Tag: The Bridge PAI

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Culture

Golden tickets: Locals reminisce about memorable C’ville shows

Diarrhea Planet got rowdy at The Southern in April 2015. Photo by Tom Daly

Remember live music? Us, too.

There’s reason to be extra grateful for recorded music right now (and for all the artists streaming sets into our living rooms), but it’s not the same as packing into a whatever-sized room with a bunch of other people to hear some tunes played just for you. Sweating, swaying, swooning, swirling, swilling a beverage while the band plays (we better not catch you talking)…it’s an  experience that’s on hold during social distancing. It’s just too risky.

We can’t convene in our favorite venues right now, and won’t for a while still, but we sure can wax poetic about when we could. Some pretty rad bands have played some pretty rad shows in Charlottesville, and local folks have these stories to prove it (and others, like City Councilor Sena Magill, have the cool, hard proof: outrageous memorabilia).

Scroll down for an update on local venues.

What’s your favorite show memory? Tell us in the comments.

Diarrhea Planet

The Southern Café & Music Hall, April 2015

When Diarrhea Planet (RIP) was on, no band mixed respect for the grandeur of rock with tongue-in-cheek jibes at the ridiculousness of “maximum rock ‘n’ roll” like they did.  —Charlie Sallwasser

 

Toots and the Maytals

Starr Hill, early 1990s 

Starr Hill was a 400 [-person capacity] club on West Main. There were maybe 600 people in attendance and, as Toots found out when he held his mike out to urge people to sing along, everybody there knew every single word to every song they played. I went downstairs for a drink and the floor was literally moving up and down eight or nine inches in each direction. It was his A-list band—the guys he records with—and they were so stoked that the crowd really knew the material.  —Charlie Pastorfield

 

Against Me!

Champion Brewing Company, October 2016

Lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out in a Trump mask to sing “Baby, I’m an Anarchist.”  —Nolan Stout

 

My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr.

Trax, February 1992

It was “immersive” and that’s an understatement. MBV was feel-it-in-your-spine loud and I am convinced that most of my current high-frequency hearing loss can be traced to that show. Then they turned on the strobe light and left it on for the duration of “To Here Knows When,” which felt like an hour [ed. note: the recorded version is 5:32]. The crowd, the bone-rattling, the sound, the blinding light all simultaneously induced euphoria and claustrophobia. It was honestly the greatest show of my life. I don’t remember the Dinosaur Jr. set at all. —Mike Furlough

 

A Tribute to Roland Wiggins

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, September 2019

Hands down, the Roland Wiggins tribute. I had to watch it on Facebook because I was out of town doing a gig, but the surprise performances from his best friend made my heart smile. Super close second fave was [soul-rock musician and theologian] Rev. Sekou at The Festy [2019]. Lawd hammercy…. —Richelle Claiborne

 

Neutral Milk Hotel

Tokyo Rose, March 1998

Won’t do the Pud (too many to count), so I’ll say [this one]. I bartended downstairs that night; they made everyone very, very, very happy and very hopeful. They stayed at our house. I went to work and then they JAMMED AND STEVE RICHMOND DIDN’T RECORD IT (forgave). —Tyler Magill

 

Jonathan Richman

The Southern Café & Music Hall, November 2015

Because every Jonathan Richman show is better than every show without Jonathan Richman. #RoadRunner  —Siva Vaidhyanathan

Funk and soul act Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings played multiple memorable shows in town before Jones passed away from pancreatic cancer in November 2016. Photo by Jack Looney

 

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings

Satellite Ballroom,

February 2006

The horns! Her voice! The dancing! The being young!  —Nell Boeschenstein 

 

Trey Anastasio Band

The Jefferson Theater, February 2010 

It was insane. Working with a hero. They rehearsed in the venue the day before, which was a real treat. Basically a private show. We loaded in during a blizzard. Tom Daly snapped one of my all-time favorite photos of me during the show. I was 24 years old and like a kid in a candy shop.  —Warren Parker

 

Muddy Waters

The West Virginian (the basement of The Virginian), 1976

Astonishing electric blues. I wrote a review of the show for the Tandem Evergreen, and got into an argument with the editor, who sniffed that “all the songs were in E.”  —Hawkins Dale

 

Lightning Bolt/ Forcefield

The Pudhaus, 2001

One of the sweatiest, most energetic, and righteous shows I have ever experienced. A room so full that the floor bounced but just an ecstatic feeling. Felt like the building levitated.  —Davis Salisbury

 

The Flaming Lips at The Sprint Pavilion. Photo by Tristan Williams

The Flaming Lips

The Sprint Pavilion, August 2019

Absolute and utter magic. The music. The energy of the crowd. The giant balloons and inflatable robot. I am not the same person I was before.  —Emily Cain

 

University School

The Bridge PAI, March 2017

University School (Peter Bussigel and Travis Thatcher) played a live techno set, did the whole thing wearing crazy animal masks and making hot dogs for everyone while they played. They even had veggie dogs for the vegetarians out there, and everyone was eating and having a great time. Not saying the concert convinced me to move here, but it definitely helped.  —Kittie Cooper

 

Sleater-Kinney

Tokyo Rose, April 1996

I bet a few people mention this one—for those who saw it, many probably remember it as one of the peak music moments of their lives, including me. It was a benefit for the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, right after the album Call the Doctor came out. Curious Digit opened—in honor of the riot grrrl occasion they did Bikini Kill’s “Carnival.” Sleater-Kinney were so glorious, my friend Jeanine (who MC’d the show, repping both SARA and WTJU) threw her bra up onstage, where it landed on Corin’s microphone. She left it dangling there the rest of the show.  —Rob Sheffield

 

Public Enemy

Trax, early 1990s 

I was a disaffected undergrad at UVA in the early ’90s when a friend told me Public Enemy was coming to Charlottesville. Why, to burn it down? Nope, to play a show, at Trax. I honestly couldn’t believe it; all I knew about Trax was that Dave Mathews played there all the time. This, was anti-Dave. But it was true, and we got tickets as soon as they became available.

