Tag: Studio Ix

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Arts Culture

Moving tributes

“A Good Cry” by Derrick J. Waller will be on display at Studio IX Gallery through December 31. Image courtesy of the artist

The act of running can be solitary and isolating—a way to get the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day and nothing more. “To be honest, I don’t like running,” says Derrick J. Waller. “I’m not sure if I will ever like running.” Surprisingly, Waller is a member of the local Prolyfyck Run Creww.

Prolyfyck isn’t just an exercise group. The organization was founded by runner William Jones III over a decade ago, when he realized he wasn’t seeing many other Black runners. The support he received when he ran through Charlottesville’s predominantly Black neighborhoods led him to start the group’s first iteration, Run These Streets, alongside James Dowell and Dr. Wes Bellamy. Later rebranded as the Prolyfyck Run Creww, (from Nipsey Hussle’s song “Victory Lap”), the group rejects the suppression and co-opting of the talent of Black and brown people by celebrating running, and working for the empowerment of the community.

Three mornings a week, runners meet in front of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and embark on a walk, run, or jog (all levels of athleticism are welcome). The workouts raise awareness and funds for local causes including The Uhuru Foundation, B.U.C.K. Squad, and Reclaimed Hope Initiative, as well as for PTSD awareness, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and the #stopasianhate movement. PRC also hosts annual teen gift card and toy drives to support local kids.

Running with Prolyfyck is about more than breaking a sweat. “It’s building mental toughness that I can apply throughout life,” says Waller. “This crew means everything to me because they encourage me to accomplish. This is my family.”

Waller, a documentary photographer, began photographing the Prolyfyck Run Creww in 2019. “I had no clue if the group would want to use my pictures or not, but I figured shooting the events would be good practice for me.” Three years later, he has carefully combed through thousands of images to create his debut solo exhibition, “A Good Cry.”

Images courtesy of the artist

“A Good Cry” at Studio IX tells the story of a community filled with love, hope, joy, and growth. “The Creww welcomes all,” Waller says. “However, a major focus is the empowerment of those in the historically marginalized Black and brown communities. My goal was to show this through the work. I want us to be seen. I want us to be heard. I want us to be felt.”

Waller’s black-and-white photographs capture moments of human connection: Runners hustle up hills, faces contorted in agony or glee, toward finish lines teeming with cheering teammates. Hugs of relief and triumph are shared, and a small tap on the back offers support mid-run. Children run alongside the adults, and fathers hold their victorious sons on their shoulders.

Family was a driving force for Waller when creating “A Good Cry,” which is dedicated to his late mother, who passed away 10 years ago this month. “It was her unexpected passing that led me to photography,” he says. “It was the wake-up call for me to stop thinking about picking up a camera and actually do it.” He had his camera ready years later when his 4-month-old daughter was laying in bed, and stuck her little fist up. The resulting image is a serene portrayal of hope and strength—a chubby baby’s fist raised upward, surrounded by ethereal light.

Other moments of quiet strength appear throughout “A Good Cry.” One large photograph shows William Jones III almost entirely submerged in the Rivanna River, his fists and head held above water, a look of intense focus on his face. Nothing strange about that—except it was February and the temperature was below 20 degrees. “Will mentioned that he was going to do some natural cryotherapy and take a dip in the Rivanna,” says Waller. “I don’t think anyone believed him.” Waller snapped his shots during Jones’ brave three-minute dip.

“A Good Cry” is on display at Studio IX as part of The Prolyfyck Exhibition Series, a year-long program in support of local artists who run, and organizations that work to uplift our community. The idea for an art show came when Creww member and Studio IX curator Greg Kelly realized this group of everyday athletes had something else in common. “It became apparent that the Prolyfyck community included a number of artists, some of whom had never seen themselves as such or shown their work before,” says Kelly.

Every month, a different artist from the Creww exhibits work and chooses a local organization as the beneficiary of artwork sales. Waller chose to support Cultivate Charlottesville, a local non-profit working to create food equity, which fosters a community garden on the Prolyfyck Run Creww’s regular route through the city.

