmond, where she had her hands in numerous creative ventures. Through her photography business, A Girl Named Leney, she shot portraiture work and weddings. She curated clothing for various shops, and at one point even had her own fitwear business, for which she designed and created collections. 

During this time, Breeden created the Folkling Instagram account. “It started as homewares,” says Breeden. “I love curating and designing vignettes.” Breeden would thrift items from around the city, create small still lifes, post the photographs, and sell the items through Instagram.

A nomad at heart, Breeden decided to hit the road in 2017 to pursue more photojournalistic projects. Over the next two years, she’d head out for days, weeks, or even months at a time, in her Subaru Outback named Blue Moon. 

“Folkling is what kept me going between photo jobs,” says Breeden. “Once I was on the road it centered more on clothing, particularly Western Wear, Native American jewelry, and old denim—really beautiful pieces that you don’t necessarily find on the East Coast.” 

Then the pandemic hit, and everything stopped. All of Breeden’s photo jobs got canceled, and Folkling was all she had left. “I put my all into it, and it kind of blew up.” It got to the point where Breeden could no longer work out of her second bedroom. Then one day on a drive through Gordonsville, she saw a “for rent” sign on Main Street and knew the small town was the perfect place for Folkling to settle. 

The Folkling brick and mortar opened in December of 2020, and it’s chock-full of clothing and goods that Breeden’s acquired from people  and places during her travels. “I would find some things thrifting on occasion,” Breeden says. “But I also just started meeting people all around the country who had stuff that they didn’t know what to do with, or things that they loved and valued, but just wanted someone to appreciate the story that went along with it, and appreciate the beauty in these old things.” 

Showcasing the beauty in the old, mundane, and imperfect is part of Folkling’s mission. “We try to help people appreciate things that are worn and imperfect,” says Breeden. “Finding beauty in the imperfection of things that have withstood the test of time.” 

Each item in the Folkling shop has a story, many of which Breeden researches and documents for her archives, a process that can take months depending on an item’s condition. Folkling’s inventory is constantly being refreshed as new items are ready to be sold, so you never know what you’ll find on the racks and shelves. 

Vintage clothing that caters to a variety of aesthetics from the ’70s and earlier is always in stock. You might find a fun ’30s playsuit, a well-worn pair of jodhpurs, or some sturdy Levi’s. Folkling also sells antique homewares, handmade items, and American-made goods that are responsibly produced, including ceramics, rugs, and clothing made from deadstock fabrics. 

Breeden curates a monthly collection of quilts from the ’40s and earlier for the shop, too. Each one is a work of art, and she tries hard to identify and document the patterns before listing them. “The quilts I find represent so much of an untold story of the women who made them,” says Breeden. “The women who made them weren’t really allowed to make art, and so they turned this utilitarian thing into a beautiful art piece. It’s a story I’m constantly captivated by.” 

Folkling is open for in-person shopping Fridays and Saturdays, and online orders from folkling.co usually ship within one week. 

For the last five years, Charlottesville artist Tim O’Kane has been designing new seed packets for the flowers, herbs, and vegetables that have been preserved and propagated by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello. Recently, he spoke with us about the project and his work.

Made in C-VILLE: How did this project get started?

Tim O’Kane: Back in 2017 the Center called me, and we had a great meeting. [Local artist] Gail McIntosh had done a black-and-white engraving that they were using on all the seed packets. The Center wanted to actually show the [individual] plants in color. The whole project is sponsored by Kenneth and Teresa Wood, a couple in Philadelphia. … We started the first year with 20 plants, then we did another 20—I’m starting a new set of 20 now. So far, I’ve done something in the range of 130 paintings. And these are all historic plants documented by Jefferson—when you buy seeds from Monticello, you’re getting what Jefferson grew.

How does this project fit with your own artistic style?

I had never done botanical drawings before, but I am a realist painter … and I’ve been a gardener most of my life. But this is a real education! Peggy Cornett [Curator of Plants at Monticello] and the Center staff are amazing. I can create the drawing, then I show it to them and they correct it. I have the skill in observation—I’ve been painting for 50-plus years now—but I couldn’t do it without them. For example, in one painting in a series on pollinators, I put in bumblebees that don’t exist here. It’s a real team effort.

How did you approach creating a unified look for the packets?