The night of the show we walked over from our place with a Dr. Pepper bottle filled 50/50 with whiskey. Typical undergraduate idiots, not challenging any stereotypes. It was a packed house and the crowd was pretty…energetic? There was a sense that something crazy was about to happen but it was unclear what form it would take: a wild party, maybe a riot. Public Enemy didn’t show for a long time, and the crowd was getting more and more agitated. My friend went to sit down in the back, the whiskey and Dr. Pepper weren’t mixing well. 

There was a palpable sense of relief when the announcement was made that PE was in the building and they started setting up. Almost immediately there was another delay, Terminator X’s turntables were messed up somehow getting them onto the stage. Not great; things really started leaning towards riot. There was some pushing, scuffling, a lot of impolite shouting. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the hell out of there when everyone heard the unmistakable sound of Flav shouting, “Yo, Chuck!,” and it was on. Every single person was immediately through the roof. What followed was a two-hour-long sonic assault; angry, political, righteous, and absolutely everything I’d hoped for. Maybe this Charlottesville thing was going to work out after all. When it was all over, I went to find my friend, still passed out sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. I had to wake him up, and he groggily asked what he had missed. Everything.

I learned later that night that another friend had his face slashed somewhere in the pushing and shoving. He stayed for the show and got quite a few stitches later. We all agreed it was worth it, and that he had likely done something to deserve it.  —Steve Hoover

 

Taj Mahal

Trax, late 1980s/early 1990s

He told the audience they were the rudest mofos he’d ever seen and he left the stage. He was right. Maybe not my favorite memory, but one of the more stand-out memories.  —Jamie Dyer

 

Ratatat

The Jefferson Theater, October 2010 

Not counting EDM shows, Charlottesville crowds are typically on the more reserved side, but something was in the air that night. It was packed and yet I was able to move freely from bar to stage, dancing from person to person on my way. It felt more like a party where everyone was a friend and Ratatat were the house band. On multiple occasions I’ve recounted the show years later to someone and they’ll light up and say, “I was at that show!” They always agree it was a special one.  —Jonathan Teeter

Fugazi

Trax, 1993

I still have the flier from that show. Trax became known as the beginnings of DMB, but they had a pretty stellar run of booking amazing indie bands in the late ’80s and ’90s—Ramones, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Pavement, Replacements, Smithereens, Jesus and Mary Chain, Bob Mould, Superchunk…Dinosaur Jr. and My Bloody Valentine on the same bill.  —Rich Tarbell

Courtesy of Rich Tarbell

 

Nada Surf and Rogue Wave

Starr Hill, 2006

Used…someone else’s ID…and had my first craft beer at a show. One of my favorite memories.  —Allison Kirkner

 

Memorial Gym, UVA, 1990s

All the dope shows at Mem Gym. Jane’s Addiction…or rap shows put on by UVA in the ’90s. All of James McNew’s Yo La Tengo shows were good, too.  —DJ Rob A 

 

Levon Helm

The Paramount Theater, 2008

With an amazing band in tow, from the opening romp of “Ophelia” onward, Levon was the happiest guy in the room and it just trickled down. We were all fortunate to have him in good voice that night. —Michael Clem

 

Gogol Bordello

Live Arts, 2004

The downstairs stage still had scaffolding and platforms up from whatever production, and the band kept pulling people out of the audience until it felt like there were more people on stage than off it.  —Phil “dogfuck” Green

 

Nik Turner

Champion Brewing Company, October 2017

Nik Turner [of Hawkwind], free, outside, bit o’ rain, C’ville…Skulls split from grinning so much. A perfect storm in every way, and to be there with a novitiate who was gobbling it up like candy made it that much better for me. And it was with Hedersleben to boot.  —Kevin McFadin

 

Phoenix 

The Sprint Pavilion, September 2013

I had lived in Charlottesville from 1999-2002 as a recent college grad. I moved back in 2013, driving from Brooklyn in a U-Haul truck with a 2-year-old and a spouse who had never lived here before. It was very hot out, we were in debt, we missed our friends, and our stuff was in boxes in a too-small apartment. We went out for a walk on the Downtown Mall and saw a poster for Phoenix, playing at the Pavilion that night. I asked some people sitting on a bench “Is that Phoenix, the band from France?” They shrugged yes, and a few hours later I drifted over to the Ninth St. bridge, where I stood and watched. (I had no money for admission, and spouse and child were tired and stayed home.) The band played a set of songs I had gotten to know and love in my old home, and from where I stood I saw a sea of smiling faces. On their way offstage the band gave an amused wave to the bridge crowd, and I walked back to the apartment feeling for the first time in a while that it would be possible to make a life here work.  —Jake Mooney

 