Clearly not in it just for the exercise, Waller includes an inspiring excerpt from Prolyfyck’s mission statement in his exhibition: “working together with a spirit of unity and love to create a world where everyone can be prolyfyck!”

“It’s just running, right?” says Waller. “I dare you to come find out.”

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Arts Culture

Pick: Asha Greer

A daily Japanese tea service at Studio IX will pay tribute to Greer. Photo: Asha Greer

About Asha: A quote on Asha Greer’s website reads, “Consider the purpose of life as living.” This says as much about Greer’s artistry as it does about her deeply spiritual pursuits. Charlottesville peers refer to Greer as a legend in the community, and say her humanity has touched lives around the planet. “Celebrating the Work & Life of Asha Greer” is a retrospective that captures the artist’s experience as a mother, nurse, teacher, gardener, tea student, and friend. A daily Japanese tea service will pay tribute to her decades of guidance in meditation and practices of presence.

Through 10/17. Free, times vary. Studio IX, 969 Second St., SE. asha-greer.com.

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Arts Culture

Spring emergence

Mary Michaela Murray’s “Emancipation.”

By Sarah Sargent

According to Greek mythology, Hades, lord of the underwold, fell in love with Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. Hades kidnapped Persephone and pulled her down to his subterranean kingdom, until Zeus intervened and freed her. During her time in the underworld, however, Persephone ate a handful of pomegranate seeds. Because she’d tasted the food of the dead, she was forced to return for a few months every year. During those months, Demeter became sad, leaving the earth barren and causing winter. Persephone’s annual ascent would cheer her mother up again, bringing spring.

“Persephone Ascending: A Multi-site Group Show of Virginia Women Artists” at Chroma Projects/Vault Virginia, Studio IX, and a number of storefront windows along the Downtown Mall and off Harris Street, presents different voices, viewpoints, and interpretations of the myth. (A full list of artists in the show can be found at chromaprojects.com.)

“When I started planning this, the Downtown Mall was full of empty storefronts,” says Chroma Projects Director Deborah McLeod. “Walking along and seeing all that sadness and dearth, it just pulled you down.” Expanding the exhibition into those vacant places seemed like the perfect antidote, but managers of the unleased spaces were hesitant to display work that might turn off potential lessors. So McLeod turned to businesses to display the work. These include Water Street Studios (Renee Balfour), C-VILLE Weekly (Bolanle Adeboye), Silverchair (Barbara MacCallum), 2nd Act Books (Rose Guterbock), My Dance Shoppe (Megan Hillary), Uplift Thrift (Nina Burke), and Rethreads (Dawn Hansen and Ann Ray).

Naturally, pomegranates figure largely in the show. Susanne Arnold uses an actual one to form her figure’s body in “Persephone Rising.” Linda Wachtmeister’s halved pomegranate (“Consequential”) references Persephone’s bifurcated existence. A reduced palette of hot pinks and grays and a graphic style make the images pop. Undulating lines dotted with white seed-like shapes pulse away from the pomegranate, suggesting the ripple effect of Persephone’s consumption.

Alexandria Searls’ stunning photo collage, “The Face of Persephone,” has an appealing hard-candy lusciousness. The composition depicts a dangling plastic baggie containing two pomegranates. As if emanating from it, a miasma of fleeting images, including Persephone’s face, hovers above. The blurry collage contrasts elegantly with the crystalline quality of the shiny, red pomegranates sheathed in translucent plastic. 

How do you point out the entrenched racism and subjugation of women that exists within the world of classical ballet? With adorable little ballerina apples dancing across a stage. Megan Hillary’s “Of Pomegranates and Freshly Peeled Apples” alludes to a George Balanchine quote that describes how a dancer’s skin should be as pale as the flesh of an unskinned apple, i.e. never exposed to sun. While excluding dancers of color altogether, the quote also sets up parallels between Balanchine’s sun-deprived dancers and Persephone, who is also kept away from the sun by a powerful, controlling male. Hillary likens the rising of Persephone to the strides that have been made in ballet, as evidenced by toe shoes on the periphery of the piece that hail the (shockingly recent) introduction of different skin tone-hued ballet slippers. 

