What are the biggest challenges and rewards in maintaining a “cooperative” art gallery – the kind that’s administered and funded cooperatively by a bunch of artists? Richmond’s 44-artist cooperative gallery that’s now getting ready to mark its 20th year - Uptown Gallery – could probably write the book.
 

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On 2/2/2012 I attended the reception for and preview of Bruce Miller’s new play for Theatre IV, “The Oliver Hill Story,” at the Sara Belle and Neil November Theatre....
 

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I’d love to pick the brain of The Color of Water author James McBride about the Science Museum of Virginia’s RACE exhibit that I visited on 1/31/2012....
 

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The 1/26/2012 art exhibition reception was my first visit to Ashland’s three-month-old Gallery Flux.     Flux has lots of wall space and lots of floor space and at the 1/26/2012 reception had lots of people –

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On January 19 in D.C. I met and talked briefly with Holland Taylor – the actress who plays the mother on the television series, “Two and a Half Men.” She was the lead in “Butley” 40 years ago opposite Alan Bates – a play that was important turning point for me. She gave a talk to a group of us in D.C. and some of her comments were worth noting:

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We intellectual elitists who pull our pants on differently than the masses know that good art and culture encounters do much more than “entertain.” They give us an enhanced understanding of ourselves and our world. This truism undergirds my explorations of arts and culture in the Richmond region and my writings about them in this blog.

With this in mind I experienced a 12/19/2011 three-hour tour of a familiar art form: tacky Christmas lights.

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