Fugazi

Trax, April 1993

-and-

Sleater-Kinney

Tokyo Rose, April 1996

I chose two, which occurred three years and one day apart. Fugazi: The first time I had ever seen them outside of D.C. Brilliant, dynamic and WAY too loud. Turns out it was the first date of a new PA, which left many a fan stone-deaf for a few days. This can be found as part of the Fugazi Live Series. The middle section, tracks 13-21, I would put up against any band, anywhere, ever. Then Sleater-Kinney: One of the very few times I have ever said to a band, “One year from now, you guys are gonna be huge.” I think that creeped out Carrie Brownstein (though I was right). Emotionally overwhelming set, even with the pre- Janet Weiss drummer.  —Joe Gross

 

The Spinners

University Hall

I call this the “phantom concert” because even though I have a pretty reliable memory, I have not been able to find any evidence on Al Gore’s interwebs that this concert happened. But…I keep telling myself that I know it did, because I was there. Just like I “remember” seeing Ike and Tina Turner here in Charlottesville at 2, I’m pretty sure I saw The Spinners at University Hall at 6. Now, there is a record of The Spinners hitting the same stage in 1981, and at that time the two biggest memories from the show I believed I was at wouldn’t have happened:

  1. A very nice man in front of my family volunteered to put me on his shoulders so that the little 6-year-old me could see (in 1981 I was 11 and almost six feet tall).
  2. There was an opener at the show and they played “Easy” by The Commodores, which was a big hit at the time, but 6-year-old me was confused because that wasn’t The Commodores on stage. In 1981, Lionel Richie would be just about out of The Commodores camp so no opener would have played “Easy” to such a rousing reception.
  3. What I “remember” of The Spinners was awesome. I kept saying to my 6-year-old self, “I’ve seen those guys on TV.” 

—Ivan Orr

 

Southern Culture on the Skids

Gravity Lounge, November 2008

I’ve seen SCOTS a few times, but that was by far the best of the shows—long set list, really intimate environment, superb energy level.  —Jeff Uphoff

 

Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires

The Jefferson Theater, May 2014

That month, everything was technicolor. I’d been dumped a few weeks prior and mourned what was really nothing, for too long. The day was warm, the beer was cold, my cat-eye liner was sharp, and my black-and-blush-and-neon-green vintage dress made no sense and perfect sense. (“If you look good, you feel good?”) The band lived up to its name, keeping perfect step while Charles grinned and sang and wailed and wept and spun and sweated buckets in his custom stage suit. Music. What crowd? Music. What ex-boyfriend? Music, music, music. Time to move on. Thank goodness for soul.  —Erin O’Hare

 

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

The Jefferson Theater, December 2009

It was my birthday, and I told her so in line after the (absolutely incredible!) performance while she signed a record. She stopped the line and serenaded me with the most beautiful and simple “Happy Birthday” rendition, and I was never the same. Maybe it was a combination of the venue or her verve or this sense that time stood still, but it became the benchmark against which I’ve measured performances—did it feel like it was just for me? My pantheon of performances have done exactly that.  —Adrienne Oliver

 

“Oh there are so many.”

Oh there are so many. Gwar at Trax, had to be early ‘90s…they ended up graffiting a jacket I had graffitied in art class (I still have it). Jane’s Addiction at Mem Gym, had to be ’90 or ’91. Of course, the Tokyo times with The Pitts, The Eldelry, The Councilors, Hillbilly Werewolf. Dread Zeppelin, they were so much fun. Also going to hear The Band and others at Van Riper’s [Lake Music Festival] in the late ‘80s. The Black Crowes, before they really made it, at Trax.  —Sena Magill

Detail of Sena Magill’s GWAR jacket. Photo courtesy of Sena Magill

Ben Folds

The Jefferson Theater, 2012? 2011?

He played Chatroulette and it was the funniest, most engaging show I’ve ever seen. So many people I knew were there, it was practically a party.  —Marijean Oldham

 

The Magic Numbers

Starr Hill, 2006

There are three factors that make up the most memorable kind of concert: One, an intimate venue, two, the surprise factor—going to see a band you know little to nothing about and having your socks knocked off, and three, the magical band-audience feedback loop that manifests when you have a band that has lightning in a bottle, but is too green to know it yet— but the audience understands, and you get to watch the band’s wildest dreams come true in real time. The Magic Numbers gave me all three on a Tuesday night. I am a sucker for a bit of indie-pop perfection, and I heard their single “Love Me Like You” on the radio on my way to work, followed by the announcement that they would be at Starr Hill that night. I immediately changed my plans and it was one of the best concert decisions I’ve ever made.  —Miranda Watson

 

Dave Matthews Band

Scott Stadium, 2001

The stadium had just been renovated and DMB played with Neil Young. I worked for the stadium event staff and got field passes. Also got to kick field goals with Boyd Tinsley during sound check the day before.  —David Morris 

 

Neutral Milk Hotel

The Jefferson Theater, 2015

They have been a favorite band since I was a senior in high school in 2003, and I couldn’t believe I actually got the chance to hear them live since they broke up in 1999 and I never thought they’d get back together. It was a school night, and I was beyond stressed from finals and job searching, but for two hours I forgot all of that and was completely enthralled.  —Caroline Heylman 

 

Dump/Girl Choir/Sloppy Heads

Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, August 2011

Hats off to Jacob Wolf for booking this show and WJTU for presenting it, but it’s a very special night for me since I put the pieces in motion to make it happen. We got Brooklyn jammers Sloppy Heads and Dump (aka James McNew from Yo La Tengo) from NYC, with Charlottesville’s own mod enthusiasts Girl Choir in between —a Brooklyn/Charlottesville/Brooklyn via Charlottesville sandwich. Tons of great folks came from all over to see a very rare non-NYC set by Dump, which he played with his partner Amy. They covered all the bases and provided a nice mellow-ish counterpoint to the Heads’ shambolic choogling and Girl Choir’s frenetic anthemic. It was quite the magical evening for both music and human interaction.  —Dominic DeVito

 

George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars

Trax, February 1993

The P-Funk legend was well into his 50s, but this cosmic slop raged on into the wee hours—I have never seen such a marathon with such relentless energy. George just gave up the funk for hour after hour, until every pair of hips was sore, except his. After four hours or so, I finally had to admit defeat and drag my weary bones home—but George and crew were still going strong onstage. To this day I still don’t know how much longer the show went on. An inspiration to us all.  —Rob Sheffield

Show stopper

When will live music come back?

