Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke star in Raymond & Ray. Photo: Apple TV.
Don’t skip the preview: The 35th annual Virginia Film Festival is less than two months away, and organizers are giving us a head start with the sneak preview screening of writer-director Rodrigo García’s comedy-drama, Raymond & Ray. Shot in Richmond, Virginia, the film stars Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke as estranged half-brothers who reunite at their father’s funeral. The screening will be accompanied by a discussion with García and producer Julie Lynn, a UVA alumna and VAFF advisory board member.
Sunday 9/25. $13, 2pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. virginiafilmfestival.org
The Cleopatra Project expands the collaboration between UVA Health System, the Blue Ridge Poison Center, and Virginia Master Naturalists with an educational booklet about poisonous animals, illustrated by members of Firnew Farm Artists’ Circle. Images courtesy of the artists.
Back in 2013, Alfred Goossens—a certified Virginia Master Naturalist—started to think about poisonous plants. How often, he wondered, were outdoor enthusiasts like him encountering species that might actually be harmful? “There are poisonous plants in our day-to-day life,” he says, “whether in the backyard or when you’re hiking, that many people don’t know about.”
He and some other Master Naturalists ended up talking with Dr. Chris Holstege, who’s not only a toxicologist in the UVA Health System, but also director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center and the Department of Student Health and Wellness. “I went to him and said, ‘How much do you see in the ER?’” Goossens explains. “The incidences were very high.”
It was the genesis of a multidisciplinary project meant to educate the public about plants—and, later, animals—that can cause trouble for the human body. Its called the Socrates Project, after the ancient Greek philosopher said to have been executed using the poisonous hemlock plant. The project brought together artists, naturalists and toxicologists to produce a free booklet published in 2020, featuring lovely artwork depicting 25 plants with ugly effects, plus information about how to identify them in the field.
By Berry Fowler.
Now there’s a follow-up called the Cleopatra Project (remember the legend of her suicide by snake bite?) that focuses on animals. The booklet will be published later this year, and as a preview, the lobby of the Student Health and Wellness Center is currently displaying many of the artworks and information for both plants and animals. Members of the Firnew Farm Artists’ Circle in Madison County have supplied the art.
“We’re trying to get students much more engaged in the outdoors,” says Dr. Holstege, explaining why the exhibition is located where students come for health care. “[Doctors are issuing] ‘nature prescriptions’ for everybody, not just students.” Anyone who lacks experience with the nastier local species would do well to bone up a little as they venture into the otherwise very healing great outdoors.
Holstege says that while some toxic species are very well known—think poison ivy—others might come as a surprise, like the beautiful but inedible berries of the pokeberry plant (Phytolacca americana). “Young kids eat them,” he says, “and they cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. They might have to go in for fluids because they get dehydrated.” Adults foraging for wild leeks, meanwhile, might mistakenly harvest American false hellebore (Veratrum viridae), which is potentially fatal.
On the animal side, snakes get a lot of attention, but spiders and caterpillars can also mess up your day. “We certainly get a number of black widow envenomations each year,” says Holstege. (By the way, if you’re wondering about the difference between venomous and poisonous, Holstege explains that venom is injected, as in a bite or sting, while poison enters through the skin or through eating.) The Cleopatra Project includes eight different troublesome caterpillars, five toads, two shrews with poisonous saliva, and even a jellyfish.
“The Eastern newt—it’s quite pretty, brilliant orange during its terrestrial stage—does have a poison in it,” Holstege says. “It could be a risk for pets.”
While it’s certainly important to be aware of these dangers, the project organizers stress that all the plants and animals have a place in our world. They are part of Virginia’s ecology, and some of the very chemicals that are hazardous to humans may also find uses in medicine. The beauty of the paintings, collages, and fabric pieces in the exhibition attests to the respect of the artists for these formidable life forms.