Chuxin Zhang’s poignant “Emergence” uses a found piece of driftwood with silver and white clay to depict Persephone’s/spring’s return. The snow that has encased the figure is melting and breaking apart, leaving little drifts that trail behind her. You can see wings tightly folded at her side as within a chrysalis—a suggestion that she will soon fly away and soar.

Other works less literally tied to Persephone’s story include the breaking laces of the corset, which represent the casting off of the trammels of female confinement, in Michelle Gagliano and Beatrix Ost’s “The Persimmon Burst.” Rosamond Casey’s “The Something Else that Had Been Lurking All Along Beneath the Thing that Was” exudes a distinct malevolence that dovetails with our idea of the underworld. There’s a decidedly corporal quality to the rent and moist looking “ductwork” that runs up through the center of the piece. One thinks of an esophageal tunnel, a discarded chrysalis, the interior of a stem, or perhaps Persephone’s route back from Hades ripped open by her flight.

Polly Breckenridge and Allyson Mellberg-Taylor attack the prompt through the aesthetic of vintage commercial art. It is quiet, but it packs a punch. Breckenridge’s “Qui Tacet Consentire Videtur” (they who are silent, appear to consent) pairs drawings of girls in different poses, possibly taken from some kind of manual on the human figure or pattern book, together with a variety of the patronizing things men (mostly) say to women and girls. Breckenridge uses glitter, a childish pencil scrawl, and smudged erasures to drive home the point that this indoctrination starts early.

Mellberg-Taylor’s message may be more oblique, but we see in the contemptuous gaze of the woman in “The Radish Cycle” someone who’s not going to take any shit from anybody despite what you might think of her overabundant collar of leaves. Mellberg-Taylor’s women seem to maintain their equanimity (and power) in spite of the strange circumstances they find themselves in. 

Persephone ascending back into the world is a celebration of the return of spring. It takes on enhanced significance this year as we emerge from the winter of COVID-19 into a vernal season full of promise, thanks to vaccines. And of course, as these artists have shown us, Persephone is a potent allegory of female empowerment whose relevance continues today.

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Arts Culture

To hell and back

Michelle Gagliano and Stuart Gunter’s collaborative reinterpretation of Dante’s Inferno is featured in a virtual artist talk and happy hour hosted by the Gallery at IX on December 3 at 5pm. Photo courtesy of the artist

Years before the 2020 pandemic, artist Michelle Gagliano developed a fascination with Dante’s Inferno and set out to interpret each of the poem’s 34 cantos through one painting per week. She completed the project, and exhibited it in 2017. But as the virus and social and political unrest escalated this spring, the work called her back. She knew there was hope in Dante’s journey through hell, and she wanted to convey that to the modern world. Enlisting poet/musician Stuart Gunter to react to her work, Gagliano then combined Gunter’s prose with her paintings to create a book. Originally intended for her sons, the collection evolved into a playful, hopeful, reinterpretation of optimism, just like Dante’s quote: “I saw the beautiful things that the sky holds: and we issued out, from there, to see, again, the stars.” 

Michelle Gagliano: “My favorite during this period of a boiling political climate is Canto 12, ‘Violence Against Neighbors,’ or ‘Neighbors Against Neighbors.’ The image portrays two couples staring at each other, one sitting on a big lawn mower, their chins jutted out with angry faces and attitudes. Suburban anger. I painted the background with an image of a clogged artery, thinking how internally toxic we’ve become. Dante traveled inward to self-reflection, and part of that means confronting issues clogging us all.”

Stuart Gunter: “I think the whole idea is a testament to Michelle’s artistry—as far as we can determine, she is the first female artist to reinterpret Dante’s Inferno. Her whimsical but intense treatment of each canto really makes me think hell is all the more beautiful and all the more daunting. I think ‘An Everlasting Quarrel’ (Canto 30) is pertinent these days—it puts me in mind of a story I recently heard about a Nelson County octogenarian discussing the fact that if anyone stepped onto her property to install the pipeline that was recently defeated, she would simply shoot them.”

