Exploring

Comprising just over 10 square miles, with a population of nearly 45,000 (closer to 120,000 when combined with Albemarle County, which is considered part of the greater Charlottesville Metropolitan area), Charlottesville is a far cry from New York. And while I was willing to downsize from a big city, I didn’t want to end up in a dull backwater. I needn’t have worried. Charlottesville’s mix of artists and writers, students and scholars, natives and entrepreneurs who live and work here speaks to Jefferson’s enduring legacy of creativity, coming together to make Charlottesville a happening place with a rich and varied cultural life and a sophisticated, big-town vibe. And there is that hard-to-articulate sense of place that so appealed to me as a child and which still seems to hover in the air—a combination of history, landscape, tradition and way of behaving that evokes, well, “Southernness.”

“For a small city, Charlottesville is doing a great job culturally,” says Deborah McLeod, 60, director of Chroma Projects, a changing exhibition space and collective of artist studios located on the downtown mall. The mall is one of the longest outdoor pedestrian malls in the nation, and home to a lively street scene and restaurants, theaters, art galleries and shops, including the recently renovated 1930s movie palace, the Paramount Theater. The mall also hosts the Virginia Festival of the Book in March, the Charlottesville Festival of the Photograph in June, and the Virginia Film Festival in October. McLeod has observed Charlottesville’s art scene for 25 years. “Charlottesville has been facilitating its artists in a more comprehensive way,” she says, “and I find more interconnectivity now.” Second Street Gallery, established in 1973 and the oldest contemporary art space in Central Virginia, is now located inside the City Center for Contemporary Arts building on East Water Street along with two other non-profit groups: Live Arts (a community theater) and Light House (a youth media organization). McLeod points to the new institutions that have popped up too, like The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative in Belmont, a small arts organization that promotes young and emerging artists, and The Garage on First Street, a multi-purpose arts and events venue, that have what she describes as fresh young voices that speak outside the established arts organizations and galleries. This, she says, “is the kind of healthy growth a good city should enjoy and encourage.”