Connecticut artist Suzanne Heilmann explores the color white with her art installations. “I think of babies being born, all new and pristine clean. Purity and innocence are represented in a conscious and simplistic way. White is cold too, and the whole death thing. I have to be very careful to give it balance so it won’t be a negative. Or sad.”
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Every year, my husband and I spend two weeks at a 70-year-old cabin in the Allegheny Mountains, west of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. I have been going there since the summer after I graduated from college, when the cabin had no electricity, plumbing or running water. But 100 feet off our back porch was the constant, comforting sound of the Maury River flowing through the mountain pass where the cabin was built—a sound that more than made up for the lack of 20th-century conveniences. Now, 40 years later, the cabin still has no … Continue reading A Place to Take Stock
I had a fantasy when I began volunteering for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Charlottesville. I would help newly arrived refugees document their identities, tell their stories and illustrate them with family photographs brought from their homelands. We would talk, become friends and I would save their stories. Naively, I didn’t understand that many arriving refugees spoke little or no English. Those who did land with language skills were eager to go to work as soon as possible. Getting acquainted and discussing their pasts was not their top priority. I signed up to assist the teacher … Continue reading A Common Language
For photographer Andrew Shurtleff, the goal in covering sports and political events is “to report the story — whether winning or losing — through photographs. I look for moments that reveal what’s really going on.” Shurtleff, as director of photography for the Charlottesville Daily Progress, has photographed the competitors — UVA sports teams as well as visiting titans of politics — from President Barack Obama, to Justice Anthony Scalia, Republican contenders Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, and front runner Donald … Continue reading Winning and Losing: Andrew Shurtleff Photographs
Balancing Craft and Business… Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels, including The New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, and Ghost Riders will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Virginia Writers’ Club Symposium. The Symposium, “Navigating Your Writing Life: Balancing Craft and Business,” will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., August 1 at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. The Symposium is sponsored by the statewide VA Writers Club (VWC). Named … Continue reading A Balancing Act
Rick Weaver seems an artist equally interested in what can and cannot be seen. Whether working with paint brushes, carving tools or modeling clay, his creations blend the subject at hand with what he imagines is missing. Initially trained in classical drawing and painting, Weaver now concentrates on sculptures, life size as well as those larger and smaller. He’s currently completing a commission of a Native American boy for an art association in St. Augustine, Florida. He’s shaping the 54″ statue in wax eventually to be cast in bronze. The young Native … Continue reading Rick Weaver: The Art of Imagination
LOOK3… June 10-13th all eyes will be on LOOK3, Charlottesville’s stellar photography festival now in its seventh year. The town will host numerous famous photographers as well as revealing talks, exhibits and shows in a variety of venues. This year’s Festival is curated by Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography at The New York Times Magazine and Scott Thode, the current Visuals Editor for E.O. Wilson’s Life On Earth. The LOOK3 Festival of the … Continue reading Through the Looking Glass….
Birds in residence are the stuff of metaphors and dreams for New York City artist Dina Brodsky. Mysterious feathered fowl — from crows to blue jays — land in unexpected interiors, their residencies somehow natural as well as disturbing. “The current series — One More Shelter — shows abandoned places, buildings given over to decay and entropy, yet still containing the memories of its former inhabitants,” says Brodsky. “Albuquerque is a painting based on an incredibly formal, beautiful, and unusable dining room I saw in a New Mexico house. I imagined what the room and the objects would look … Continue reading Fine Feathers: Miniatures by Dina Brodsky
What is the difference between illustration and fine art? Streetlight’s featured artist Kate Samworth, and Nick Clark, former Chief Curator and Founding Director of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, consider the question. Illustration as fine art — and the relationship of children’s book illustration to “art” or “fine” art — are complex questions. In short, they are, or were, the same. Illustration, or “narrative” painting, dominated Western painting for centuries until the mid-1800s. The longer answer requires that we decide what is the difference between “fine” and other art? … Continue reading The Art of Illustration