#HERStory: AMY BLACK
Amy Black, an award-winning tattoo artist in RVA, is the founder of The Pink Ink Fund, a non-profit that provides post-mastectomy tattoos as part of breast reconstruction due to breast cancer. Luke Witt caught up with Amy for the #HERStory photo series, in partnership with Richmond Grid magazine, to find out what drives this impressive, […]
SoundView Project Taps into Street Energy
On a lively stretch of E. Broad sits a brand experience shop that boasts a bold name and even bolder ideas. Release the Hounds, which offers advertising and graphic design led by John Mills, is known for its street-level window display that has featured everything from art to pop-up shops over the years. This fall […]
Mapping RVA: Excluded Communities
Whether you live in the Upper Fan or in East Henrico, you likely have much more in common with your neighbors than a zip code. The racial and socioeconomic divides within Greater Richmond find bold visual expression in Excluded Communities, a spatial analysis and exhibit launched by Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) to illustrate the […]
It’s All Relative
What makes a family? Who can define your family? The Valentine shares in the dialogue with this new exhibition, It’s All Relative: Richmond Families (1616–2016), which opened on October 13 in the Stettinius Community Galleries. It’s All Relative explores the changing definition and composition of families in the Richmond community from the 17th century to […]
The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia Opens in the Leigh Street Armory
By Paul Spicer On the corner of St. Peter and Leigh Streets in Jackson Ward sits a place for dialogue. The castle-like building, originally constructed in 1895, once served as the base for the First Battalion Virginia Volunteers Infantry, Richmond’s first African American regiments. This spring the building, known as the Leigh Street Armory, became […]
Creative Sprint RVA: Richmond Schools, Businesses, and Entrepreneurs Get Creative
By Noah Scalin and Mica Scalin When you think of creativity, what comes to mind? Is it an artist painting a picture or an author writing a book? Is it yourself? As siblings from a family of artists, we never questioned that we were creative, but when we started teaching creativity to the business […]
This is Major
Communities are built through stories. When we tell stories that inspire and engage us, we inevitably build stronger communities. But it also takes dedicated people to share narratives that have the power to change. At the intersection of powerful stories and community engagement live two men: Mike Kemetic and Marshall “Major” Taylor. A Powerful Story […]
An Instrument Built to Last
By Davy Jones Many would consider metal to be Richmond’s main musical export, but an instrument with a slightly more dulcet tone is bringing our city’s creativity and ingenuity to households all over the globe—the ukulele. From the Richmond office of Hohner, the storied German instrument manufacturing company, Leon Lewis heads up Lanikai, which has […]
Art Happens Here
Change is constant at 2016 Staples Mill Road. It was once Colonial Grocery. Then it was a beauty school. And from there, a mixed-use building that peddled everything from mattresses to flooring. For the past 13 years, the property, however, has served one purpose: the home base for Crossroads Art Center, a growing clearinghouse for […]
How A Local Publisher Created RVA’s Biggest New Year’s Bash
Tony Harris knows how to throw a party. In 2007 Harris orchestrated a 10,000-plus gathering of Richmonders in Carytown to ring in the New Year. And in 2008 he ramped up those numbers to 23,000 people, resulting in a legendary New Year’s Eve party that gridlocked nine blocks of Carytown and still has RVA talking […]