Goossens says that as a public service project, the booklets are not for sale but are distributed to state parks, school nurses, and Master Naturalist chapters. You can also view both projects online.
Even the most familiar species can cause unexpected trouble. “A lot of people don’t know that if you have an open burn or a field fire, and poison ivy burns,” says Holstege, “that toxin gets aerosolized and gets on your skin.” So be careful with those fall brush fires, and watch your step in the woods.
Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton star in the modern, grown-up fairy tale Three Thousand Years of Longing. Photo: United Artists.
Having masterminded the Mad Max franchise, Australian director George Miller could have spent his entire career making billions filming high-octane chases around a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Instead, he consistently chooses unusual, disparate projects, ranging from The Witches of Eastwick to the animated Happy Feet. His latest, Three Thousand Years of Longing, again proves he’s anything but one note.
Adapted from A. S. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Miller’s latest stars Tilda Swinton as Alithea Binnie, a repressed narratologist visiting Istanbul for a conference. She fatefully acquires a glass bottle containing a Djinn (Idris Elba), who she releases. Imprisoned in the bottle for around three millennia, the Djinn must now grant her the traditional three wishes, but Alithea, a specialist in stories, is acutely aware of how such wishes can backfire.
Desperate for his freedom, the Djinn attempts to convince her of his basic goodness by elaborately detailing various incarcerations and escapes, weaving major historical figures into his recollections.
In these tall tales, Three Thousand Years elegantly captures the feel of myths—not kids’ fairy tales, but mature myths loaded with murder and lust. When a director describes an adult-themed movie as a “fairy tale,” it’s likely to be half-baked magical realism, ridden with plot holes. Three Thousand Years, however, is a love letter to storytelling.
The Djinn’s yarns are genuinely mythical in scope, where each marvelous detail grows more extravagant. Miller uses this outsized material to comment on how, as human technology advances, our true sense of magic erodes. He echoes cinematic Arabian Nights classics like Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad without becoming derivative, and undercuts traditional notions of Djinns’ trickery.
Miller creates an atmosphere of wistfulness, laced with wry humor. Three Thousand Years marks a major shift away from the relentless pace of Mad Max: Fury Road. It moves leisurely without being slow, more like the original Mad Max, where quieter stretches let the audience get to know and like the characters before things get frantic.
Swinton and Elba give vulnerable, appealing, low-key performances that ground the film in believability and compassion. Every creative department delivers beautifully: the cinematography, costumes, and production design are all first-rate. It’s a visually sumptuous production where every penny spent on its intricate, rococo sets and opulent costumes is vibrantly apparent on screen. CG effects are used effectively, most notably in a standout sequence where Alithea discusses a childhood imaginary friend.
When a movie accomplishes as much as Three Thousand Years does, it’s hard to criticize it. The film’s well-written dialogue and inventiveness make it easy to forget how simple—and, at times, thin—its plot really is. It could be improved by raising the emotional stakes and tightening the story up overall. At its best, Three Thousand Years is a reminder of the far-flung, impossible places that movies can transport viewers to. With so many militantly dreary films in current circulation, the exoticism, romance, and humanity of Three Thousand Years combines for a magic carpet ride worth taking.
Merrie Mill Farm & Vineyard hosts its Art Festival on September 16. Photo: John Robinson.
In vino ars: Say so long to summer by enjoying wine and art at the Merrie Mill Farm & Vineyard Art Festival, a day-long showcase of local creatives. Sip on a sparkling white as you peruse works from 18 artists in a variety of mediums. And a crisp rosé pairs nicely with soulful blues-folk from The Mojo Parker Express. The fest also features demonstrations, including glassblowing by Katie B, oil painting by Emily Baker, and mural painting by Breana Field.
Light House Studio's 21st Annual Youth Film Festival features showings of 22 short films created by 90 students. Supplied photo.
