As always, final exams meant a relatively peaceful time around Grounds (outdoors at least; not for the libraries). The University Communications staff snapped a few Instagram photos during the week to capture the feel. Click for bigger versions.
U.Va. Today’s Robert Hull Reports:
For two months, U.Va. students met with Buford Middle School students in Desmond Cormier’s art classes to develop ideas for a garden-themed mural design for the side of Buford’s gymnasium, facing the school’s garden.
U.Va. students work to fill in the final spots of the mural at Buford Middle School.
This creative exchange had been established through a partnership between the U.Va. Student Arts Committee, Buford Middle School, the Charlottesville Mural Project and City Schoolyard Garden solely to plan a 2,200 square-foot mural adjacent to Buford’s garden.
Based on the conversations with students in the art classes at Buford, U.Va. first-year student Mary Kate Bailey designed the mural – with Photoshop assistance from second-year student Monica Mohaparta – as an intricate and geometric depiction of a garden landscape. Using a digital projector and a boom lift, the design was traced onto the wall at night.
For a month, students and teachers diligently worked at painting a colorful mural that would serve as a cornerstone of the arts and natural sciences for the students and faculty of Buford Middle School. They used over 25 gallons of paint in the creative process.
On Friday at 12:30 p.m., the garden-themed mural will be dedicated at Buford Middle School in a formal ceremony that will include Buford’s principal, teachers and students; U.Va. Student Arts Council students; Ross McDermott, director of Charlottesville Mural Project; Jody Kielbasa, U.Va. Vice Provost for the Arts; Sarah Lawson, director of Piedmont Council for the Arts; and many other local community leaders in the arts and education.
All visitors should access the school from Cherry Avenue, and sign in at the office before walking down to see the mural.
The Buford mural project will continue to expand the mission of the Charlottesville Mural Project, helping to facilitate the talents of local artists and designers while creating a more interesting visual landscape for the Charlottesville community. It also creates a model for more school-based murals that instill a sense of artistic sensibility and community collaboration.
The International Space Station. (NASA photo)
UVA Today’s Fariss Samarrai reports:
There will be three visible-from-Earth passes of the International Space Station over Central Virginia this week, according to U.Va. astronomer Ed Murphy.
The first is this evening, April 23, from 9:45 to 9:48 p.m.
To view it, Murphy says to go outside at about 9:40 p.m. – “to let your eyes adapt to the dark” – and face northwest. “The ISS will look like a very bright star rising straight out of the northwestern horizon,” he says. “It will climb high in the northwestern sky and then disappear high overhead at 9:48:02 p.m. when it passes into the shadow of the Earth.”
U.Va. Today’s Robert Hull writes:
Luchadora, Dub Campaign, Oh So, Band Concord, Melonhead, Moist Keith – these six bands will be duking it out with power chords, bass runs, thrashing drums and vocal shouts on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion in downtown Charlottesville.
As part of the annual University Programs Council Springfest 2013, the WTJU Battle of the Bands marks the first time that “The Sound Choice in Central Virginia” has hosted this type of event.
It’s supposed to be a pretty nice weekend in Charlottesville. The Dogwood Festival and Tom Tom Founders Festival will be going on, in addition to a long list of other fun and educational activities. Ahh, spring.
But a healthy portion of you will be indoors, for reasons that have nothing to do with tree pollen. Yup — Tax Day. Federal tax returns are due Monday. (Just to add to the hassle, University employees have until Tuesday to submit their forms verifying that their dependents are indeed eligible to receive health insurance coverage.)
Now imagine that you had to file, say, 800 tax forms.
The days are getting longer, and flowers are in bloom. Spring is here, but most important, it’s the time of year when WTJU 91.1 FM blasts forth its special brand of rock ‘n’ roll. Get ready to dance and party all week long with this year’s WTJU Rock Marathon.
WTJU Rock Marathon kicks off with party April 5.
From April 8-14, WTJU will offer a week of uninterrupted rock programming – and the chance for listeners to give back to “The Sound Choice in Central Virginia.” The Rock Marathon is one of the few times during the year when WTJU asks for financial support from its listeners.
The 2013 Rock Marathon kicks off with a party on Friday, April 5, from 9 p.m. to midnight at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar in downtown Charlottesville. There will be sets by WTJU DJs and live music by Savoir Adore, a pop-rock band from Brooklyn. The door charge is sliding scale ($5-$20), and the proceeds will benefit WTJU. Continue reading…
Are you looking for a great place to get away for an office retreat or get-together or to hold a class or workshop? U.Va.’s Mountain Lake Biological Station could be just the place, and it’s not just for scientists.
Located on 650 pristine acres in Southwest Virginia, about 20 minutes northwest of Blacksburg, it’s a mini-Academical Village with its own Lawn – at 3,800 feet in elevation.
Lewis Hall, at Mountain Lake Biological Station
The station has rustic and modern cabins, apartments and dorms for overnight stays, classrooms and meeting rooms with projection equipment, a full-service computer lab, a library, outdoor pavilion, a 100-person auditorium, kitchen facilities, audio-visual equipment and free open-access Wi-Fi.
