Zombies, A Birthday, the Slave Trail, and Big Naked Men



The gals are back for the First Friday's On and Off Broad Art Walk sponsored by Curated Culture that each month injects the kind of liveliness pictured here to midtown Richmond. If you are new to the billion-eyed audience, you may not know that the image is of a long ago opening at the former Three Miles Gallery which is now the new and improved Tarrant's Café, that takes the name and part of their space from the pharmacy that conducted business there for years, and a splendid stained glass transom bears the name.

We hope the rains of the day's forepart may slack and that the street will be busy anyway, as it often is, and that the girls will wear an appropriate wrap around their shoulders.

UPDATE: Yes indeedy, the precip is past, and Watteau clouds and blue sky are treating the eye.

The star turn tonight is the Jillian MacDonald exhibtion at the 1708 Gallery. MacDonald brings her new media/performance work, that has included transforming herself from a normal subway communter into a zombie, and an ongoing artful obsession with Billy Bob Thorton, and the general insanity of the age. And the Partner In Art For Life is bartending.

At art6, gallery go-founder John Bailey is displaying 13 floor-to-ceiling crayon drawings of nekkid men. Hey, if it's what you're into. The curious audience should be worth observing.

Also tonight, the Valentine Museum Richmond History Center opens Tell Me Where You're Marching, Tell Me Where You're Bound, a photographic exhibit of pinhole images by Shanna Merola of the all-but erased images of Richmond's antebellum slave trade. I want to make an effort to get to Court End for this, but as usual there's much going on. There's a gallery talk on February 10. This haunting image represents the holding pens of Lumpkin's Jail (If you follow the link, scroll down)

I'll be checking out the Third Birthday Party of WRIR Radio with its array of musical and performance artists. This is held in what was built as the Masonic Temple and is now commercial and residential, with the Renaissance Center conference center within. This is always a big fun party and I'm eager to hear the No BS Brass and Tulsa Drone. I've liked the snippets I've heard of Erin Tobey, but don't know much else about her.

Now, tomorrow, of course, if you have a cultural bone in your body is the Richmond Moving Image Co-Cop Italian Festival -- the fifth! -- and it's in the intimacy of the Firehouse Theatre, food, wine and cappacino all day long. All that, and Sophia Loren, too! [via onanslemming.nl]