Charlottesville is really feeling the void left by the lack of live music, and Danny Shea’s got a theory as to why.

Ours is “a remarkable town in regards to support and appetite for live music. We have the luxury of having so much live music per capita, so I think [its absence] is felt more so than in other places,” says Shea, who’s booked music in town for over a decade and currently handles booking, promotion and venue management for The Jefferson Theater and the Southern Café & Music Hall, both owned by Red Light Management.

Local venues have been dark since the second weekend in March, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Everyone is eager to know when we’ll be able to gather again, but the reality is that nobody—not even venue operations folks like Shea—know the date. Though restaurants with outdoor seating will be allowed to reopen with restrictions on Friday, May 15, entertainment venues, including concert halls, must remain closed. And even when they are allowed to open, it may take a while for things to return to normal. 

Emily Morrison, executive director of The Front Porch, a nonprofit music school and venue online, says she probably won’t feel comfortable holding classes and performances in the building until 2021 (they’re all online for now). When she does open, Morrison says she won’t fill the space to its 100-person capacity for a while. “If everybody rushes toward each other this summer as restrictions ease in the state, I’m worried we’ll just have this terrible spike, even worse than the one we’ve had in the spring,” she says.

Jeyon Falsini of local booking and management company Magnus Music shares that worry. Falsini books for a number of restaurant-bars in town, including The Whiskey Jar, Moe’s BBQ, Rapture, and Holly’s Diner, and he says that all of these venues will focus on food and drink sales before hosting live music. These spots typically don’t charge a cover, so musicians are paid from the register and/or a tip jar. “You can only have music if the place is packed, to justify paying out of the register,” says Falsini, who, unable to collect booking fees, is currently on unemployment.

And what would shows even be like? Will touring bands want to pile into their vans (even before the pandemic, touring wasn’t the most hygienic thing) riding from city to city where they might be exposed to the virus, and in turn expose their audiences? Will audiences want to go stand in a room with a band that’s been in 10 cities in two weeks? Will fans pay more for a ticket to offset lower capacities? If the venue marks off safe social distancing spaces on the floor with tape, will attendees obey them (especially after a few beers)? Who would enforce mask rules? Can people be trusted to properly wash their hands in the bathrooms?

With safety measures in place, a show just won’t feel the same, says Shea. “The idea of social distancing at a rock show is impossible. It would be so awkward. …Can you imagine being the band on stage? There’d be no energy created at all.”

With so many questions about how to balance entertainment with public health concerns, “we’re just a little bit on our own…and it feels a little scary,” says Morrison.

Shea expects some aspects of what venues have developed—like expertly produced concert streams—will stick with us once the pandemic’s over. “You can’t trick yourself into old ways of pursuing this stuff,” he says. And while he is unsure of whether scheduled shows will actually happen this summer,  he’s certain that Charlottesville’s appetite for them will remain.

 

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Pure Formalism

Celluloid hero: In defining its summer film series Pure Formalism, The Bridge PAI states, “In the spirit of Stan Brakhage, we stand face-to-face with the image itself—and absorb.” Brakhage was a highly influential experimental filmmaker whose career spanned five decades beginning in the ’50s. His six-minute short The Dante Quartet, a silent film of images painted directly onto the frames, will be screened along with eight other historic and contemporary works—some of them local.

Wednesday 7/3 Free. 8pm. The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, 209 Monticello Rd. 984-5669.

 

Categories
Arts

Creative connections: Arts organizations bridge the divide between students and locals

Julia Kudravetz is making a focused effort to attract UVA students, as well as recent graduates, like assistant manager Sarah Valencia, to New Dominion Bookshop’s events. Image: Eze Amos

For a university with such a dominant sports culture, it’s easy to forget that the arts community is thriving, too. UVA boasts over 100 visual and performing arts organizations, from aerial dance clubs to filmmakers’ societies.

The vast majority of these groups are Contracted Independent Organizations. This lack of a direct university connection can spell difficulty when finding spaces on Grounds to rehearse or congregate. Between the infamous “concrete box” of the Student Activities Building and the still hypothetical arts building to fill the lot where the Cavalier Inn once stood, it can sometimes feel as though the necessary space for university creatives doesn’t exist.

That’s where the community steps in. Many Charlottesville arts organizations make an effort to welcome UVA students.

Just ask Julia Kudravetz, owner of New Dominion Bookshop. Since taking over operations in November 2017, Kudravetz has set her sights on ensuring that the bookstore’s capacity for hosting community events is preserved, and even amplified. Selling books is only part of her mission statement, she says. Just as important is for members of the community, “a nice mix of humans,” to attend New Dominion’s events and engage with each other.

Aside from the Thursday night MFA readings, New Dominion hosts student-focused open mics. Kudravetz is branching out to more performative groups as well—one of the most recent events at the bookstore was a staged reading of Much Ado About Nothing, co-hosted by UVA drama group Shakespeare on the Lawn. She’s also expressed interest in a cappella groups performing in the store, and says she’s waiting for a student to pitch her “an avant-garde puppet show.”