Film stars: Behold the future of movies at Light House Studio’s 21st Annual Youth Film Festival. A celebration of the art of storytelling, the fest supports the org’s annual budget and offers a first-time viewing experience of 22 short films created by 90 student filmmakers in the past year. Get your blood pumping with a ghastly zombie chase, and be moved by beats from a selection of music videos written and performed by residents of juvenile detention centers. There’s a selection of documentaries, as well as hard-hitting films that tackle important issues such as tobacco use, climate change, and the pursuit of social justice.
Friday 9/9. $14-102.50, 7:30pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. lighthousestudio.org
In her memoir Bright, Kiki Petrosino relates her experience as a Black American of interracial background through fairy tales and literary references to Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and Dante. Supplied photo.
As a poet, Kiki Petrosino has published four collections, including most recently, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, and received the Pushcart Prize and the Rilke Prize, among other awards and fellowships. As a prose writer, her first full-length book, Bright: A Memoir, published in August, and she will give a reading from it on Friday, September 9, at New Dominion Bookshop.
C-VILLE Weekly: Though your poetry has embraced aspects of memoir, Bright marks your first book of prose exploring personal history. How did you decide to make this shift?
Kiki Petrosino: I consider this to be a really exciting expansion of my writing practice. Over the past several years, I became really intrigued by how difficult it is to write an essay. I can anticipate how it will feel to write a poem; I couldn’t anticipate how it would feel to write an essay but I wanted very much to write sentences and paragraphs and hear how my voice would sound in that form.
Once I finished my latest book of poetry, which was also a work of research, I realized that I had more to say on the topics of racial identity and background and upbringing. And I wondered if I could take some of the additional things I wanted to say, and the additional stories I wanted to tell, into a lyric prose form. I wanted to see if I could do it, I hoped that I would, and I wondered what I would sound like.
As an artist, I’m interested in different ways of making meaning, and poetry has been a set of forms that is capacious and expansive and allows me to investigate a number of different kinds of questions and to think about language in a particular way, and so I always value poetry for that. But, I also admire the way that essayists, whether they are lyric essayists, investigative writers, or personal memoirists, have been able to tell stories that also evoke emotion. I’m mostly a lyric poet, in the sense that I want my poems to evoke an emotion. Sometimes I tell stories but the stories are meant to make the reader feel what I am hoping that they will feel. More and more, I’ve become interested in the actual stories themselves, and prose might be a place where I can actually say what happened and also find language for talking about how it felt to be in that story or to guide the reader toward some kind of emotional impact. And that’s why some of the tools of lyric essay writing, such as juxtaposition or contrast or braiding—placing two stories next to each other so that the reader can understand the relationship between those two stories without the essayist having to explain it—are the kinds of prose forms that I’m interested in, because they actually link back to things that happen in poetry.
What led you to structure Bright around fairy tale interludes, and how do you hope that shapes the reader’s experience?
I am interested in the way that fairy tales are allegorical. Bright is a memoir that tells the story, in part, of my own life living as a Black American of interracial background. And because my external appearance announces that fact, what I often encounter, especially when I first meet people, is that I can tell that there is a story about me that they’re telling themselves. And those stories may or may not match up with my lived reality. In a society where, historically, the optical marker of race has been so determinative of someone’s experience, I wanted there to be a place where I talk about how I came to be but also how it feels to be this self. And so the language of fairy tales seemed to overlay quite well onto the kind of investigation I was making.
I also just really enjoyed writing one- or two-sentence fairy tales, and it was fun, over time, to be able to piece together a fairy tale where some parts of the story are told and a lot of the rest of the story is submerged into silence. For me, writing is not necessarily about explaining everything so that the reader can draw a map to where I want them to get. Often, with writing, I want to point a reader in a direction, not deliver them to the exact destination.
You write that, “To write a poem is to assert one’s attachment to the materiality of language, but it also requires the poet to assume the openhanded posture of a questioner.” What questions did you grapple with through this work?