Once I got this job, I started to look at old seed packets—I always liked the way they were done, before photography. I decided to go for a whole new style, a kind of pop art. Each painting has a box around the edge, to give it a three-dimensional aspect. And they all have a pretty bold composition. I really wanted to make them into good paintings, not simply illustrations.

How do you create the paintings of the individual plants?

Mostly I work at Tufton Farm [a Monticello property where the Center’s nursery is housed]. The staff may call me and say such-and-such is in bloom now. I start by photographing the plant I’m working on, so I can get the details. Then I do black-and-white studies to work out the composition and the accuracy. Then I paint in oils. The Center is in the process of having all the works framed—they’re planning to do an exhibition.

What are some of the challenges?

For some of the plants, I had to find out how to make them more dynamic. Herbs, for example—there’s no big flower. I’ve done vegetables, flowers, even fruit—tomatoes are a fruit, and the Center has so many varieties! And I’ve learned about so many new plants—blanket flowers, for example, I didn’t know about them, they’re beautiful and bloom all summer long. And Canterbury bells…

Beyond the seed packets, many of O’Kane’s plant paintings are also featured on pillows, scarves, and other objects sold at the Monticello Shop.  

Ralph Dammann and Ray Varona make instruments you’ve probably never heard of. Their specialty is the mandocello, a bigger, baritone version of the mandolin. But while mandocellos traditionally have four courses of paired strings, their version has five, spanning an even wider range than a guitar (from a low C, a third below the lowest string on a guitar, to the same high E). And that’s only one of their many innovations. 

“We just don’t bother making anything that we don’t make significantly different from everybody else,” Dammann says. “Everything we do, we do it the way we do it.”

Dammann made his first instrument, an electric bass, in 1969. He was playing professionally in and around Washington, D.C., and he was looking for guidance on good bass technique. “With every other instrument, there’s a technique that’s worked out over years and years and years, centuries a lot of times,” he says. But with electric bass there was nothing. The only real advice on offer at that point was transferred over from the electric guitar, and it didn’t travel well. 

Dammann finally found his foothold as he began studying double bass at American University, training under the principal of the Washington Symphony Orchestra. There he learned the technique he was looking for. But it was hard to put into practice on a standard electric bass, given the different orientation of the instruments.

So, naturally, he reinvented the electric bass. His version, which Dammann Custom Instruments still makes today, was rebalanced to stand upright like a double bass. He kept playing that bass throughout the ’70s.

The decades that followed took Dammann in different directions. He ran a successful construction company and built up a small cabinet shop. But he never abandoned the luthier’s art. He started making instruments for his son (who now plays bass professionally in Chicago), and Dammann’s cabinet shop slowly morphed into an instrument shop.

Things really picked up when he met Ray Varona in 2007. Varona was working with AmeriCorps at the time, but had been making instruments on his own since 2001. Varona has the exceedingly rare combination of an engineer’s mind and a musician’s ear, so Dammann worked hard to convince him to come on as head luthier. 

“He’s a far better luthier than I ever was,” Dammann says. “He really understands a whole lot of the depth of it.” There are so many variables in the making of an acoustic instrument that affect the final sound. It can be almost impossible to tell what minor adjustment is responsible for what you hear—the kind of wood and the weight of it, the positioning of the sound port, and many more subtle factors still. Varona meticulously tracks all of these things, making each instrument slightly different from the last. “He’s always experimenting, but he never produces a bad instrument.” 

Perhaps the most path-breaking of Varona’s experiments has been his “total control neck,” a now-patented mechanism for manually adjusting the action on an instrument—that is, for adjusting how far the strings are from the frets. If the action is too low, the strings will buzz against the frets. If it’s too high, fingering your chords becomes far more difficult. Over time, as the strings naturally pull on the joint between the body and the neck of an instrument, difficult and costly adjustments become necessary. Varona’s invention is the first really successful solution to the problem. Dammann hopes that in 20 years, you’ll see it on every guitar in the country.

Dammann and Varona have worked together now for 15 years, and the shop has grown tremendously from their partnership. They’ve made instruments for people all across the U.S.; they’ve made instruments for people in Britain and Turkey and France. Local musicians like Matthew O’Donnell (who plays Celtic music) and Jason Ring (who plays all varieties of Americana) can be heard playing Dammann instruments around town. 