The facilities are available as an inexpensive escape hatch for U.Va. groups. During the academic year rent on cottages is free, the kitchen facilities can be rented or meal service arranged through the station’s caterer, and other needs can be accommodated on a case-by-case basis. Continue reading…
As we at UVA Today crank out seemingly endless streams of press releases about upcoming events, it is stunningly obvious that there is a heckuva lot going on at the University these days. (Why is it that so much stuff happens in April? Is it the better weather? Budgets that need to be spent before the end of the semester? Procrastination? All of the above?)
As a public service, please allow us to point out that the first step in publicizing your upcoming event is to make sure it is on the University Calendar. That’s what it is there for — use it! Viewers can search by date or type of event. Event hosts can provide detailed information. It’s a great resource!
If you only think you will be posting events occasionally, you can submit an event as a guest here. If you are a serial event host, posting three or more events per semester, you might want to apply for your own account that will allow you to submit and modify events any time; email calendar@virginia.edu and they’ll set you up.
How can you find the calendar? It’s on the home page — twice. See image below with the helpful circles.
UVA Today’s Fariss Samarrai reports:
The University of Virginia’s Fan Mountain Observatory is open to the public just twice a year, once in April and once in October. This spring’s Public Night will be on April 12. Guests will be allowed to look through the telescopes beginning at about 8:30 (once it’s dark enough, and weather permitting). The event runs until everyone has had a chance to look through the 40- and 31-inch telescopes.
Nice story this weekend in the Fredericksburg Fee Lance-Star on fourth-year U.Va. student Phoebe Willis, who graduated from Fredericksburg’s James Monroe High School.
That’s her at right. See the long hair? It’s going away soon. Willis is participating in the annual St. Baldrick’s Day event, in which participants pledge to shave their heads in exchange for donations to benefit cancer research. (It’s been one of this blog’s favorite causes ever since this writer participated a few years back; as an already mostly bald, middle-aged guy, I certainly had nowhere near as much to lose as Phoebe does.)
Willis is not giving up her hair for nothing. She’s set a goal of raising $25,000 before the March 21 event at The Biltmore — yep, two months before posing for all of those graduation photos — and has already taken in more than $7,000 in pledges. (Click here to support Willis or any of the other local participants.)
You’ve got your Black Friday (which actually begins Thursday nowadays). You’ve got your Cyber Monday. And now … “#Giving Tuesday.”
Tomorrow, U.Va. is joining more than 2,000 universities, charities and businesses in encouraging people to participate in this national effort, a “celebration of our great tradition of generosity,” according to the effort’s website. It is encouraging people to support the charities that build community, either financially, by volunteering or by merely spreading the word about opportunities to give.
Certainly, everyone is free to choose to participate or not, and to support whatever charity or non-profit they wish. If you’re looking for ideas, here are a few suggestions:
What are your favorite causes? Click on “Comment” below and offer your suggestions for #Giving Tuesday.
Time is flying by. Could “Tomtoberfest” really have been two weeks ago?
OK, I realize the Tomtoberfest was probably not on the world’s calendars, though it seemed like a pretty successful event when it happened Oct. 27. Billed as “an Elliewood Block Party and Corner Crawl: a FREE day of grilling, live music and beer gardens, that celebrates Innovation at UVA and in the Community,” the event celebrated U.Va. research and entrepreneurship, while encouraging some creative thought on possible uses for the plaza in front of the OpenGrounds Studio. (Check out the Newsplex’s report, or the Cavalier Daily report.)
If that all sounds good to you, you can still capture a little of the conversation. UVA Innovation has archived several interviews that WTJU station manager Nathan Moore conducted with various “voices of innovation” from around the University and made them available on the U.Va. Innovation YouTube channel. Listen to the Tomtoberfest interviews here.
Mark Johnson is a busy — and successful — Hollywood producer, working on between two and four films a year. He makes time for two things: chairing the Foreign Language Film Award Committee for the Oscars, and the Virginia Film Festival.
A 1971 graduate of U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences, Johnson has been coming to the festival since it started in 1987. He’ll be there again Thursday when the 2012 festival kicks off with a screening of his new film, “Not Fade Away.”
He’ll also be given a couple of nice honors. Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has issued a proclamation in his honor, and the festival itself will present him with a silver-anniversary award.
Sandy can’t ruin our fun! The annual Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn is still on for Wednesday, from 4 to 6 p.m. Believe me, the student look forward to this event as much as, or more than, the local children and their adults who attend.
A reminder that free parking for families attending the event will be available beginning at 3:30 p.m. in the lots at Scott Stadium and University Hall and at 4 p.m. in the garage on Culbreth Road. Paid hourly parking will be available in the Central Grounds Parking Garage on Emmet Street.
Read more about it here.
The mural above, executed by Norfolk artist Sam Welty, appeared Wednesday on the Free Speech Wall on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall to promote a Virginia Film Festival screening of “A Journey to Darfur,” a documentary about Nick and George Clooney’s travels to the troubled region of Africa.
The screening, supported by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression (founded by former U.Va. President Robert M. O’Neill), will be held Nov. 3 at 4 p.m. at U.Va.’s Nau Auditorium, and will feature a discussion with Nick Clooney.
(More about the movie on Amazon.)
Here’s an interview the Clooneys did shortly after the film came out:
ReelzChannel Movie News | George Clooney | Movie Trailer | Review