I wanted the reader to understand the term “brightness,” and that it is both a physical description of someone’s appearance but that it also has these other meanings. It’s a superficial term that doesn’t speak to the interior life of the person being described. I wanted to ask what does it mean to me to have this descriptor applied to me and what relationship do I have to the term … to see if the memoir could allow me to claim that term in a way that is resonant for me and doesn’t necessarily connect to what other people say brightness is. As a person moving through the world, I want time to think about what I mean to myself. Being able to think explicitly about what my journey through the world has been was really rewarding because I went down some paths of inquiry that I wouldn’t have predicted.
As you explore the lives of your Black ancestors in Bright, you continue your work to examine the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, which is also a recurrent theme in your poetry. How has that evolved over the course of your work?
I continue to approach Jefferson with fascination and curiosity. That doesn’t mean I take an uncritical view of him, that I don’t see what his vision excluded as much as what it included. It means that I walk a line between those two modalities. For me, the generative place—the place where writing can happen—is in the space between absolutes. Jefferson is an incredibly complex figure. To read him solely as a hero or solely as a villain excludes other things we could be learning. And I always want to be in a position of learning.
His archive is so extensive, and so much of his archive is right here in Virginia and at UVA that his legacy also becomes an opportunity to explore what an archive can contain and exclude, and to listen carefully to how, for better or worse, an archive may “stand in” for or represent the legacy of a person who is no longer here in a physical sense. Archives also change, so I don’t feel that Jefferson is static in terms of his legacy. My relationship to that legacy continues to gain complexity, and I think that is exciting. It’s not a simple story.
Bright also explores your Italian grandfather’s life and death by suicide. How did you decide to include his story?
In White Blood, I have a sonnet sequence that talks about my student days at UVA, and my grandfather completed suicide during my second year at UVA. So that material is in those poems but I approach it in the way of poetry—it’s built and braided into this sonnet form.
In the memoir, I wanted to talk about how I would observe my Italian grandfather’s relationship with nature. In thinking about his influence on my life, I couldn’t not also talk about his death and how that affected me. Also, as it happened, I was majoring in English but minoring in Italian, which I had started studying because I wanted to learn his language. So, while I’m trying to learn this language and read the literature—encountering Dante’s Wood of the Suicides—in my memory, that corresponded to that particular moment of my grandfather’s death, and so it also points to how my literacy was shaped. It isn’t only the high points that have gone into making you who you are, but it’s also the grief. All of those things are marbled into experience and so I could not leave that out of the memoir.
What drew you to include the specific and wide-ranging literary references that you did?
What’s interesting is that when I wrote my last poetry book, I found myself pretending to be a kind of scholar—in the sense that I’m not a trained historian—and going into the archive, learning what the techniques of documentary poetry are. When I wrote my last poetry book, I found myself reading works of history, looking at primary sources. When I was writing the memoir, I was putting this together during the height of the pandemic and all the archives were closed. So what I had was my memory of what works of literature were in my personal lexicon, my own firmament of referentiality. I encountered Dante at a pivotal point in my literary education, so that work became entwined with my literacy. The same with Beowulf, with Shakespeare. So I wove together the memoir not having to do, and not being able to do, outside research, but thinking about the tangle of literacy that I could tell. Those are the works that came out.
Being able to attend the reading that Seamus Heaney gave in 2012, in London, was one of the most wonderful moments that I experienced as a poet. Being in a London audience listening to Seamus Heaney, especially reading that one poem, “Digging,” that’s probably his signal poem. Those are moments that, as a writer, I continue to think about and remember. They’re just these moments of luminous attention that have stayed with me.
Is there anything in particular that you’re excited to share with local readers at your upcoming event?
For me, writing becomes complete when it’s shared with other people. To be able to share this work that I was putting together during a time of really close quarantine and lockdown, and all the isolation that many artists felt, it’s going to be meaningful to actually bring that out into the world and speak it in words. And the audiences at New Dominion are always so wonderful. It’s going to be an honor to read there for the community.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema hosts a Steel Magnolias Drag Brunch on September 4. Photo: Tristar Pictures.