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Culture

Less is more: Grace Ho’s virtual exhibition ‘Solace’ transcends the online gallery

Grace Ho’s “Solace” is online at StudioIX.com through June 30. Courtesy of artist

By Ramona Martinez 

The paintings in “Solace,” shown this month on Studio IX’s virtual gallery, are large. Most of them are three-by-four feet, and would doubtless be particularly compelling in person. But it is a testament to Grace Ho’s voice as an artist that, even on a computer screen, her work leaves a big impression.

In striking black and white, Venus-like figures are closely cropped in minimalist compositions. There is a keen sense of design here, and an almost intuitive understanding of the power of efficiency. To be able to depict a figure with just a few marks brings to mind artists like Matisse and Picasso—and “Solace” is in conversation with those masters.

Artist Grace Ho. Image courtesy subject

“Less is more, if you can swing it,” says Studio IX Gallery Curator Greg Antrim Kelly, “and Grace certainly can.”

That approach is due to her other line of work: Ho is a digital designer at WillowTree, a mobile app and web development company in Charlottesville. She began painting a few years ago because she wanted to find “something outside of work.” Ho describes her past art experience as “drawing here and there,” though on her website she has posted a devastatingly effortless portrait of Jimi Hendrix that would make Egon Schiele take a second look.

The show consists of 16 pieces: nine large paintings and a series of smaller, stream-of-consciousness drawings. The drawings were inspired in part by an Ecuadorian artist based in Brooklyn named Juan Miguel Marin, who creates large, black-and-white vortices with a Sharpie, based on what’s going on around him at live events. Ho aims to emulate that free-spirited approach in these smaller pieces. She cites Marin as one of her biggest influences, but the strongest works in her show were clearly developed independent of his style.

“Solace,” a theme chosen pre-coronavirus, is about the beauty of being alone with one’s self and present in the physical body. The figures in her paintings are bodies of mothers and middle-aged women, close-ups of how curves look while the back is arched or while lying down. There are rolls of fat and saggy bellies, but they are elegant and sensual. Although the aesthetic is very modern, the figures themselves are more classical. You can feel their weight, plump and soft.

“Everybody’s trying to be so perfect, using visual tools to tune their body,” says Ho. “That’s why I wanted to paint some of the ‘imperfections’ that are beautiful and human.”

Image courtesy of the artist

Offline and alone, the women in these paintings are not performing. And if you know anything about the history of figurative art, this is significant. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger writes, “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.”

Art for centuries has reflected this; in fact, the whole genre of the reclining nude basically came about so kings could have pictures of their mistresses to show off. Even as a woman artist, avoiding this patriarchal tradition takes real effort. Ho has managed to banish the male gaze from this figurative series. It feels like we are looking in on a private moment, but not voyeuristically.

Another notable element of this series is the sense of space. In “Rest” and “Rise,” the figures look mountainous, and the composition almost becomes a landscape. Here the figures are echoing their natural source. The choice to use black and white also affects the perception of depth. In “Curve,” a remarkable work composed of only five white marks, the mainly black composition creates a void that gives us a sense of infinite space. In the future, Ho is interested in exploring painting that uses pigments found in nature. Thematically this makes sense, as her work is already tapped into something very organic.

Two other paintings are worth mentioning separately: “Figure,” on a black canvas with white paint, is more experimental than the other work, and it is Ho’s favorite piece in the show. We can make out a head, a waist, and a woman’s bottom, but the rendering is much looser. There is movement in this piece that pushes your eyes around the composition, and it is absorbing, even though there isn’t technically much paint on the canvas at all.

“Solace” ends on a personal note with “Ru,” a charcoal drawing of a mother and child on acrylic. Ho made it while she was feeling homesick, and thinking of her childhood in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She says she thinks of her mother a lot when she paints. “Ru” is reminiscent of the genre paintings, or scenes of domestic life, that women artists turned to instead of figurative work (from which they were barred for centuries). There is something beautifully poetic about a figurative show ending with a return to this tradition. “Solace” returns us, in many ways, to our roots.

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Arts

All in good fun: ‘Retrospective’ at IX spans 15 years and thousands of holidays

Every day is a holiday for Eliza Evans and Virginia Rieley, even if it’s made up. The childhood friends have been collaborating on humor, art, and calendars for more than 15 years. Their “Retrospective” show is on view at Studio IX through February 2.

