Sidewalk Sale at CoArt Gallery

Saturday, April 27th, we’re having a SIDEWALK SALE, 10 am – 6 pm. Low prices on original artwork, reproductions, and note cards by our artist-members. Come browse our tent and tables for a great deal on great art! Rain date: Saturday, May 4

Spring Events at Art Hive

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 String Art – 10:30 am to 12:00 pm – $12 Memory Wire Bracelet – 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm – $12 Wednesday, March 27, 2024 Earth in Bloom Flower Making Contest – 10:30 am to 12:00 pm – $12 Neon Painting – 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm – $12 Thursday, March 28, 2024 Pop Art Portrait Painting – 10:30 am to 12:00 pm – $12 Roller Printing – 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm – $12

Opening Reception for Christine Watt’s “After Midnight”

Friday, April 5th from 5-7pm The CoArt Gallery is hosting The April First Friday featuring the Opening Reception for Christine Watt’s exhibit “After Midnight.” Christine will be available to answer questions about her artwork. Light refreshments will be served. For more information you can visit coartgallery.com

Classes at Art Hive

Friday, March 29th, the Art Hive collective is hosting 3 classes. The first one from 10:30 am to noon is the Peeps Diorama, Where there will be art supplies, a shoe box that attendees are encouraged to bring if they have one. Bring one you have already started or finish it at home. Either way, participants can bring it back at noon for voting and prizes. Price is $12 From 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm is the Easter Egg Decoupage where attendees can create their own personalized egg with our paper/fabric or anything that can be mod podged onto wood. The price for this class is also $12. From 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm is Craft-A-Buzz where participants can do their own arts and craft projects, while chatting, snacking, and watching bad movies. There will be snacks, but participants can also bring their own. This is a free hangout. For more information on the classes offered at the art hive collective you can visit arthive.art

Fiber Festival at Frontier Culture Museum

The Frontier Culture Museum is hosting their Fiber Festival, where they highlight their heritage breed sheep. Attendees will learn about natural fibers such as wool, flax, and hemp as they explore the ways in which these fibers have been used throughout history and how they’re used today.There will also fiber artists, vendors, and shepherds.Fiber Fest vendors and presenters will offer information on historical fiber processing as well as workshops and demonstrations.

Rachel Cantor: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister

2024 Virginia Festival of the Book Preview Event Sunday, March 17th from 11AM to 1:15PM at the American Shakespeare Center, author Rachel Cantor will read from her new novel, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, an innovative re-envisioning of the Brontë family’s lives. Her reading will be interspersed with exciting, imaginative performances from Wuthering Heights by actors of the Staunton organization The Off Center. Afterward, Staunton Books and Tea on 34 East Beverley Street hosts book sales and a signing, as well as a cake celebrating the Brontë patriarch’s 246th birthday. The American Shakespeare Center is also presenting Pride & Prejudice at 2:00PM.

Judy McGovern Staunton Irish Pub Crawl

Saturday, March 16th, WQSV DJ Bluegrass Chuck is leading the 2nd annual Judy McGovern Staunton Irish Pub Crawl. The revelry will start at 11:30 am at The Depot Grille restaurant in downtown Staunton, then move along after a 45 minute stop at the following bars: The Bistro, Ciders From Mars, Red Beard, The Green Room, Blu Point, The Clock Tower, Queen City Bistro, Baja and finally Bricks Restaurant & Pub. Attendees are encouraged to jump in and jump out at their pleasure! Chuck suggests that participants find alternate transportation home at the conclusion of their crawl. A group photo will be taken at each stop, as well as singing a chorus of The Irish Unicorn. For more information you can follow the 2nd Annual Judy McGovern Staunton Irish Pub Crawl on Facebook.

Dirty Barbie and other girlhood tales

Silver Line Theatre Exchange welcomes Denise Stewart back to our stage to remount her poignant and hilarious autobiographical piece about growing up a girl in the south. Dirty Barbie has brought audiences together at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), New York City, Washington D.C., and all over Virginia and North Carolina to great acclaim. Denise Stewart grew up in North Carolina. This show is a series of true stories and scenes pulled from her life there (1978—1994). This is a one hour performance with no intermission.

Intro to Herbalism with Mahi Doiron

Begin your journey into the world of Herbalism with this easy, demystifying class. Learn how to start seeing and working with the abundance of food and medicine plants that surround us daily. We will discuss the importance and history of herbalism around the world, basic preparations of herbs, some common herbs for common ailments, and we’ll be making an herbal preparation to begin your own home apothecary. Mahi is a folk herbalist living in Stuarts Draft. He has been learning and practicing herbalism for the last seven years and is always excited to teach and share the knowledge he has gained about meeting and working with herbs. Please bring a notebook and any questions you may have! Tickets are $35.

Susan Paul Firestone Lecture on Contemporary Art: featuring Brian Palmer

The Susan Paul Firestone Lecture Series in Contemporary Art at Mary Baldwin University is pleased to announce the 2024 speaker, Brian Palmer. As an award winning photographer, journalist, advocate, and educator for over three decades, Palmer tells untold stories of the conflict and struggle, daily life, politics, and activism of everyday people of often marginalized communities candidly, and with integrity and compassion. Palmer began his journalism career as a fact-checker at the Village Voice newspaper and freelance photographer. He served as a CNN correspondent and the Beijing Bureau Chief for US News and World Report. In 2002, he returned to freelancing. He has been published in the New York Times, the Nation, Smithsonian Magazine, New Republic, PBS, and by Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting. Palmer has also taught undergraduate and graduate students as an adjunct (School of Visual Arts, Baruch College, Hampton University) and as a visiting professor (University of Richmond and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism). He has been awarded numerous awards: a Peabody, a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence, and an Online Journalism Award for the Reveal episode, “Monumental Lies”, focusing on the myth, the Lost Cause narrative, of the Civil War and slavery kept alive with confederate monuments. Additionally, he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to create a documentary, Full Disclosure, that focused on his time as a journalist in Iraq with US Marines. In addition to his work in Iraq and on confederate monuments, he reported and produced a story for PBS on the burden of evictions of Black and Brown residents in Richmond. He was included in the International Center for Photography’s “Radical Conversation: Making American Great” series presenting on “The Image of Greatness” revealing how he saw America’s political movement within the global context. Themes of place, politics, and community figure heavily in Palmer’s work. Through his visual journalism, Palmer strives to tell the stories and uplift the vibrant African American communities that have been devalued or erased. Working with independent curator Ashley Kistler, writer Laura Browder, and the University of Richmond Museums, Palmer photographed community members for the “Growing Up in Civil Rights Richmond” exhibition and subsequent catalog. Since the end of 2014, he and his wife, Erin Hollaway Palmer, have been part of the volunteer effort to reclaim and document East End Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground in Henrico County, Virginia. Most recently, in January, Palmer participated in the “Picturing the Black Racial Imaginary” Symposium at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Brian Palmer is presenting at Mary Baldwin University on March 11 at 7 pm in Francis Auditorium as part of the Susan Paul Firestone Lecture and will work with art studio students on March 12. This lecture series was initiated through the generosity of Ray A. Graham III and it honors the creative work and accomplishments of Susan Paul Firestone ’68.