Steel a few moments: Celebrate friendship and love, and learn a few life lessons too, at a Steel Magnolias Drag Brunch. Don any shade of “blush and bashful,” tease up your hair, and enjoy the sweet Southern drawls of Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Sally Field as they navigate life in a small town. Munch on brunch classics, sip on coffee and cocktails, and make sure to arrive early for a live pre-show performance from local drag queens Bebe Gunn and Cherry Poppins.
Jay Simple, the executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, sees Ix Art Park’s new community-made mural as a message to the surrounding neighborhood: “I see you.” Photo: Eze Amos.
There’s a new wall mural at Ix Art Park. It’s an explosion of colors, shapes, and symbols. There are words of advice—“Be humble”—and statements of power—“Black women built this,” “Lesbian pride.” It’s made of hearts and rainbows and flowers and peace signs. And above it all, a bold and insistent proclamation: “There are Black people in the future.”
The quote by artist Alisha B. Wormsley calls to onlookers from across the street in large white letters. It’s a prophecy and a gesture of solidarity, advocating for more than just a Black presence in humanity’s far-off cosmic future, but also for Black lives and Black relevance in the near future—the future of changing neighborhoods and redrawn districts.
For Jay Simple, the new executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, which shepherds the Charlottesville Mural Project, the visibility of Wormsley’s quote from the street is paramount. The park sits across from Friendship Court, an affordable housing community, and so the work was carefully considered for its potential audience. “If you look at the current situation with gentrification in Charlottesville, you see they are actively, within that community, fighting for their right to be there,” says Simple. “So the idea of being able to see that wasn’t anything more for me than a way to be able to say ‘I see you.’”
While Simple acknowledges that the mural itself can’t change the struggles of families in Friendship Court, he knows the power of the work is in how it activates the community. The Ix mural was made not by a single artist but by 2022 Soul of Cville attendees, who had the opportunity to participate in group painting sessions. The artwork features a dotted outline of an Airstream, as it was initially to be a community-led ideas board for what the vehicle should look like, but clearly that shape couldn’t contain the enthusiasm of the artwork’s many contributors.
“The mural stands out to me because we did it together,” says Khalilah Jones, an Ix Art Park board member and image consultant.
“I was one of the first people to get to paint on that wall, and it felt liberating,” says Jones, who painted the words “Phoenix Rising” and “Stronger, wiser, better” on the wall as a reference to overcoming the deadly Unite the Right rally, which marked its fifth anniversary the same weekend as the festival. But like many local events, Soul of Cville and the Charlottesville Mural Project sought to uplift the community on a somber weekend. “That was what my theme was because of August 12, about resilience and unity and rising up from ashes and coming back strong, better, and wiser.”
“[If] you’re gonna put a mural somewhere … it needs to be a conversation with the public as well.” Jay Simple, Executive director of The Bridge. Photo: Eze Amos.
“They were all painting on that wall and acknowledging that, being Black, we have things to offer, we have a presence, and we’re not going anywhere,” says Jones. “And we’re to be celebrated just like the rest of the world is to be celebrated. And here’s a mural to remind you of it.”
There’s a more abstract idea behind the mural, however, something that speaks to the nature of arts institutions and of public art itself. As executive director of The Bridge, Simple is particularly concerned with what role an arts organization plays in a community. Public art can sometimes impose, either by being built without local input or by being physically obtrusive. The many Confederate monuments that have dotted the South are painful examples of this, as artwork that antagonizes and ignores communities. But, in other cases, even galleries can be unwelcome and considered agents of gentrification. Repairing that communication breakdown is key to Simple’s philosophy.
“I come into this position with the thought process that [if] you’re gonna put a mural somewhere, it can’t just be an endeavor between the institution and the artist, but it needs to be a conversation with the public as well about what’s going there,” says Simple, “because just two people can’t possibly parse out all the feelings one may have when they come to that public art.”