The key to their continuity and success is their refusal to be like anyone else, their devotion to making instruments in a way that no one else makes them. “That’s the part I’ve never been able to figure it out,” Dammann says. “Why, why, do you want to do the same little thing that everybody does?”

L

ifelong thespian Ti Ames was never comfortable with their casting.

First, as an African American, Ames was long frustrated never to be cast in Black roles. There just weren’t all that many to cast, Ames says, and “unless you are told otherwise, you are playing a white character.”

Second, as a young person still learning who they were, Ames was uncomfortable in traditionally gendered casting. “I was always put in the position where I wasn’t an ingénue, because I wasn’t skinny and light,” they say. “There were a lot of roles I couldn’t play growing up. I was always put in the role of mother or servant—or man.”

Still, while it was theater that brought Ames some discomfort, it was also theater that eventually helped them learn who they were. 

Now, a decade and a half after first encountering musical theater at Live Arts as an elementary schooler, Ames returns to the organization as its new education director.

Ames takes over the role from Miller Susen and will oversee Live Arts’ education program for adults and youth. That includes programming classes, camps, and workshops, overseeing volunteer education, arranging student internships, and coordinating the theater’s mentor/apprentice program. “I’m 26 and still trying to figure out what I want to be, and this job is part of that,” Ames says.

Ames has been involved with Live Arts, first attending summer camps and classes, later working as a camp counselor during college, and most recently directing shows and teaching in Susen’s education department, for 16 years.

Before moving back to Charlottesville and taking the new job, Ames had earned a degree at Oberlin College and Conservatory in Ohio and then completed a guest artist position there. “[They are] talented, gifted, and totally ready for this position,” Oberlin theater department chair Caroline Jackson Smith said when Live Arts named Ames its education director. “They are a brilliant actor/singer and an accomplished director. They are so clear, prepared, and organized.”

After moving back to Charlottesville post-college, Ames designed and taught an African American History course at Renaissance High School and began giving vocal lessons at The Front Porch. They have also taught theater workshops and coached vocal students at Monticello and Charlottesville High schools.

Ames served as Live Arts’ interim education director before moving into the position full-time, making them uniquely qualified. “Ti has a depth of experience that belies their years,” Live Arts Executive Director Anne Hunter says. “They are passionate about theater and kids and widely respected at Live Arts and in the community.”

Ames says their family’s roots run deep in Charlottesville, with their mom’s paternal family being enslaved in the area. Ames’ great grandmother lived in Midway Manor when they were in elementary school, and their single mother would leave them at home on summer days. That’s when Ames, age 9, would walk down the hill to attend Live Arts camps, then head back up afterward to meet mom at the end of the day.

Ames’ mother introduced them to singing and performing at an even earlier age. A pastor who founded a church and a singer herself, Ames’ mom also had a public access show. She asked her to sing in church and perform in various ways on air. Ames joined the local chamber chorus, Virginia Consort, when they were 12. They won a Shakespeare competition at 16, earning a summer study program at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

It wasn’t until Ames attended Oberlin, double majoring in theater and African studies, that they figured out they were non-binary. “I realized I was not very comfortable playing women anymore,” they say. “When I finally understood what it meant, it meant I wasn’t crazy, that I wasn’t necessarily born in the wrong body. It changed how I thought about myself in the world.”

Ames says they gained confidence in their body. They knew many people wouldn’t understand them. They hoped some would. 

Still, Ames had more to learn about themself. Since returning to Charlottesville, they began doing productions with the Charlottesville Players Guild, and it wasn’t until then that Ames first played a black character on stage. They went on to direct the Macbeth adaptation Black Mac at CPG, and later staged an original radio play, See About the Girls.

Ames says their new position at Live Arts stands to serve as a place for further growth.

“My main thing as education director here is to expand on the process, not the product,” Ames says. “I think that kids deserve the process. And adults that were never given a chance deserve the process—to be heard, validated, and tell stories that make sense to them.”

Every day on fast-paced Route 250 between the towns of Ivy and Crozet, countless drivers may pass The Barn Swallow without even noticing. Only a small sign points it out. Shielded by a line of thick bamboo and tucked into a barn by a trickling creek, the boutique artisan gallery is an oasis from hurry next to the busy road.

Those who pull in to the gravel parking lot follow a path through a dense garden under a thriving apple tree. By the time they reach the broad porch with climbing akebia vines, the highway has already vanished, and the rush is replaced with rest.

