The Arts Council - Thanks So Much for a Wonderful Evening!!

This is a short post my friends - not because tonight's Arts Council of the Blue Ridge Annual Meeting wasn't something worthy of a long post, but because I am just too awed for words. If you are a Roanoker and into the whole love-affair of our area's Arts presence, then you will appreciate this short and sweet entry.

First of all, I am a newbie Arts Council member. I belonged to my hometown's Council years ago in Elizabeth, NJ. We were not exactly bursting with members and programs. (I am still friends with one fellow who is a world-class 6-string Contra Bass player, a member and son of musicians/ artists, his mother being one of the leaders of the Elizabeth Arts Council. In fact, he will be performing here at the Taubman this coming Sunday. I will give details at the end of my post.)

Anyway, as a member to the Arts Council here, I went by invitation to its Annual Meeting and experienced a history lesson of this organization by one of its founding members: Ms Carol Bewley Dalhouse, the Arts Council's first Executive Director. She was the Guest Speaker for the meeting tonight held at the Eleanor D Wilson Museum at Hollins University. What a heart-warming story she told! And it was a real treat to hear it from the person who did so much to make this Arts Council a reality today. One of the amazing things I learned was how in its early days, they felt they had no choice but to return an initial grant of funds because trying to get matching donations took them away from the Council's real mission.

I met and chatted afterwards with some of the wonderful people on the Council's staff and made my way over to the special exposition of Artist Betty Branch: "Through The Crow's Eye, a Retrospective." Her work is currently on display at the Eleanor D Wilson Museum, as well as throughout Roanoke and beyond. (You can find more information about Ms Branch's sculptures and drawings - including videos - on her website http://www.bettybranch.com/. The artist has a Roanoke studio you may visit by appointment. The Betty Branch Sculpture Studio and Gallery is located in the Historic Warehouse District in Roanoke, Virginia at 123 Norfolk Avenue.)

Scuplture of women's figures, crows, a variety of media including fire - I took my time walking through the museum in amazement. I can't remember the last time I was so moved to stare so long at an artist's creations. I wondered what her mind was telling her hands - or was it her heart speaking, or an other-worldly breath? I was also intrigued by the combination of the two subjects. Could it be one theme? Indeed, sculptures of the female form/ female rites of passage (see Biographical Notes on her website) interspersed with sculptures of crows. The soft and the hard; the blunt and the sharp; the curved and the angled... those are just the visual contrasts. It seemed somehow perfect to me in the same room.

Well, I lied. This is not a short blog post after all. Therefore, let me finish by saying that my friends Denise Jordan Finley and Daniel Pagdon, singer-songwriters, will be performing at the Taubman this Sunday at 1pm. Perhaps I can see a woman-crow combination in their musical partnering now that I may never be able to shake that concept... Hmmm.

(Photos of Betty Branch's work are from her website, http://www.bettybranch.com/ and if there are any objections to embedding them here, please contact me and I will humbly comply with your request to remove them.)