Simple was enamored with the arts from a young age. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Philadelphia, and as a child, his creative interests ran the gamut—he played saxophone, drew, and took up photography and theater, anything to express himself. And his parents encouraged his interest in the arts, which Simple considers an acknowledgment by them that “engaging with some clay or having to think about an idea and get it down on a piece of paper … are all these lessons that you can apply to the greater goals that you have in life.”
At a glance, Simple is a photographer. He earned his BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago, a master of liberal arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, in addition to holding a photo teaching position at The New School in New York (along with appointments at Longwood and VCU). But as an artist, Simple has never settled on a single discipline, preferring instead to keep a practice that incorporates elements from all sorts of mediums and traditions.
“Anything really that comes to mind, I give myself the agency, like, ‘Hey, I wanna do that, I can be a painter,’” he says.
Simple’s belief in independent creative liberation is at the core of his character as a leader. He believes that arts institutions like The Bridge are just one part of a thriving artistic community in a city, rather than an epicenter where what he calls “capital-A” art happens. And he considers the new Ix mural to be an example of the kind of relationship he hopes to have with Charlottesville, by “bringing art to the public where they’re at, and making it accessible for them to be able to engage with. But also to make that engagement something that can be meaningful for the people that have to see it on a regular basis.”
So, as Simple puts it, when someone goes for a jog, or heads out to grab something to eat, they’ll see that message from the street: “There are Black people in the future.” And unlike a statue that glares down at them, or a massive wall painting done by a single hand, it’s a group effort designed to uplift. Instead of imposing or advertising or directing, the mural insists. It beckons, it encourages, it has a conversation with the viewer. And that’s its true power.
Matalie Deane at Botanical Plant-Based Fare. All images courtesy of the galleries.
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 170 McCormick Rd., UVA Grounds. “No Unity Without Justice” centers around the work of UVA students and Charlottesville community racial justice activists who organized demonstrations and events that resulted in significant anti-fascist victories in response to Charlottesville’s 2017 Summer of Hate. Through October 29.
Botanical Plant-Based Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Acrylic works by Matalie Deane. Through October 4.
The Center at Belvedere 540 Belvedere Blvd. “Capturing the Color,” an art exhibit by The MidAtlantic Pastel Society. Through October 27. First Friday opening.
Central Library 201 E. Market St. In the third floor lobby, works by library staff member Dominic Brown.
Beverly Ress at Chroma Projects.Brittany Fan at The Garage.E. Porter at Studio Ix.
Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Light: Illusions” showcases recent works by Beverly Ress. Through September 30. First Friday opening.
Corner Gallery Campbell Hall, UVA School of Architecture. “In The Garden: A Comparative Study Of Public Parks In Paris,” features Howland Fellow Madeline Smith’s perceptions and experiences in eight different public green spaces in Paris. September 5-26.
Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd. “Stained Glass in the Dalle-de-Verre Technique” by Vee Ovalds. September 1-30.
Crozet Library 2020 Library Ave. Watercolors by John Russell.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Making the Cut—the Art of Paper Cutting by Ming,” showcases works in the traditional art of paper cutting by Ming Qiu Chen. First Friday opening.
The Fralin Museum of Art 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. New exhibitions include “Power Play: Reimagining Representation in Contemporary Photography,” “Earthly Exemplars: The Art of Buddhist Disciples and Teachers in Asia,” “The Little Museum of Art,” and “Kenji Nakahashi: Weighing Time.”
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “Witnessing Resistance,” images taken by photo-journalist Eze Amos between 2016 and 2017 that represent activist resistance to the alt-right. Through September 16.
Hannah England at Guild Gallery.Tim Burgess at UU Congregation of Charlottesville.R. Hamill at Studio Ix.