Two days before the opening of their joint show at Studio IX, Virginia Rieley and Eliza Evans are together in the gallery space, spreading their art multi-dimensionally throughout the room. Evans is on a ladder, hanging dried gourds that she grew in her garden and then used as portrait canvases. Rieley stands in front of a long table, contemplating pages of the calendars the two artists have created every year since 2006. She’s trying to figure out how to represent 15 years’ worth of calendars on one wall. It’s big, but not that big.

The art in this show—simply and aptly called “Retrospective”—spans a lot of time within the boundaries of greater Charlottesville. The women are true locals and their friendship is local too, having begun when they were grade schoolers at Red Hill Elementary. In some ways, their collaboration reaches back to those childhood days. “The comedy thing came first—we would make each other laugh,” says Evans.

“We’d make rhyming poems,” says Rieley. “And little songs,” adds Evans.

Since Evans’ father, John Borden Evans, is a well-known local painter, “There was always paint around,” says Evans. Being an artist seemed natural.

The other walls of the gallery feature individual work: Evans’ portraits and Rieley’s collages. It was while Rieley and Evans were living together in Scottsville, around 2006, that Evans painted her first portraits of friends, in the form of a mural inside their shared house. She realized she’d tapped into a rich vein. Portraits—mostly simple, frontal portraits painted on wood, with a solid background color—soon became her signature.

“I really like people,” she says, “and I always paint from life.” For several years before her children were born, she was known for setting up a mobile studio on the Downtown Mall and doing on-the-spot portraits. Many of the 180 or so portraits that cover the long wall in this gallery—arranged so the background colors form an enormous rainbow—come from those mall sessions, and picture people who let Evans borrow the pieces back for this show. Then there are the ones she painted “of people without a job, who were sitting there talking to me anyway,” she remembers. “I accumulated quite a few.”

The show includes newer works too, and taken as a whole, they record a Charlottesville era. A lot of viewers will probably spot several faces they know on this wall. There are couples, kids, dogs and cats. “It’s history, but it’s not a photo,” Evans says. “It’s an impression.” Most of her subjects aren’t smiling or presenting themselves too self-consciously; one senses that Evans’ easy manner has allowed them to sit still and look back at her, even as she closely observes them. The portraits honor people in detail and spirit.

Evans doesn’t think her style has changed much over the years, but she says she’s gotten more efficient. “There used to always be a moment when I wasn’t sure it would come together, but now I never have a doubt,” she says. “I just do it.”

Rieley’s work, meanwhile, focuses on the local settings that the people in Evans’ portraits probably know well. Her collages—constructed from photos, watercolor, and ink—will feel familiar to anyone who’s lived in Charlottesville, with their mix of iconic and ordinary spots around town. Serpentine walls and the Beta Bridge are here, but so are modest streetscapes and anonymous garages. “I’ve been honing the formula over the last 10 years,” she says.

These images have often become backgrounds for the pages of the calendar that Evans and Rieley have created together for the last decade and a half. Though the images—which layer Evans’ portraits over Rieley’s collages, and sometimes include rhyming poems à la their school days—are appealing, the calendar’s real claim to fame is captured in its moniker: Every Day Is a Holiday.

The concept arose when both artists worked at the farm known as The Best Of What’s Around. One of them wondered aloud when the next holiday was, but then realized that the month of August is bereft of holidays. So Rieley and Evans started inventing their own reasons to celebrate and marking them on a calendar.

These run the gamut: Notice Your Privilege Day, Swimming Day, Do Someone A Favor Day, Kissing Day. Each one is lettered onto its square in Rieley’s neat hand. Over 15 years, some holidays have remained attached to their dates while others have shifted or been replaced.

Meanwhile, each year, the duo have come up with a slightly different concept for filling the upper calendar page, the one that features an image. Sometimes they’ve focused more on text in decorative frames, sometimes on landscapes. To represent the calendars in this show, they’ll choose eight complete years to tack up on that big wall—a sprawling grid of local people, places, and homegrown holidays. (If you’re interested in the 2020 version, look for it on Etsy.)

