Inside Voice by Deborah McLeod


 

  Chroma Projects enjoyed four exciting years of being able to introduce and exhibit art in our glorious space on the (Charlottesville) Downtown Mall. But all things being eventually subject to change, we had to accept that we needed to find a new way to continue. To keep Chroma alive and functioning under more manageable terms, we transitioned the gallery to our home.     Exhibiting art in a residence is not a new idea by any means, art has been formally presented in manor homes since the Italians initiated the tradition in the 16th … Continue reading Inside Voice by Deborah McLeod

Publish Thyself?


 

A good friend and fellow writer recently introduced me to Medium. NOT the dead-people-seeing-housewife tv show. Medium is a digital publishing platform/story-telling community for writers to engage through feedback, recommendations, and followings. There’s not much fluff—it’s cleanly designed and very simple, with a big variety of writing top. Recently, Medium posed a writing prompt/contest that seemed too ripe to pass up: “I had to have it.” I ran with it, created an account and uploaded my response. Since winning the contest had to do with ‘recommends,’ I don’t think my six followers who somehow appeared when I joined won me any trophies. But having a … Continue reading Publish Thyself?

My Pilgrim Problem


 

In second grade, I was assigned the role of a Pilgrim woman in the Thanksgiving play.  I wore a dull, gray dress with an itchy, starched white collar and I had only two sentences to say: “Look, look, the Governor is coming.  He is such a fine man.”  Even as a seven-year-old I recognized that this was a smarmy speech and a bit part, but such was the lot of us Pilgrim women.  We all delivered our brief lines and then stood back, pretending to stir things while the Governor and Squanto got all the action.  … Continue reading My Pilgrim Problem

Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions


 

    When I first moved to Qatar ten years ago, I was disappointed to find that the desert of the Qatar peninsula (on the northeastern coast of the Arabian peninsula) was not as lush as that of Arizona, where I previously had lived and fallen in love with Sonoran plants and animals. At first, Qatar’s desert appeared to be nothing but a barren wasteland.   Then I was introduced to a local artist and wildflower expert who, every spring after the rains, took us out into the desert to search for flowers and other … Continue reading Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions

It’s Coming, Ready or Not – A Rant


 

And you know I don’t mean Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. You do know that, right? I notice that the newspapers, the internet, the TV, are all full of stories about the seasons coming, by which they mean Thanksgiving and Christmas — just as they have been full, of course, about the season past, which is to say Halloween. This is certainly an effect of capitalism, which the media, being its children, cannot ignore. It’s their business, after all.   Halloween? Buy lots of candy! Thanksgiving next, buy your turkey here! Christmas after that, be sure and … Continue reading It’s Coming, Ready or Not – A Rant

All Souls


 

As I write, Halloween is upon us.  Not that I need to say anything.  Signs of its approach have been around for a while.  It is unlikely to slip by unnoticed.  Depending on how you measure such things (public displays, retail spending, poll numbers), Halloween is challenging Thanksgiving for second place among our culture’s favorite holidays, and it has the momentum going forward.   Poor All Saints’ Day, the original reason, after all, that there is such a thing as Halloween.  Safe to say that most people who enjoy the make-believe, the trick-or-treating, or the … Continue reading All Souls

Up Close in Color and Black & White: Katherine Minott


 

  Western photographer Katherine Minott moves in close in color and black and white. Her closeups — abstracts as well as things recognizable — explore “the beauty hidden in every day objects, the sacred hidden in the mundane.” Her subjects from broken eggs and weathered wood to purple kayaks and hot pink splattered paint, highlight intense contrasts and intimate observation.     Minott equally enjoys shooting in color and black and white. “Often black and white lends itself     to capturing the ‘soul’ of something, like a tree with sunlight streaming through leaves,” she … Continue reading Up Close in Color and Black & White: Katherine Minott

Art Notes by Elizabeth Howard


 

Charlottesville’s Les Yeux du Monde Gallery is presently exhibiting a solo show by mixed media painter and landscapist Anne Slaughter, profiled earlier in Streetlight. Slaughter is known for her layered sculptures and earthy, semi abstract landscapes, works that show the effects of weather and time’s relentless passage. Her present show, Connections, is dedicated to figures, although faceless, for the first time. Slaughter’s show will run until November 16th. Visit https://www.lydm.co/ to read more. The McGuffey Arts Center’s Sarah B. Smith Gallery is now showing samples of the Charlottesville area’s quality pottery, fiber art, furniture, jewelry, glass, leather and … Continue reading Art Notes by Elizabeth Howard

Stevie Nicks by Ann Robinson

Stevie Nicks
 

Stevie Nicks   Under the strobes guitar hands, neon blonde. She sings like a forty-year-old child, wears a witch’s cape. Tosses back her jukebox tenor to the audience. We stone up, all the freaks in the back row, breathless. Where was I going before I heard her music? Back when the world was hunger, and we only took. Ann Robinson’s work has appeared in American Literary Review, Connecticut Review, Fourteen Hills, Hiram, Poet Lore, Spoon River Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Whiskey Island Review among others. Her poetry book Stone Window, by Bark for Me Publications, came out … Continue reading Stevie Nicks by Ann Robinson

The Hairy Man by Laurie Billman

salmon
 

It was midnight of our last night in the cannery, and all twelve of us who had been assigned the fish house had been working since seven that morning. All day and into the light-filled night, we had been cleaning fat salmon as they slithered out of the tin chutes directly from the salmon boats. White fish bellies were burned on my lids when I closed my eyes, and my ears sang with an exhausted hum. When the warning bell rang, down slid silver salmon, spilling, wet and shiny, onto the long, wooden tables. We … Continue reading The Hairy Man by Laurie Billman

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