East Wing Gallery Campbell Hall, UVA School of Architecture. “Densifying In Place: Five Proposals For Inclusive Infill Housing By The Charlottesville Zoning Design Workshop” features five speculative design proposals representative of a range of architectural and topographic conditions across the city. Through September 13.
Elmaleh Gallery Campbell Hall, UVA School of Architecture. “Finding Virginia’s Freetowns,” a collaborative exhibition that documents Freetowns in Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, and Orange counties. Through September 8.
The Garage 100 E. Jefferson St. “In Season,” acrylic paintings on canvas and wood panel by Brittany Fan. Through September 28. First Friday opening.
Guild Gallery Inside Vault Virginia, 300 E. Main St. “The Future and Beyond,” works by Hannah England, Feixue Mei, Raneem Tarfa, and Sha Li in a variety of mediums, including acrylic paint, illustration, collage, and oil paint. Through October 14. First Friday event.
Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Bright Lines,” works by David Summers. Opens September 24.
Vee Ovalds at Crozet Artisan Depot.Ming Qiu Chen at Cville Arts Cooperative Gallery.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Vessels,” reduction linocuts by Maryanna Williams. In the First Floor Hallway, “There is another world, but it is inside this one,” recent mixed-media works by Anuja Jaitley and Jennifer Billingsly. In the Second Floor Hallway, “Reflections: From the Physical to the Metaphysical,” a McGuffey member show. In the Associate Gallery, “Good Humor: A Mini Show of Happy Art,” oil on panel by Mary Jane Check. Through October 2. First Friday opening.
New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Feed Them,” drawings by Warren Craghead III and paintings by Mara Sprafkin, made in collaboration with her children. Through September 23. First Friday opening.
Northside Library 705 Rio Rd. W. In the quiet room, works by Ellen Moore Osborne.
PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. Through September 9, the Annual Student Exhibition. Opening September 23, the Annual Faculty Exhibition and a retrospective of works from PVCC’s The Fall Line literary magazine. Through November 9.
Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “With a Thousand Other Heartbeats,” acrylic paintings by Kathleen Markowitz, and “Slant,” paintings by Don Crow. Through October 9.
Random Row Brewery 608 Preston Ave. Ste. A. “Art for Life,” an exhibit of pastel works by Joan Dreicer supporting the UVA Cancer Center. Through October 31.
Ruffin Gallery 179 Culbreth Rd. “The Transubstantiation of Shoe Polish,” works by Michelle Gagliano. Through September 23.
Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “Teeny Tiny Trifecta 5,” the fifth annual group exhibition and fundraiser. In the Dové Gallery, an artist-in-residence exhibition featuring Somé Louis. Through September 30. First Friday openings.
Shenandoah Valley Art Center 126 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. In the Cabell/Arehart Invitational Gallery, the annual exhibition by the Virginia Watercolor Society. Through September 23.
Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “Inspired by Gauguin’s Tahiti,” a group exhibition from Fiber and Stitch Art Collective that reinterprets the bold forms, colors, and themes of Gauguin’s exotic Tahitian locales. Through September 25. First Friday opening. Artist talk and happy hour September 22.
Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “Whereabouts,” works by Andrew Sherogan. Through September.
UU Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. “Connections,” paintings by Tim Burgess. Through September 30.
Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “This is the Place,” mixed media by JaVori Warren and Megan Richards, Freeman Artists in Residence. Through October 2. First Friday opening.
Journalist and bestselling author Beth Macy addresses the complexities of addiction and healing in Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. Supplied photo.
Virginia journalist and bestselling author Beth Macy returns this week with Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. The book builds off her previous book, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. While Dopesick traced Purdue Pharma’s orchestration of the opioid epidemic and shared stories of those caught in the crisis, Raising Lazarus examines the recent legal machinations of the Sackler family (Purdue Pharma founders) while highlighting the work of harm reductionists working to make care more accessible for people who use opioids.