Owners Mary Ann Burke and Janice Arone say that the grounded, nature-oriented atmosphere is something they’ve tried to cultivate as curators.

“We had a vision about the antiquity of the barn.” Arone says. “It’s pre-Civil War and it just has this beautiful essence to it, so we try to comply with that.”

In November 2000, the pair acquired the barn from former owner Bob Leiby, who had built it into an artisan space called The Crafter’s Gallery. Both Burke and Arone showed pottery there. When Leiby decided to move on, they bought the barn and set to work on its next iteration. 

“We’re bringing the outside of nature in,” says Arone about their aesthetic. That has been their general rubric for filling the gallery. Both potters make earthenware with watery or wooden textures and incorporate the figures of birds or leaves. 

Slowly, one by one, they started to gather the pieces of their nest. “John Grant was one of the first photographers,” says Burke. “And jewelers like Elizabeth Haines.” The curators always kept their eyes open for the qualities that fit their Barn Swallow ethos. 

“Once the artists come in, they tend to stay,” Burke says of the makers they show.

More than 20 years later, some of the original contributors are still there, but the gallery has grown to have more than 75 artists on display. There is more than the eye can take in. The tall barn room with exposed tin roof is packed tight with canvases and images that seem to call back to the hay and animals that once occupied the space. Behind a partition wall, more crafts spread out on a landing, and down the stairs there is a stone and cement basement where the original foundation can be seen. Patrons can rummage endlessly and find unexpected treasures. 

The artists are all local and regional; The Barn Swallow is a rare venue for people to find their work. There are somber drawings from Charlottesville illustrator Tim O’Kane. There are morel-shaped candles, encaustics, and dyed fabric. Crozet-based painter Leslie Banta shows her skyward-looking paintings in which vast clouds dwarf tiny buildings. 

Laurie Gundersen is a folk artist whose bark-based creations can be found in the gallery. The vases made from cherry or poplar bark and handbags made from white pine have a rough, rustic, and raw appeal that opens new doors in how we use natural materials.

Anne Scarpa McCauley’s intricate, hand-woven baskets hang on the wall. The tightly woven honeysuckle vines trained into astounding, sculptural patterns that can seem alive reveal why the award-winning artist is also displayed in the Smithsonian and nationally. 

Grant’s sublimation photography also hangs on the walls. The large, botanical arrangements are printed onto dark metal with dark tones that subvert the bright blush normally attributed to all things floral. 

The barn has hosted artists for Crozet’s Second Saturday exhibitions, workshops, and talks. Events can be a great way to interact with the space and its exhibitions. As much as the barn has to offer in the numerous pieces in the shop, it also has at least as much to offer as a place to be. The owners hope to open up the creekside meadow to events when it is safer to gather.

Most people who visit The Barn Swallow have heard about it before and travel to see it. But some customers passing by come in off the road, and there is also an online store. But the gallery is really a destination venue. The barn and gardens are a joy to explore and you never know what you’re going to find tucked away as you browse the displays.

As The Barn Swallow has grown, Burke and Arone have also grown in their craft. Like their barn, clay has the flexibility to be shaped into what you need it to be. 

“It’s so versatile, you could make a spoon out of clay or you could make a 6-foot sculpture out of clay,” Arone says. It fills the room in various forms. Pitchers, plates, bowels, vases, and teacups line the walls of the shop on shelves, each with an expressive personality.

After two decades, Burke and Arone can look back over what they’ve made. The natural aesthetic of their shop makes it feel like a growing thing. Every year, The Barn Swallow has a little more within its walls, more artists, more work, more flowers in the garden. Every year, it comes back fuller, like a tree with more blossoms on its branches.

Artists have been creating and decorating miniature models for hundreds—if not thousands—of years. But miniatures have exploded in the past half decade with the growing availability of 3-D printers and virtual gathering spaces for enthusiasts. For example, Warhammer, one of the world’s largest tabletop gaming franchises, has drawn an Instagram community of miniature enthusiasts and painters nearly 400,000 members strong.

Charlottesville resident Robert Myers stumbled on miniature painting early during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ideal time to take up a painstaking hobby requiring skill and patience. A working artist who’s dabbled in various media, Myers quickly found himself drawn to the intricacies of miniatures.

