Living | Andrew Cedermark

Barbara Buhr opened Warm Springs Gallery on Third Street—it’s that bright little room with the wood floor opposite Fleurie—a year ago as a show-case for challenging art. Warm Spring’s latest bit of eye candy, “Asymmetry and Abstraction,” by the noted African-American painter and etcher Joseph Holston, is a welcome challenge. Joseph Holston’s (below) “Two Fishermen” [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Nobody’s been rocking Charlottesville as long as the party band leader Bennie Dodd. So when Bennie Dodd raises his hand at a meeting about Charlottesville music, you listen. “I remember years ago, back in 1976. The Mall didn’t even have anybody,” said Dodd. “We could play out of Stacy’s Music, and you wouldn’t even see [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

If your dad, as mine once did, blasts Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”—a song about being “stolen from Africa” and then fighting for your life—to summon a carefree vibe every time you drive to the beach, then you’ll have some context for this question: Why do humans, when faced with oppression, make music that the unoppressed [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

The church of rock and roll was built on the remains of just about every other church that came before it. But somehow, the great rock tradition of mining the music of alien cultures—from slave music to traditional Appalachian music—has mostly kept north of the border. That’s why Simon & Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa,” a [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

The Nazis at the Terezin concentration camp took a cruel sort of pleasure in hearing the motley chorus of Jews sing a dramatic piece of music about death. The Jewish prisoners, for their part, relished the opportunity to sing a passionate work to their oppressors about what awaits sinners come judgment day. Both emotions were [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Thanks to Marina Abramovic’s sweeping retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York last year, 2010 was in some ways the year that performance art entered the public awareness. “The Artist is Present” greeted viewers with shocking images: A totally nude woman, and clearly in pain, balanced on a thin seat that jutted [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Reko Rennie’s (pictured) graffiti installation opens at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection this week. Rennie and Native American Artist Frank Buffalo Hyde will also collaborate on a mural, which will be unveiled at The Bridge/PAI in February. High drama was in the air at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection last week when I went to [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

If you’re leaving a concert this year, and some stranger walks up to you to ask what you had for dinner, or where you’re sleeping that night, do not—I repeat—do not be alarmed. It’s only a study, spearheaded by the Piedmont Council for the Arts, which aims to determine just how great an impact spending [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Wes Swing taught high school Latin for two years before devoting his time to music. A love of the classics comes through in his imagist lyrics and formally literate arrangements.

Living | Andrew Cedermark

If I were a food critic, 2010 would’ve left me with a royal case of gout. But as it is, I write about local art, so 2010 left my brain all wrinkly, my body tired, and all of me excited about 2011. Throughout the year there were a bunch of art-related events that thought outside [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Several weeks after we first speculated whether Satch Huizenga was still working as Live Arts’ Producing Artistic Director, the theater announced last Tuesday that Huizenga—whose 10 years at the leading local theater included six as a volunteer and four on staff—had resigned for “personal reasons.” But the lag time between Huizenga’s apparent depature and any [...]

Living | Andrew Cedermark

Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell digs her CLAWs into the Jeff.