All the calendars—true to the concept—grow from the same spirit of celebration, not to mention freewheeling creativity. (Poem next to a portrait of a young, serious-looking man: “My name is Patrick. / I’m handsome and nice. / Lately I’ve been making / really good fried rice.”)

“We don’t take ourselves super-seriously,” says Rieley. “But we’re both perfectionists,” adds Evans. Rieley clarifies: “We want it to be enjoyed.”

Eliza Evans and Virginia Rieley’s “Retrospective” show is on view at Studio IX through February 2.

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Arts

Ripple effect: Environmental action motivates a water-focused show at IX gallery

Portland, Oregon, artist Thea Gahr’s Risograph print is part of “Wellspring: A Portfolio of Prints Celebrating Water,” on display at The Gallery at Studio IX through September 1. Image courtesy artist

A little boy stares into a river while ghostly shadows move through the current. The long, lithe bodies could be lost souls or river spirits, past lives or unspoken dreams, but whatever life force they represent, they’re rushing onward away from the boy—and away from you, the passive observer. The headline reads, “What we do to water, we do to ourselves.”

The image is one of 13 Risograph prints that comprise “Wellspring: A Portfolio of Prints Celebrating Water,” at The Gallery at Studio IX. Created by artists from the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and curated by Sarah Lawson, the show features work that asks viewers to do more than sit idly by. Rather, it asks us to reflect on our own relationships to water, consider the critical role it plays in our lives, and hold the baton of preservation, prevention, or management in a rapidly changing world.

“For me, engaging with others’ art is a way to grapple with issues that are sometimes too complex to try to address head-on,” Lawson says in an email interview with C-VILLE. That same spirit moves Justseeds, the collective of 29 artists across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, who work together to produce collective portfolios and other creative responses to contemporary struggles for justice, from environmental and racial equity to migrant issues and the prison-industrial complex.

Molly Fair

“For this exhibit specifically, I hope that people find the art interesting to look at and engaging to think about, but that it’s also a chance to get your feet wet and hopefully become motivated to take some sort of environmental action,” Lawson says. Though she recommends simple shifts like reducing water waste through more efficient appliances, donating to non-profits, or calling representatives about water-related issues like pipelines, the exhibit itself stops short of prescriptions.

According to the artists’ statement for Wellspring, “These graphic tools are for you, as a human that recognizes that you need clean water to continue to be. The messages can be used for uniting, inspiring, warning, inciting, animating, empowering, invigorating.” Rather than focus on specific struggles over water—such as contamination in Flint, droughts in California, or the Pacific Garbage Patch, among other issues mentioned in the statement—each print leaves room for personal interpretation.

The final exhibition offers a broad swath of creative concepts to generate viewer inquiry and impact. In response to the water theme, each artist created a unique visual they rendered via Risograph, a printing process akin to automated screen printing. By pressing single shades of vibrant ink onto paper, then layering new colors and images on top, the artists developed multi-dimensional work with a vintage feel.

Each piece takes a different approach to the topic of water. In one, two frigate birds swan dive alongside a polar bear poised atop a towering iceberg; the root of the ice feeds choppy blue waves through which jellyfish glide. In another, neon pink and blue raindrops scatter across the word “commonwealth,” simultaneously conjuring visions of Virginia and the universal wealth water provides.

Roger Peet

Calls for change range from literal, like Colin Mathes’ doodles and handwritten list of improvised water filters; to pointed, like Erik Ruin’s whale emerging from a whirlpool of trash; to abstract, like Josh MacPhee’s graphic blue-and-green grid embedded with the words “aqua para todos!” In the gallery itself, art pieces are punctuated by quotes from scientific and political commentaries on the contemporary state of water in our world.

Regardless of the clarity or obfuscation of storytelling, the overall message of the exhibit is clear: There are as many ways of approaching and working with contemporary water issues as there are voices communicating what’s possible.

