I am a writer and designer in Central Virginia.
PREMISE: If an author were to write a book, followed by another and others still, each of which plays with readers, challenging assumptions of narrative and continuity in unending ways, we also should expect that the author would be sportive and demanding.
Though his style has been described as "cinematic guitar poetry," musician Hiroya Tsukamoto more often defies description when he takes the stage. "I don't really categorize music ... I compose and play something [that] I feel [is] natural and honest," he said.
The best crime novels evoke a time and place, whether it's the smoky back rooms of the 1920s jazz era or gritty alleys of 1980s New York. Settings and moods they create are often equal in importance to the characters and clues themselves.
It's been four years since The Blow put out a new album-the last being their self-titled release in 2013. A lot has happened in the outside world since then, socially, politically and musically. The same, however, seemingly cannot be said for the interior worlds of the band members...
Note by note and phrase by phrase, Harmony of Difference, the new EP by saxophonist Kamasi Washington, builds a towering euphoria within the short span of six songs...
In "Where Are You Going?" Briana Chrispin describes how, for her, attending school as a kid had little to do with learning. "[S]chool was just a place where teachers talked a lot about things I hardly understood," she writes.
With the first kick of a drum and stroke of a guitar string, each song by the band Nap Eyes begins conjuring the ruminative, northern coastal climes of Nova Scotia...
Writing a novel isn't easy by most measures, but it's said that your second novel is where the anxiety really kicks in. Pressure builds to craft a book that's readable and critically embraced, without being too similar to its predecessor. Of course, this is even more true if your first was met with popular success.
When was the last time you fell asleep thinking about monsters in the other room? For most of us, that thought fades after childhood. But Matthew Gatto knows there are monsters just 10 feet away from where he sleeps. They reside in his living room or, as it's more commonly known, the Parlor of Horrors.
Christophe Vorlet painted his mailbox pink, but purely for functional reasons: It makes it easier to give directions to people. That the mailbox also serves as roadside art didn't factor into the decision, he says. Much of Vorlet's approach to visual art is filtered through a similar matter-of-factness.
Playing with the art in a gallery is not always the viewer's first instinct. "I always worry that video [art] is intimidating, but then you put on a lab coat and it changes things," says multimedia artist Fenella Belle. In an exhibition this month with photographer Stacey Evans, Belle's lab coat is both symbolically and physically present.
Charlottesville native Lincoln Michel knows a thing or two about literature. A familiar face in the New York literary community, he received his MFA in fiction from Columbia University and is currently the editor-in-chief of electricliterature.com as well as a co-founder of Gigantic, a magazine dedicated to flash fiction.
In the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each man takes his hands and feels a part of the elephant-a tusk, a haunch, the trunk, perhaps even the tail. Each then reports back to the others with a conflicting impression of the animal, based on the small square footage he covered.
The popcorn machine remains silent and the box office window is still tightly closed, but signs of life are returning to Vinegar Hill Theatre this summer. After the arthouse cinema and adjacent restaurant closed in 2013, the building remained vacant for almost two years.
For these Nelson County kombucha brewers, it isn't just about selling a good product...
From dedicated amateur to celebrated professional, this Virginia-bred fashionista is taking the world (and the stars) by storm with her highly-structured garments.