“I had just had knee replacement surgery and was laid up and looking for something to do. I got into the rabbit hole on YouTube,” Myers says. “I always liked building models, and for me, it’s the aesthetic. I liked the way everything looked and wanted to apply the principles of 2-D painting to 3-D objects.”

Most folks who charge into miniature painting are tabletop gamers. With their resin-packed 3-D printers at the ready, the self-styled nerds build their own tiny figures for deployment on the fantasy battlefield.

Myers doesn’t play tabletop games. But he was drawn to comic book illustration in eighth grade and began studying art in high school. He joined the Navy afterward and bounced around jobs, bartending and the like. In 2010, he went to art school, focusing on figure drawing, oil painting, sculpting, and other media. All told, he’d had nearly a decade of formal art schooling. 

Since going pro, Myers has done some commission work, but it wasn’t until he found miniature painting that his passion was finally piqued. He still struggles to make ends meet selling finished models under his Red Right Hand Miniatures brand, but he’s hopeful about the future.

“Everything artistic sounds corny, but the process for me is finding inspiration in the blank canvas of the miniature, the figure itself,” Myers says. “I ask myself, ‘how do I expand on this?’”

Myers and other miniature painters typically start with an existing 3-D design, print the piece using their resin of choice, then begin their creative process through paint application—priming, layering, creating lighting and transition effects.

“If you’re going to paint a still life, like a bowl of fruit, you might think about whether you want to put your grapes in front or behind,” Myers says. “With miniatures, that’s decided for you. But there are so many techniques you can use to expand on it.”

At some point, Myers might also like to move into the business of miniature sculpture design. With the way the hobby’s growing, he figures it’s an artistic pursuit with serious upside.

“With COVID and people having so much time, lots of people got involved in the hobby,” he says. “It’s an amazing, supportive community. It’s an open and progressive community. And I think more people are starting to realize there isn’t this stigma for being into it.”

Formally trained artist Robert Myers finally found his niche in painting miniatures.

Kori Price is one of those rare creatures with full control over both sides of her brain. By day, she is an electrical engineer educated at Virginia Tech. In her off hours, she is a writer and mixed-media artist. In January 2022, she put on her first solo exhibition, “You can’t compromise my joy,” at New City Arts. She is a founding member of the Black Artists Collective, a new board member at New City Arts, and the host of “Creative Mornings,” a breakfast series for local artists. We chatted about the past and future of her creative work.

Made in C-VILLE: It’s unusual to meet someone with a talent for both the scientific and the artistic. How did that come about? Can you tell me about your self-discovery as a creative?

Kori Price: I’ve always loved crafts and arts and that sort of thing, even as a kid. So, even as I found myself pursuing more technical things in school, I was still in band. I played the contra-alto clarinet for four or five years—a really tall, outrageous, low clarinet. I also loved art. My dad had cameras, so I would pick up his cameras and try to take pictures. I’m terrible at sketching, but I would try to sketch. I started writing a book in high school. I would just dabble in all of these different things.

In college, as I pursued my electrical engineering degree, I just stayed around creative people. That’s what helped me journey closer to a life as a creative. I might have had more arts-focused friends in college than I had engineering friends. While my engineering friends were off doing projects with Arduinos, microprocessors, or circuit design, I was writing short stories. I was in the concert band and the marching band. I bought my first DSLR and started taking photos for friends.

So I think because I’ve always had this curiosity about art, as an adult, it just felt right to pursue a career as an artist alongside my career as an electrical engineer. I just want to explore the work that I can do, the things that I can make.

You work in such a diversity of forms as an artist. Is there a central set of themes that holds your work together?

There are a few themes that I really enjoy. One is Black womanhood. That’s a pretty central theme, and it’s something I want to keep exploring and expanding on. I also love making work that creates a liminal space. I love making work that’s ethereal, that sends shivers down your spine, that makes you feel like there’s a presence in the room, so to speak.

A lot of it is rooted in conversations with folks about things as wild as particle physics and quantum mechanics as well as people’s experiences with their spirituality or their experiences with folks who have passed on, with their ancestors. I take two things that contrast—like hard science vs. spirituality—and try to show that they don’t have to be separate. There are places where they blend and they merge.

You recently had your first solo exhibition, ‘You can’t compromise
my joy,’ which we wrote about in C-VILLE Weekly. Tell me about that experience. What came out of that for you?