Lawson says this diverse artistic conversation seeks to soothe viewers and would-be activists rather than overwhelm them. Given the scope of issues like climate change and global water pollution, “it can be really difficult to focus on [these problems] in any meaningful or sustained way without feeling like we’re doomed,” she says. “This exhibit attempts to create small moments of engagement with the issues, through each interaction with one of the prints, in order to foster awareness and concern but in a way that doesn’t make change seem impossible.”

In this way, an exhibition like “Wellspring” can become “a useful buoy in a sea of bad news,” as the artists say in their statement. Like the little boy watching spirits of past and future flow beneath the surface, we have the chance to reflect on what is, in order to change what could be.

“Wellspring: A Portfolio of Prints Celebrating Water” is on view at The Gallery at Studio IX through September 1.

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C-BIZ

The future of work: Shared spaces abound in C’ville

James Barton of Studio IX and Vault Virginia says coworking spaces help fulfill the needs of the modern worker. Photo: Stephen Barling

Throughout modern history, certain movements have changed how we work—the Industrial Revolution, the birth of the personal computer, and more recently, the arrival of social media. These transformations have also changed where we work (and even when we want to work).

Are you an anti-9-to-5-er who likes working for yourself? An entrepreneur who isn’t ready to commit to an office lease? Or maybe you’re a side hustler, freelancer, or teleworker who likes the flexibility of working wherever you want, but still craves connection and collaboration?

Then coworking has probably crossed your mind. And Charlottesville—as small of a city as it is—is replete with shared work environments and options to suit various work needs and styles.

Studio IX, co-founded in 2014 by Natalie and James Barton in a former textile factory on Second Street, was one of the first co-working spaces to hit the scene.

“In the modern digital renaissance, information technology has created new industries and new options for organizing ourselves,” James Barton says. Out were factories and corporate offices, he adds, and in were home offices and coffee shops. Then coworking spaces came along to fill in the gaps, “allowing people to share resources and, more importantly, experience connection as well as personal and professional growth through daily engagement with communities of peers.”

At Studio IX, you can grab a $30 day pass, or choose from a menu of four different memberships, including $800 to $1,500 monthly private office options. Workers gain access to such amenities as high-speed internet, soundproof booths for private calls, conference rooms available for booking, all the freshly roasted coffee you can guzzle, and a light-infused industrial work space.

Five years later, recognizing the trend was still on the rise, Barton founded his second coworking endeavor, Vault Virginia, in a former bank building on the Downtown Mall. At the multi-floor, 25,000 square foot Vault, day passes are $50, while on the high end, private office memberships run up to $700 to $2,500 per month, with various options in between.

“Studio IX and Vault Virginia are both focused on creating ideal work experiences for our members,” Barton says. “Beyond the essential furnished, open workspaces and private offices, there are shared kitchens, meeting rooms, multi-purposed gallery spaces, event spaces—and in development, functional ‘labs’ for various kinds of creative production.”

Barton says Studio IX and Vault Virginia members tend to be freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small teams, or those who work remotely for larger organizations.

While it doesn’t bill itself as a coworking space, Common House, a Downtown Mall social club and gathering space, is also a place where members can break out their laptops and work communally.

“Often freelancers and entrepreneurs [and so on] are working from home or hopping anonymously between coffee shops,” says Derek Sieg, Common House co-founder. “Membership to Common House compliments the freedom you get from a freelancing [or] self-employed job with a full slate of curated programming and social opportunities that can lead to a friendship or collaborator or some well-timed inspiration,” he says.

If you are looking for something a tad homey-er, The Farm House in the 10th and Page neighborhood offers co-working studio space to artists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders.

Next on the horizon: hedge fund CEO Jaffray Woodriff’s tech incubator, the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, now under construction at the west end of the Downtown Mall. CODE will have co-working space on two floors of its multi-story structure. “It will have it’s own little sanctuary [and] it’s own entrance,” says Andrew Boninti, president of CSH Development, which is building CODE for Woodriff. But you’ll have to wait a bit longer to get in there—construction of CODE is estimated to be completed in spring 2021.

