Tag: UVA Arts

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Arts Culture

Lightening up

For Brighter Together, visual artist Jeff Dobrow took the small screen to the big screen by displaying his work on several UVA architectural icons, such as the Rotunda (above). The series finale is May 14 and 15 at UVA Chapel. Photo courtesy of subject

Of all the changes COVID has brought to the arts world, one of the most significant has been to big-screen entertainment. Charlottesville theaters and moviemakers have done their best to adapt, whether it’s drive-in film festivals or rent-a-theater evenings, but the pandemic has undeniably sped up the trend of people consuming entertainment alone and on decidedly smaller screens.

Jeff Dobrow, a visual and technology artist based in Charlottesville, has given a lot of thought to this. “We are so used to consuming amazing experiences in small ways,” he says. “Our laptop screen is 17 inches. That’s our new world.”

He argues that it doesn’t have to be that way. Brighter Together, Dobrow’s ongoing series of visual shows through UVA Arts, is his solution to the small-screen problem. Since late March, Dobrow has been using projection mapping technology to display a variety of images on various buildings on Grounds, starting with the chapel and concluding on May 14 and 15 with Madison Hall. The intended result is to inspire both awe and hope—awe at the dazzling, enormous images transforming iconic architecture, and hope about the ability to safely draw crowds of art lovers together in the same space.

Creating such larger-than-life projections may seem like a daunting task, but it’s business as usual for Dobrow, who’s been working in technology since he was a teen. (“It’s been my entire life, since I started programming computers for RadioShack in 1983.”) Much of his early career was devoted to the commercial side of the field, but he says that one day he woke up, “did a 180,” and immersed himself in the arts instead.

Dobrow had been living and working in Charlottesville for several years when UVA Arts reached out to him about the Brighter Together project. “I’ve known Jody [Kielbasa] for probably five or six years,” he says. Back in 2017, he and Kielbasa, UVA’s vice provost for the arts, had “chatted about the bicentennial”—an event that heavily utilized projection mapping on the Rotunda, displaying a visual history of the building—“but that was not my kind of show.” When Dobrow gave up commercial art, he also shifted away from chronological storytelling in his visuals, opting for more loosely conceptual work. His style didn’t mesh with the bicentennial’s, but it proved to be perfect for Brighter Together.

True to form, Dobrow consciously chooses not to tell a story with his work on these buildings—either of the university at large or of the pandemic year. “I didn’t want to create a piece that contemplated…the horrible reality [of 2020],” he says. “We’ve had enough of that. Let’s dance, let’s have some fun.”

Fun doesn’t begin to describe the sublime projections. Some of the images are recognizable and taken from the animal kingdom, like a tiger prowling across the surface of the chapel or a butterfly visiting flowers on the Rotunda—a decidedly more peaceful image than the bicentennial’s flaming Rotunda, itself a callback to the disastrous real-life fire of 1895. Other Dobrow images, rippling and morphing shapes and patterns, are less rooted in reality. Everything is connected by different selections of EDM music that can be heard at each of the Brighter Together events.

Dobrow identifies these soundtracks, and how they interact with the visuals, as the most important relationship in his artwork, aside from the relationship between the art and the building onto which it’s projected. For Brighter Together, he enlisted the help of Red Flower Lake, a local husband-and-wife group. The duo’s otherworldly tunes pair nicely with Dobrow’s trippy visuals, creating a product that might be commonplace at a music festival, but is considerably more remarkable when projected onto UVA’s historic buildings.

Projection mapping is still a new art form, particularly in the U.S. “It’s huge in the rest of the world and has been for years,” says Dobrow. “Like most things in the United States, our first exposure to it was…through revenue-generating advertising.” He’s advocating for it to become a more accepted medium, both for patrons of the arts and for aspiring creators. “A huge part of what I do is education, especially for at-risk kids. No one has heard of [projection mapping], but a lot of it is accessible.”

Not only is the concept relatively recent, Dobrow says it’s also constantly in flux thanks to continual technological improvements—or, in his words, “basically everything that’s going to turn us into Terminator 2.” It’s already incredible, he stresses—the GPU technology he’s used for Brighter Together enables the images to interact with the music in real time—and it’s becoming more advanced by the day. He contrasts the canvas and brush process of traditional painting with the more complex world of projection mapping. “With technology, we are experiencing things we didn’t think we could do.”

What Dobrow wants to emphasize most—and what’s hardest to convey in a newspaper article—is the sheer magnitude of his projects. He says the creation of his projections often gives him small-screen fatigue, hunched over “my little laptop for endless periods of time…but when I go and put it back on the building, it’s huge. It’s everything. The transformation hits me every time.”

Brighter Together is a partnership between The Division of Student Affairs, UVA Arts, and the office of the Provost and Vice Provost for the Arts with generous support from the AV Company.

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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

Chicho Lorenzo paints through barriers at local exit

Charlottesville Mural Project artist Chicho Lorenzo’s recently completed work is located at Barracks Road near the 250 bypass. Photo by Eze Amos

When painter and muralist Chicho Lorenzo saw the 7′ tall retaining wall along Barracks Road near the 250 bypass, he knew exactly what he wanted to paint.

“Maybe two years ago, I was commissioned to paint a mural for a military school,” Lorenzo says. “I had an idea for an image of two teachers standing like columns, supporting the base of education. I didn’t paint it then, but when I saw this wall I thought, what if I extended it from teachers to nurses to dreamers to many other people in the community?”

In early 2017, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative partnered with Albemarle County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, UVA Arts and local residents to beautify the concrete corridor that connects busy Barracks Road with scenic Garth Road. Local and regional artists submitted proposals to the initiative, which was spearheaded by The Charlottesville Mural Project, a Bridge PAI program designed to showcase artistic talent while creating a more interesting visual landscape in Charlottesville.

In the process, members of nearby communities discussed what they hoped to see in the mural, including organic colors, a sense of whimsy and playfulness, and a theme that communicated the history, geographic beauty and diverse people of the area.

Small wonder that Lorenzo was chosen. Since moving to Charlottesville in 2008, the self-taught artist has become known for painting dreamy, colorful murals that reflect the vibrancy of his native Madrid and typically reference real people from the local community.

Local musicians are some of his favorite subjects. “If I sit in front of a musician playing, I can perfectly draw it—not just their faces and instruments, but the way they play,” says Lorenzo. “I can draw their music with symbols and other graphic resources. It’s very instantaneous inspiration.”

Manifesting the unseen is part of the pleasure of creation for Lorenzo, who views art as “opening the window for a real life” that just happens to not exist yet.

He points to the mural he painted on the back wall of Mas Tapas in Belmont. “It’s a floating banquet with real people: people from the restaurant, people from the yoga place upstairs, many neighbors from that area,” Lorenzo says. “There was one neighbor who told me that his mom always wanted him to have a farm. So on one of the mountains, far away, there’s a little farmhouse with this guy in the door.”

Just like that, the man’s mother was right. Suddenly, he had a farm.

“In my experience, art opens possibilities in life,” Lorenzo says. “We are so used to seeing life a certain way. We see our routines, our day-by-day. Now with the Internet, we can see more, but it’s still limited. But then you learn how to do art, and you realize life is limitless.”

That’s the power of mutual inspiration, he says. Whether he works on painting a portrait or creating a massive mural, he continually draws from the town that inspires him—and hopes to return the favor.

“Mostly, I hope my art inspires a kind of happiness,” he says. “I have this trust that my art somehow makes the world or at least the local community, a little better.”