I got disorientated after viewing all the surreal art with double images, optical illusions and symbolism at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. With names like Exploding Raphaelesque Head, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, Portrait of My Dead Brother and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, I’m not surprised that by the time we ordered […]
‘Looks like you’re at a party,’ my son Josh texted after I sent him a picture of Joe and me in front of the scene in the picture above. I wanted to see if he, an artist, could guess where we were. Next, I sent him bigger clue, a picture of Dale Chihuly, the world […]
I told her I’d try not to use the term “bad ass” in my write-up for our hometown paper about her new CD, Puppets for My Heart, which she debuted with The Stepbrothers at Dogtown Roadhouse Friday night. I’m still impressed with how she seamlessly rhymes words like strangers and dangerous and how her songs paradoxically give […]
The Youngbloods was one of the bands that epitomized the ‘60s music experience for me. I bought their records, and my sister Sherry and I saw them in concert at The Boston Music Hall in the early ‘70s. After the band broke up I followed Jessie Colin Young’s, the lead singer’s solo career. Everyone knows […]
Even if it’s Halloween weekend and I went to a party the night before and have a party to go to the night after, I come out to dance to Richie Ursomarso and whatever Wildlife he puts together on stage. This time, the new addition was Sam Kephart on fiddle, which even got some Dogtown […]
Cosmic Charlie set some “fire on the mountain” Saturday night at Chantilly Farm in Floyd. For me, going to Grateful Dead concerts – whether an actual show with Jerry Garcia and the rest or a great tribute band like Cosmic Charlie or The Kind – is something like going to church. There is a following […]
It was our first time at The Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount, and we went for good reason, to see the iconic singer songwriter whose 1970 album that bore his name played regularly on my turntable throughout the ‘70s: Tom Rush. While settling into our seats, we ran into friends from Floyd who also […]
I stopped at a Department Store, looking for a leopard-skin pill-box hat to wear to the Bob Dylan concert in Roanoke Saturday night, but they didn’t have one, and he didn’t sing that song. He did sing Tangled Up in Blue, Don’t Think Twice and Baby Blue. I hardly recognized those classics at first because […]
It’s an Urban Hermitage in the middle of a city, where a Thoreau-like character named Greg lives simply and intentionally. It’s an art installation that fills up a house. The artist calls it “The Abandoned House Museum.” His life revolves around walks, sometimes with his wife who lives in a different house. He practices Zen […]
I covered the inaugural Little River Poetry Festival in Floyd this weekend and was completely won over. I’m still feeling the goose bumps and the earth shaking from the featured poet readings. Thanks to all the poets who came and shared their talent with Floyd! Read more about The Little River Poetry Festival HERE and […]
My favorite room in the exhibit on WONDER at the Renwick Gallery in D.C. is one by Boston artist Janet Echelman. Her installation creation draws from the maps of energy released during the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and features a woven sculpture and changing lights that, together, create a fantasy sail boating effect. Even the […]
Willow branch weaving by Patrick Dougherty, one of the artists that created room installations expressing WONDER for the re-opening of the Renwick Gallery in D.C. _____Shadow Shot Sunday