For those new to the topic, Macy provides a nuanced history of drug use and treatment in America, examining racist, classist, and anti-immigrant policies—from the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 to Nixon’s War on Drugs—that have led to almost 110,000 deaths from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2021, with opioids accounting for approximately 75 percent of those, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As Macy argues though, this does not have to be the state of things—and in most other countries, it simply is not. Opioid and substance use disorders are medically treatable, and there are proven models for community-based harm reduction; the social stigma and societal problems at the root of the American overdose epidemic, however, are more difficult to address.
“America remains the only developed country where it’s easier to get high than it is to get help,” Macy writes. The terrible reality is that 90 percent of Americans with a substance use disorder do not receive treatment, a theme that Macy returns to time and again: Public health infrastructure in the U.S. needs to be reimagined in ways that are informed by people who use drugs and people who have been working for years to meet the needs of their affected communities, with or without institutional support.
Macy’s decision to focus on “the people who weren’t waiting around for justice” introduces an assortment of folks working day and night with limited resources, often on a hyper-local level, in the face of the ongoing opioid epidemic. Her subjects range from nurse practitioner Tim Nolan, who provides mobile testing and treatment, to photographer Nan Goldin, who organized die-ins to raise awareness of the Sackler family’s involvement in the opioid epidemic, and Lill Prosperino, a nonbinary public health “hill witch” in West Virginia, home of the highest overdose rate.
Throughout Raising Lazarus, Macy is no-nonsense, calling out the bullshitters while sharing the struggles and successes of those whose work she celebrates. The personal stories included in the book are devastating, and patience is necessary to find glimpses of hope amidst the overwhelming severity of the problem. Some communities are more open to harm reduction than others, and the people she highlights so passionately are human too. This is a story of the messy middle, with hindsight to explain how we got here, insight into how we might move forward, but without a concrete conclusion, as there is still much work to be done.
Despite the fact that “roughly one in five Americans uses illegal drugs,” according to Macy, social stigma and shaming are hardwired in our culture, reinforcing ideas about “tough love” as a response to drug use despite decades of data demonstrating that this does not work. Raising Lazarus offers wide-ranging alternatives, from “the lowest of the low-hanging fruit” like drug court to radical ideas of safe consumption sites, and middle-ground options such as increased access to addiction medicines like buprenorphine.
For now, 90 percent of physicians still “refuse to prescribe addiction medicines because they don’t want ‘those people in [their] waiting room,’” writes Macy. Indeed, there is a dramatic lack of well-resourced programs that are accessible to the people who need them, many of whom are also grappling with other health concerns. Numerous treatment programs continue to be abstinence-only or include mandatory counseling, both of which are exclusionary and ineffective. Simply put, there is no single treatment strategy that will work for every person.
Given this, it is unsurprising that Macy does not have an answer to this complex and evolving epidemic. However, she does provide action items, including basic human rights like housing and universal health care. She also references sociologist Damon Centola, whose work suggests that dramatic social change—of the sort needed here—is possible when “just 25 percent of people are committed to changing the status quo.” In other words, change is possible through the efforts of individuals like those highlighted in Raising Lazarus, advocates like Macy herself, and community members who are willing to get to work.
In the Charlottesville area, resources include the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition, a peer-run nonprofit that uses evidence-based solutions to improve the health of the people who use drugs, and Cville Area Harm Reduction, which works to provide free naloxone, sterile syringes, and fentanyl test strips. In addition, free opioid reversal training is offered by the Blue Ridge Health District, On Our Own of Charlottesville, and Region Ten. Learn more about these and other resources for addiction, substance, and overdose prevention and treatment through the Community Mental Health and Wellness Coalition at helphappenshere.org.
Raising Lazarus is available through local booksellers and libraries. Macy will be featured during a free in-person and livestreamed event on Tuesday, August 23, at 6pm, hosted by the Library of Virginia. Learn more at va.virginia.gov/eventscalendar.