Rather than see a divide between the university and the rest of the city, a tendency both students and locals can fall prey to, Kudravetz considers the two communities inextricably linked. “The fate of the town is tied to the fate of UVA, and we need to be more aware of each other’s communities,” she says.

Kudravetz also admires “the energy that college students bring to projects”—in fact, her staff is partially composed of current UVA students and recent grads. New Dominion’s assistant manager, Sarah Valencia, graduated from the creative prose writing program last May.

Valencia has an intimate understanding of why UVA creatives might not see eye-to-eye with their Charlottesville counterparts. “There’s definitely a divide,” she acknowledges, “but we’re working on that.”

Valencia is less concerned with whether students know about New Dominion and more so with whether they feel like they belong. “I wish more students would come out,” she says, describing some of the readings she went to while attending the university in the comparatively “dreary” UVA Bookstore. “We just have to make sure…they feel welcome.”

Gorilla Theater Productions is less centralized than New Dominion, but just as committed to student involvement. Artistic Director Anna Lien describes it as a “counterculture, offbeat organization…just now kinda getting in the limelight.”

Located in a tiny black building tucked into Allied Street, Gorilla Theater is easy to overlook but impossible to forget. The organization’s programming tends towards the violent, absurd, or otherwise controversial—but its intent is not to shock, Lien explains. Rather, Gorilla wants to foster conversation.

“We have a big focus on LGBTQ issues and transition,” she says, explaining her plans to partner with a transition support group at the university in order to bring visibility to these students in creative fashion. Gorilla Theater’s current student- based project is its annual Summer Shorts, which consist of short plays typically directed by and starring high school or university students. “It’s young people being able to rise to an occasion that they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

Lien also acknowledges that a barrier exists between UVA arts and the Charlottesville equivalent, but she doesn’t think it’s a mental one. “The biggest challenge we have is transportation,” she says. “That’s something that I’m working towards figuring out. How can I bring theater to UVA? How can I build that bridge?”

Alan Goffinski seems to have found an answer. As executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, he has poured his organizational efforts into a partnership with the UVA music department to create the Telemetry Music Series, a monthly event that features both student and local performers.

When he took on the role a couple years ago, Goffinski says he “wanted to build on the assets that Charlottesville already has.” He recognized the enormous resources possessed by the music department and, with the help of its technical director Travis Thatcher, created Telemetry. The goal was to foster a “cross-pollination of ideas,” he explains. Based on the typical crowds at the events, which he judges to be half Charlottesville residents and half UVA students, the two have succeeded.

“Some students are less inclined to explore the quirkiness of their community,” Goffinski admits. “There’s oftentimes not a perceived reason to venture out…we like to try to provide that reason—to show students what they might be missing.”

Even if you’re not artistically minded, he urges students to better appreciate their city. “I would ultimately just recommend that students look around every now and then at what might be happening in the community in general…Charlottesville is less than five miles wide. There’s no excuse.”

Julia Kudravetz is making a focused effort to attract UVA students, as well as recent graduates, like assistant manager Sarah Valencia, to New Dominion Bookshop’s events.

Eze Amos

Julia Kudravetz
considers the two
communities
inextricably linked. “The fate of the town
is tied to the fate of UVA, and we need to be more aware of each other’s communities.”

Rather than see a divide between the university and the rest of the city, a tendency both students and locals can fall prey to,

Categories
Arts

It’s not personal: Federico Cuatlacuatl uses his story to open others

Indigenous artist Federico Cuatlacuatl, Tom Tom Festival Artist in Residence at The Bridge, paints a mural (design pictured) and opens an exhibition this week. Image courtesy the artist

Federico Cuatlacuatl began making art when he was 7 years old. It was a “survival instinct” that kicked in when his family moved from Cholula, Mexico, to Indiana.

“I knew like, two words of English, and I needed a way to communicate that I felt sad and depressed, and that I missed home, and that I didn’t feel good,” says Cuatlacuatl. Because he couldn’t express those feelings verbally to most of the people around him, he developed a visual language for it.

By high school, Cuatlacuatl was an active, prolific artist. Making work was a continuation of that survival instinct that kicked in when he was little, he says. Growing up undocumented, he knew that he had to work “toward something that would one day be fruitful,” he says.

“And that was my chance: to be an artist.”

Now, Cuatlacuatl is living and working in Charlottesville and teaching art classes at the University of Virginia. He works in a variety of mediums—illustration, animation, painting, installation—and throughout the month of April, as the Tom Tom Festival artist-in-residence at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, he’ll exhibit some of his own work and lead a number of community art projects.

Federico Cuatlacuatl

“I can’t sit still,” Cuatlacuatl says, half-jokingly, as the reason for why he works in so many different mediums. But there’s much more to it than that.

An artist’s flexibility and fluidity is crucial to how he functions within his community, says Cuatlacuatl, and for his own artistic practice, community is paramount. “An artist can function, and must function, in a community, and must respond alongside a community,” he says. “I always like to emphasize that my work is not personal. My work is not talking about my narrative, or me personally. But it uses my narrative to amplify that there [are] thousands of cases like these.”

Broadly, his work focuses on a number of issues, including immigration, recognition, and celebration of indigenous communities, and cultural sustainability. We talk a lot about environmental, social, and economic sustainability, and not enough about cultural sustainability, says Cuatlacuatl. “Culturally, we’re so diverse and so dynamic within our own communities, that we have to understand that, and we have to bring that into the conversation of how we are collaborating and becoming a collective community.” In order to sustain a culture, its traditions must be acknowledged and practiced.