The biggest thing for me is just the confidence that I gained. I don’t know who has put this in our minds, but it feels like you have to have a solo show in order to be an artist. I know in my head that’s not right, but this show still gave me that confidence. Look what I did! Look what I accomplished! I planned and executed on an idea that had just been images in my head. I translated those ideas into reality.

But hearing people’s reaction was important, too. In my work, I want people to be part of the show. I want them to be present in it.

I had this twisted hair fringe at the front, which I titled ‘Did you just touch my hair?’ I wanted to make it clear that once you come through those twists—you couldn’t see through the gallery wall or the window, because there was a wall of hair there—you were in a Black woman’s headspace. You kind of intruded in, you parted through the hair. That resonated with people. They felt it. They left notes in the book that brought me to tears, because it had really translated. I think that’s the one of the most important things that an artist can do, to get people to feel.

So, it was just good to know that I could do it. Now I’m challenging myself. What else can I do? What more can I do? What’s next?

So what is next?

I’m sort of in an exploratory mode. I’m focusing right now on finishing a book I’ve been writing. I don’t have a title yet, but it’s a fantasy/science fiction series that I’d like to write. I’ve written the first book; I’m in the process of editing it now. It’s a young adult book. I’ve been writing it for a long time and things are finally solidifying, which is great.

In the photography realm, I’m working with a couple of ideas. The first idea is about our relationship to our ancestors. That’s another liminal space. Just like night and day exist at the same time at dusk and dawn, why can’t life and death exist in the same place or the same space? That’s my core idea, the core metaphor that I’m working with. I’ve created a few images from that which were recently on display at Studio IX. I’ll post them on my website soon.

I’m also going back to the theme of Black womanhood. I want to experiment with mixing weaving and photography to create personas of different Black women, and celebrating particular African-American names—your Keisha, your LaQuanda, your LaToya, those names that are so unique to African American culture. I want to find a way to bring those women to life.

Leather goods designer Daniel Foytik has had his share of adversity. Raised in a remote town in Siberia, Russia, he was diagnosed in 2004 with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease causing spinal fusion. About a year and a half ago, COVID-19 caused him to close his Charlottesville leather goods storefront on Second Street. Now, he’s going through an emotional divorce from his wife and business partner, Alisa.

Still, Foytik says none of that is going to stop him from continuing to make handcrafted products under the Foytik Leather name. “I need to work hard,” he says.

Foytik says he’s been fascinated with leather—“the smell, the touch, the pliability and durability”—since he was a child. Because of the remoteness of his birthplace, his family crafted homemade toys, instilling a DIY sensibility in him early on.

Foytik began his leatherworking career making sheaths for his own artisan knives. He soon started creating belts and wallets, as well. In 2012, Foytik moved to the United States and settled briefly in Rappahannock County. He and his wife wanted to buy a home and came across a list of the “10 happiest cities to raise a family.” Charlottesville was on the list.

Foytik and his wife opened the brick-and-mortar Foytik Leather shop in 2015. By then, he had expanded his product line, and today it includes dog collars (his most popular item), leashes, bags, camera straps, passport covers, smartphone covers, lanyards, and journals. He purchases most of his raw leather in half-hides from an Amish company in Ohio. Once in-house, Foytik stains, stamps, and finishes the leather, assembling his products and sending them to customers across the country.

Foytik doesn’t blame COVID entirely for his storefront closure. He says he may have grown too fast pre-pandemic, adding too many employees and sacrificing efficiency. Plus, he never saw the foot traffic he’d hoped for, and “the design of the product wasn’t really fit for Charlottesville clientele,” he says.

With the shop closed for the time being, Foytik is focused on his online Etsy store. Most of his customers these days live outside Charlottesville. Foytik says he rarely works on commission due to the long lead times but is constantly looking for new items to add to his line, and designs every product himself. 

“I like the newer stuff better than the old, but it is not always that people agree,” Foytik says. “When I create something one-of-a-kind, I get into the groove and get inspired.”

Foytik has also reworked his production approach and employs only two to three people at a time, depending on demand. He’s planning several pop-ups this summer and hopes to introduce a high-end product line. Perhaps most importantly, he’d like to reintroduce his passion to locals.

“If you think about it, there is no synthetic material that could completely replace leather,” Foytik says. “It is a perfect product.”

Daniel Foytik loves leather: ““the smell, the touch, the pliability and durability,” he says.