Looking back at the arts in culture in 2024

By Page H. Gifford
Correspondent

The arts flourished in 2024 with another successful Artist’s Studio Tour, sell-out crowds for Empowered Players at Carysbrook Performing Arts Center, while Fluvanna Art Association members’ creative minds and imagination gleamed in the spring show Elements. 

It wasn’t a year just for entertainment but also for thought-provoking subjects, crossing over into sensitive issues including the Black experience, the evolution of feminism in sports, and the fight against mental illness.

Carysbrook Performing Arts Center has sought to be a place of variety and diversity. Audience members have been positive and receptive to the return of classical and jazz music. Films have become part of the season line-up and Raised/Razed raised some eyebrows about the plight of Black people living in Vinegar Hill in Charlottesville, displaced in the name of progress and politics.

Friends of the Library welcomed a wide range of authors, most of whom wrote fiction, yet based on realistic and timely topics. Jody Hobbs Hesler’s Without You Here, explores the raw emotions connected with depression and coping with suicide. Her  in-depth research and attention to detail provides the realism that makes the reader forget it’s fiction.

Kalela Williams tackles the relationship between a mother and daughter against the backdrop of a plantation and its history in Tangleroot. She takes her main character Nonie on a journey of self-discovery to unearth the meaning of her heritage.

In non-fiction, Bonnie Hagerman looked at the evolution of women from swimsuit models to successful athletes in her book Skimpy Coverage, A Look at Sports Illustrated and Female Athletes. The author never found role models when she was an athlete.

Influenced by local Black history and the work of filmmaker Horace Scruggs, artist Linda Staiger saw this as an opportunity to bring Black and White artists together with Black descendants who would model for the portraits to facilitate learning about them and their history. This would help the artists shape their images through a perception of the model’s history and self-expression.

The visual arts featured emerging artists engaging in mediums other than traditional drawing and painting. Duffy Dillinger demonstrated her unique style by building abstract sculptures with paper mâché. Carol Sorber discussed her glass creations and Alyce Walcavich talked about printing and mixed media. Joseph Gastrock in an interview, discussed rediscovering the master’s technique of silverpoint, painting with metals.

Artists are branching out, exploring, and experimenting with mixed media, printing, and collage as a way of expressing themselves. With new products on the market, artists have become more curious about what can be accomplished with other than traditional methods.

Writers, artists, and filmmakers are not afraid to dive into thorny issues, confronting the norms and sharing their thoughts on a variety of timely subjects with their personal vision and voice. Visual artists break the barriers, going outside the boundaries of what has been acceptable to what is possible. Next year can only get better.