Cuatlacuatl was in the car, on his way to town to begin his professorship at UVA, the weekend of August 11 and 12, 2017. When he arrived, one of the first things he did was respond to the tiki torch march on Grounds —a major trauma for his new community. He deconstructed a tiki torch and made it into a kite, which he flew as a form of peaceful protest against the ideas the torch-wielding neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched for. It was his way of demonstrating that, “with tradition and culture, you can really shift conversations around, literally and also culturally,” he says.

Kites as a form of peaceful protest are the basis of Cuatlacuatl’s “Desencabronamiento” exhibition, which opens Sunday, April 14, at The Bridge PAI. It will feature a variety of kites, all of them traditional Mexican forms, which Cuatlacuatl learned from Mexican master kite maker Pedro Cuacuas. The kites are white, rather than rainbow-hued, to express peace.

Cuatlacuatl expects the sight might conjure up the image of waving a white flag, an action that holds different meanings in different cultures. In the United States, the action of waving a white flag indicates surrender. In other cultures—including Mexico—waving a white flag, or in this case, flying a white kite, means peace. “Let’s talk, let’s enter into dialogue.” Cuatlacuatl’s inviting the latter.

The exhibition title, “Desencabronamiento,” translates literally to “the process of getting un-pissed off.” Cuatlacuatl chose that title because making these kites has been cathartic for him, and he hopes it will be to everyone who gets involved, including the local Latinx high schoolers who are building some of the kites along with him.

Cuatlacuatl’s exhibition of kites, “Desencabronamiento,” opens at The Bridge PAI on Sunday, April 14. Image courtesy the artist

The flight patterns of the kites will be 3-D mapped and made into an animation that will live online. And, along with those Latinx students, Cuatlacuatl has begun work on a mural in the Hogwaller neighborhood, one that will celebrate indigenous communities of many kinds in Virginia. “I think we often forget that we are occupying native land,” says Cuatlacuatl, who wishes there was more acknowledgment of the Monacan Indian Nation—the traditional custodians of the land we now call Charlottesville—and other indigenous peoples throughout the area. And not just their past, but their present and future, too.

The social practice of art is an important agent for social change, says Cuatlacuatl. “I really see social practice as a more powerful way of approaching concerns and issues. You can directly work with communities, confront the issue, and possibly propose advances…shift things around,” he says. “Rather than making things, I’m more interested in making things happen.”

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Strange lot: The Bridge fills with curiosities in new exhibition

Throughout October, the “Gallery of Curiosities” at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative is the setting for a variety of events, such as experimental music performances, a horror film screening, a Halloween party, trick or treating, and more. Photo by Martyn Kyle

On a sultry First Fridays evening in early October, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative gallery glows gold beneath the dark, overcast sky. People flock to the warmly lit building to see the “Gallery of Curiosities.” Outside, near the door, there’s a small table draped with a white cloth and adorned with candles, where Leslie M. Scott-Jones (a C-VILLE contributor) reads tarot cards for those who opt to sit across from her.

Inside the gallery, Elyse Smith spins fur from a visitor’s beloved pet into yarn, and all around her, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, hang hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of curiosities, oddities, and objects, each item begging more questions than it answers.

In a thick frame sprouting from the wall, the chalky, fragile white skeleton of a two-headed snake. On a table, an apocalyptic diorama; on another table, a pinhole camera. Sprouting from the floor, a mermaid tail. Stored in a cabinet are slender, corked glass vials of animal whiskers and porcupine quills. Human teeth. A loved one’s ashes.

There are planters made from grinning baby doll heads with all manner of cacti, succulents, and leafy greenery poking out the top. One wall holds nine lidded glass jars, each containing a red tomato in a different state of moldy, liquefying decay. Immediately above it are nine more jars containing chocolate Hostess cupcakes, each alarmingly well preserved.

Inspired by the cabinets of curiosities and wunderkammers of Renaissance and Baroque Europe, as well as contemporary museums like the Museum of Psychphonics in Indianapolis and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, the “Gallery of Curiosities” is at The Bridge through the end of the month.

The show seeks to elicit a number of reactions from visitors, says Alan Goffinski, director of The Bridge. What is all this stuff? Where did this come from? Is it really from Charlottesville? Who are the people who collect these things?

“Curiosity is this force within us, this natural thing that we’re born with, that we take on as children, that points us toward the unknown and pulls us into a head space of authentic opportunity for learning and growth,” says Goffinski, and this exhibition is a place to exercise, or perhaps rediscover, that force.

The Bridge put out a call for submissions on its website, via email, social media accounts, and even Craigslist, urging folks to submit things they might have on display in their living rooms, attics, and cellars. More than 50 people from the Charlottesville area contributed items, ranging from Fraternal Order of Police memorabilia to Richard Nixon swag.

Tobiah Mundt contributed felted fantastical creations that she describes as a “sculptural representation of the creatures [found] in the place between asleep and awake.”

Hattie Eshleman’s pinkish-reddish-brownish bodily organ brooches, shiny and moist- looking, are a rumination on the inside turned out. “I would love for the viewer to imagine if they had extra organs other than the heart, liver, lungs, etc.,” says Eshleman. “What might those be? Fear? Intuition? An organ that stores forgotten memories?”

