THE ART of RE-INVENTING ZOOM
What's going on around the Village(s) of WestVirginiaVille | On thurs.oct15.2020
Welcome. If this newsletter was forwarded to you or you found it online, subscribe for free at: westvirginiaville.substack.com. | Douglas John Imbrogno, editor & co-founder
1 | ZOOM This Way
West Virginia native Ann Magnuson is special guest at today’s Oct. 15 virtual art opening by Tamarack Foundation for the Arts. | photo: Steven Love Menendez; hair & make up: Virna Smiraldi
If you like art, artful people, and artful experiences, click this link: tamarackfoundation.org/eafshow. That’s how to get into the free Virtual Art Opening from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. today (Thursday, Oct. 15). The event takes place, well … everywhere you’re at, via computer screen or smartphone.
The event celebrates the work of Tamarack Foundation for the Arts’ “Emerging Artists” class of 2020: Jessie McClanahan; Psychoflauge, Jes Reger Davis, Jaci Rice, and Nevada Tribble, whose work ranges from watercolor to video collage, industrial paintings to evocative pottery. The real world exhibit is at Taylor Books in West Virginia’s capital. But the ZOOM experience will be an art happening experiment.
“We’ll be playing with the whole notion of a ZOOM gathering,” says TFA’s Renee Margocee. “Some ‘rooms’ will include the artists, available for chatting. Others will feature video visits with the art.”
Each year, TFA looks out across West Virginia’s cities and hills and picks artists to showcase, while also helping them build sustainable businesses around their work, says Margocee. “They may be of any age and do any style of work. They just must be exceptional at what they do, whether with a brush, scissors, video screen.” | For more on the artists, click here.
The exhibit features guest Ann Magnuson, a Charleston WV native and an acclaimed protean artist, musician, and performer. ‘Beyond’ certainly captures the video invitation to today’s event (below), which Ann fashioned with her creative collaborator Adam Dugas:
CLICK VIDEO to view.
2 | The Uncensored Politician
Politicians are notorious for saying one thing in public while feeling quite another behind closed doors. Rarely do we get a peek behind the door or curtain. Or—in the case below—into the chat room. In the debut of our multimedia editorial feature, The Justice Project, we take a musical walk-through of some chatroom comments that led Cabell County West Virginia House of Delegates member John Mandt Jr., to resign earlier this month. He has since called back that resignation. He now says he'd serve a new term, if voters choose him on the ballot on Nov. 3. You be the judge. | READ ON for more on the controversy over his comments.
CLICK VIDEO to view. | A WestVirginiaVille.com original video
3 | Barring the Vote
The hue and cry has gone out—vote! But in West Virginia, advocates say education about voting rights for people with prison time or records or who are on parole is often unclear. Changes are needed to keep former inmates from being disenfranchised as described in this story we’re reprinting from Mountain State Spotlight. | READ ON
“Without me being able to vote, do I really matter to them?” says former inmate Kenny Matthews on the steps of the WV Capitol building. | Douglas Soule photo
4 | ‘5 THINGS’
Among the items in our new installment of “5 Things” from around WestVirginiaVille, is this glorious painting (below) of an Autumnal Appalachian sky by Sharon Lynn Stackpole. The other four things include: a foggy New River Gorge Bridge; the uplifting lines of Cabell Huntington Hospital’s architecture; a “Grab ‘Em By the Ballot Box” poster by artist Colleen Anderson; and a campaign sign that may lose Trump votes in the West Virginia heartland. Even if it may be fake news. | READ ON
5 | Coming Up in WestVirginiaVille.com:
Our Minister of Paragraphs Connie Kinsey has a—so-far—non-life-threatening case of Covid-19 (I’m knocking on the pixels of my virtual desk here at WestVirginiaVille World Headquarters). She’ll be filing a report from the (personal) front lines of the pandemic.
Esteemed member of the online publishing digeratti, Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher, edits The Longridge Review, which presents essays on how the mysteries of childhood experienc connect with the wonder of adult reflection. She’ll turn her attention another direction, as she interviews former West Virginia resident Jeff James, author of “Giving Up Whiteness.” It’s a book by a white author that explores white privilege and critical race theory and is “a disorienting investigation of what it means to be white in twenty-first-century America.”
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Wear a mask in public like a superhero or superheroine. Send feedback and suggest stuff to: heythere@westvirginiaville.com. Subscribe for free: westvirginiaville.substack.com. | Be well, stay safe. Douglas John Imbrogno, editor & co-founder, WestVirginiaVille.com