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Arts

Matters of the art: Going behind the scenes of local galleries and museums

Henry Skerritt, curator of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, takes a look at one of the museums pieces.
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Arts

Exposure therapy: Photographer Richard Needham faces fear at Studio IX

In images like this one, photographer Richard Needham explores judgement, fear, fashion, and analog film in his show at Studio IX. Photo courtesy of the artist

Before meeting on the patio outside Kardinal Hall, Richard Needham worried about his outfit. He thought his white jeans might be too feminine, or that his “There is no planet B” T-shirt and rope necklace with a C-shaped bear claw tied to the end might be too much of a conversation-starter.

“It’s a double-edge sword. People tell me, ‘Well, a bear is your spirit animal.’ But this real bear died,” Needham explains. “A reindeer herder in Mongolia gave it to me. It’s like a talisman. I feel some sort of power when I wear it against my chest.”

Needham’s work as a documentary filmmaker and photographer has taken him around the world—from photographing Tsaatan nomadic reindeer herders in northern Mongolia, and teams of polo players who compete on elephants in Moo Baan Chang, Thailand, to filming 60 professional dancers with artist Dara Friedman on the streets of Miami. He credits Friedman and her focus on fashion, the human body, and street art as a large influence on “My Fellow Man: Don’ttalk to strangers,” his upcoming show at Studio IX.

“Everyone is a photographer now. You just pick up your phone,” says Needham. “It’s not mindful. The show is a meditation.”

In his latest images, Needham walked around densely populated areas—usually the Downtown Mall, though some images are from trips to Seattle and Walla Walla, Washington. He approached individuals who he found himself judging at first glance, whether positively or negatively, and asked if he could take their photograph. If they consented, and Needham found that most people did, he would photograph and record an audio interview with them. Needham’s creativity is influenced by his social anxiety about approaching strangers, his self-judgment that he “isn’t particularly good at words,” and his worry about the speed at which our world moves.

Photo courtesy of artist

The questions in each interview varied depending on the individual, ranging from “What’s troubling you right now?” to “What message would you like to share with people looking at your photograph?” Needham will display text from interviewees next to their portraits in the show, leaving the dialogue largely unedited.

The photographer, who has an MFA in film production from the University of Miami’s School of Communication, appreciates the ability to replicate the beauty of natural speech and cadence of human dialogue.

“My Fellow Man: Don’ttalk to strangers”

Opens September 7 at Studio IX

“I was surprised that politics wasn’t as much on the forefront,” Needham says of his conversations. “The current climate is there, but people appreciated the attempt to connect when it seems like social media is all there is. In a single sentence, everyone’s battling for dominance on social media. This [show] is the antithesis of that. It’s analog.”

It’s about connecting with people and humanizing them, and taking a moment to slow everything down—which is exactly what Needham had to do while using a Pentax 67 camera. It’s a large, 40-year old medium-format film camera that weighs five pounds. Needham says the camera takes a long time to focus, and makes a loud sound he describes as a “ka-lunk” when the shutter opens and closes.

Artists don’t traditionally use the Pentax 67 camera to capture street images, Needham says, though it is used often to take full-body fashion shots in a studio.

And Needham’s images resonate with fashion or photo journalism spreads that viewers might see in Vogue or Vanity Fair with subjects confronting the camera with confidence, comfortable in their own skin. As viewers stare back at them, Needham’s anxiety, discomfort, and fear become tangible. Needham says that in a certain sense, “these are all portraits of me.”

Photo courtesy of the artist

“With digital cameras, you’re always looking at the past. With this camera, I had no idea what I got. It’s very forward,” says Needham, who usually takes one or two shots of each of his subjects. “I like that way of looking at it. It’s frightening and scary. Fear is the whole project.”

One of Needham’s most forward moments involved Valerian and Elliott, the two individuals in the show’s title image. In the image, Valerian wears a floral maxi dress, a straw sun hat, white gloves flecked with red, and a beard past vis collarbone. Elliott wears a black graphic T-shirt, gray slacks, and sunglasses—both are smiling.

“I saw them walking down the street while I was driving, so I pulled around the block, parked, and had to run to catch up to them,” Needham remembers. 

Despite his anxieties, Needham is moved by the experience of talking to his subjects, and he encourages others to do the same thing. “Go first. Say hello first. Be the one to say hello when you’re in an awkward situation.”