Visitors can test their telepathic connection with another person using the same experiment that Upton Sinclair (author of Mental Radio, a book on telepathy) and his second wife, Mary Craig Sinclair, used. Renee Reighart set up the experiment on a table with side-by-side stations, complete with instructions and suggestions for how to clear one’s mind and prepare to send or receive an image to the person on the other side of the divider. It’s “freaky” when it works, she says, but even when it doesn’t, it’s about the wondrous discovery of potential synchronicity and connection with another person.

In the gallery bathroom, there’s the Actuator, researched and developed by artist and musician Will Mullany, who describes his creation as a “proto-conscious mechanical being that guests are invited to interact with.” Mullany displays his research as well, hoping visitors will “set aside their base human inclination to filter their perceptions through logic and reason and accept the ultimate divine logic of the Actuator into their hearts.” And since it’s tucked away in the bathroom, he says, “it offers a sort of serenity and seclusion for these private revelations.”

In most cases, “you won’t be able to tell…what’s tongue-in-cheek and how much of it is fiction, or how much the truth dabbles in fiction along the way,” says Goffinski. For instance, did Ian Coyle’s belly button really produce that much lint—on display in an 8-inch by 10-inch oval frame—in two months’ time?

Coyle says yes; “even in a year’s long creative block, my tummy kept producing works of art.” But still, questions remain.

At its core, the “Gallery of Curiosities” is “an exhibit for Charlottesville, for the quirkiness that exists in our community,” says Goffinski. The show’s power lies in those who’ve curated it, he says, and it affords us a look into the character—both hidden and otherwise—of our friends and neighbors.

“It’s so damn interesting to learn about people in a show-and-tell sort of way,” says Goffinski.

Check out The Bridge’s calendar for a full listing of Halloween-y events related to the “Gallery of Curiosities” exhibit.

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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

ARTS Pick: Soggy Po’ Boys bring the NOLA sound

The Soggy Po’ Boys are a lot more appetizing than they sound. The six-man band formed in New Hampshire, but its members are firmly rooted in the ways of NOLA jazz, from vintage outfits to the instruments themselves—among them a piano, two saxophones and a stand-up bass that looks straight out of a 1960s club. The Soggy Po’ Boys will perform twice in one night, with the first show including a brief talk about some of the band’s vital influences.

Thursday, June 28. $10-25, 7:30pm. The Bridge PAI, 209 Monticello Rd. 984-5669, and The Whiskey Jar (no cover, 10:30pm), 227 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. 202-1549.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Restroy releases self-titled debut

On its new self-titled release, Restroy combines grunge, electronic, classical and mbira music into avant-garde compositions. Photo by Amy Jackson

It’s more than a push of a button when Restroy’s Chris Damman sends a wave of electricity through his carefully composed cello numbers. Despite using electronic drones and noise, the acoustic instrument is the foundation of sound for Damman, who is so physically in tune with his cello that it’s actually changed his posture. On its new self-titled release, Restroy combines grunge, electronic, classical and mbira music into avant-garde compositions. The CD release party also features special guests Tavishi and Christina Carlotti Kolb.

Wednesday, May 16. $20, 8pm. The Bridge PAI, 209 Monticello Rd. 984-5669.

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Musical language: Catherine Monnes is bringing music to life

Catherine Monnes performs at The Bridge PAI’s Telemetry series on Saturday. Photo by Tom Daly

In the sunflower yellow kitchen at the back of her narrow house, Catherine Monnes drops a few thistle teabags into a pink tulip-shaped teapot full of boiling water. She slides the lid into place and carries the pot into her plant-filled sunroom. The evening light is disappearing behind the trees in her North Downtown yard as she sets it down among the orchids on her table.

Monnes’ home is full of things that have a story: paintings of a strangely tiny-footed Bob Dylan and another with three of The Beatles, as well as a chair covered in reptile teeth that she bought in New Orleans from a man frustrated that he hadn’t made any sales that day.

As she pours, Monnes, a multi-instrumentalist perhaps best known for her cello and fiddle work in a number of Charlottesville bands, recalls the story of how she came to own her cello. A bag of cello pieces came from a friend who’d found the fragmented instrument wasting away in a rotting case in a flooded basement. Other musicians and luthiers told her it’d cost thousands of dollars to fix—money she didn’t have—but she held on to the pieces for a few years.

At violin competitions, she kept running into the same young man in the wee hours of the morning, when both of them were still awake and searching for a jam partner. Monnes soon learned that he was apprenticing to be a luthier, and she mentioned the cello to him; he excitedly asked if he could do the repair and Monnes says he charged her just $250 “to bring these pieces to life.” A set of cello strings alone can cost that much, she says, eyes wide.

“It’s still not a great cello, and it needs regluing all the time,” Monnes says, but it’s her cello, and her affinity for the instrument dates back to childhood.

When Monnes was growing up in New Jersey and then the Washington, D.C., area, music “was one of those things that you just did. You hang clothes on the line. You play music,” she says. Monnes recalls singing constantly with her four sisters, and in the same way that some kids pretend to play the piano on the kitchen table, she’d take two curtain rods and imagine they were a cello and a bow.

“My mother played classical music, and I was almost violently disinterested in it,” Monnes says. “It put me to sleep, and I also saw her doing this really intense scramble-struggle for work.” Monnes also saw her mother’s battle with self-worth—if she didn’t get a job, she doubted her talent, her dedication. “I didn’t want to do that,” Monnes says, and so she listened instead to Jimi Hendrix and other experimental musicians.

But she never gravitated toward the guitar, or to drums, “the obvious instruments for the kind of music that I was drawn to,” says Monnes. Instead she pursued the violin and cello. Monnes says she “wanted to figure it out, how to make cello, and violin, speak that [type of music].”

“I was really wanting to bring another sound to the palette of everything, and that’d be both in terms of bringing a cello into places it isn’t usually, and also making a cello sound ways it doesn’t usually.” That urge comes naturally to Monnes, who believes that every instrument has its own voice, and it’s up to the musician to coax it into speaking a certain language.

“I really care to be listening,” Monnes says. She thinks her ability to play music responsively is why she loves performing in projects led by other musicians—she’s provided cello work for glitter rock outfit The Sally Rose Band (the eponymous Sally Rose is Monnes’ daughter), goth-ish rock band The Secret Storm, experimental jazz group Restroy and flute-doom metal act FLOOM. When she talks about how touched she is by the number of musicians who invite her to play music with them, Monnes places her palm to her chest, closes her eyes and bows her head. “I’m really moved and excited to be invited,” she says.

Her upcoming set at the Telemetry experimental music series at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative on Saturday is a rare solo set. There will be some cello, of course, but she’ll also play a few synthesizers she made in an instrument-making class taught by Peter Bussigel in UVA’s music department.

Each of her solo pieces has a certain shape and progression, but there will be plenty of room for improvisation, and Monnes plans to participate in the usual paradox of performance “of either losing yourself or being completely there. …It’s almost like I don’t know which to say,” she says, laughing.

Monnes thinks her set will be entertaining, but she wants it to be more than that. “I hope it’s musical, that it has some beauty, that it has some edge,” she says. “I can usually manage interesting. And I’m thankful if beautiful happens.”

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Arts

Designer Annie Temmink coaxes ‘Beasts!’ to life

Join Annie Temmink and other artists for DIY crafting and a special performance at the opening of “Beasts!” on March 2. By Martyn Kyle

After years spent living abroad and around the U.S., Annie Temmink thought something was missing from her native Charlottesville.

“I miss really great dancing and really wild visual clothing and adornment,” she says. “They’re rich opportunities for people to have moments of unbridled, creative expression, and they’re really critical for connection, and happiness, and all the things that most people want.”

As an internationally awarded sculptor and costume designer, Temmink is tackling the problem head-on by collaborating with other local artists to build “more wild and outrageous experiences in Charlottesville.”

The revolution begins with “Beasts!,” a show about imagining and creating wild creatures, on display in March at The Bridge PAI and featuring pieces in Temmink’s trademark style—architectural costumes with kinetic elements—developed around the idea of making creatures she hadn’t seen before.

“I didn’t set out to create a particular narrative,” she says. Rather, the works take on life once they are created, especially once they are worn.

In addition to soaking up the visuals and musical performances by Weird Mob and Free Idea at the “Beasts!” opening, visitors can try their hand at creating their own work. “I work with common household items like cardboard, construction scraps and cast-off materials, and I think that adds to the fun,” Temmink says.

Her wearables center on elaborate headdresses that sweep up, down or out, spanning the wearer’s crown, shoulders or entire body. From dangling mobiles to fanning coronas to glittering starbursts made of spoons, her concepts begin with everyday items and go big.

“The first time you look at a spoon, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this,’” she says. But her willingness to explore—to look at a spoon over and over again, to get inspired by ice crystals and plant geometry, to arrange and rearrange shapes with pleasing emotional qualities until something clicks—evolves into works that are larger than life.

Growing up in an artistic family—her father is a carpenter and her mom runs City Clay—Temmink always made things by hand. In college, she studied sculpture and realized she wanted to do something beyond “make this thing that sits on the wall.”

After college, she became a Watson Fellow, receiving $25,000 and 12 months to pursue a research topic outside the U.S. “I made adornment and costumes and textiles in Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania, Indonesia, Japan and India,” she explains. “Seeing how adornment is celebrated in other cultures gave me the link that costume is sort of like sculpture but way more fun.”

Once back in Charlottesville, she got a job working in carpentry and rented a studio space where she made costumes after work and on weekends. “It was definitely one of those jumping off the deep end moments,” she says. But Temmink was committed to going outside her comfort zone, to showing up to the work and being disciplined about creation.

In 2016, she produced a fashion show for the Maker Faire and began making giant hats. From there, she started getting commissions for theaters and private clients, including a fireproof Donald Trump wig for a fire ballet opera company and bedazzled shorts for Ke$ha, and for numerous fashion shows along the East Coast.

Most recently, Temmink’s work was featured at the World of Wearable Art in Wellington, New Zealand. “It’s like the Olympics of costumes,” she says. “The most amazing things you’ve ever seen are on display in this hybrid of fashion and theater and runway.

The organization found her work on Instagram, invited her to submit it, and her creation went on to win the award for Best New Entrant.

“It’s really as simple as staring doubt in the face, and saying, ‘Look, I hear you, but I’m not going to go with that. I’m really going to be courageous and explore this idea, even if it’s crazy, or it’s not profitable,” Temmink says. “…because there’s something about it that’s really important.’”

The beasts in “Beasts!” originate from that very same place. “The concept came from thinking a lot about the blocks that come up in a creative practice. To me, a beast is a thing that has a positive side to it, but it might look overwhelming at first.”

And of course, she says, it’s also huge fun to make a giant creature.

“The point of all of it is a joyful expression,” she says. “To make me laugh, to make other people laugh. As we get older there’s less and less room for that, or it doesn’t come up because we take things so seriously. I think it’s important to create your own joy. And there’s nothing more fun than making these wild creatures and getting to see how they come to life.”