We talk a lot about diversity these days, about how one form of culture should not necessarily dominate over another. If art indeed does mimic life, we can conclude from two exhibitions currently on display in Chapel Hill that plural perspectives are now well established. And even if these two shows offered nothing else, they […]
Kate Dobbs Ariail
Bio: Kate Dobbs Ariail writes about the arts.
Posted inGuides
A SEEDS Grows in Durham
While I was waiting for the SEEDS staff to be ready to meet with me, up in their comfortably shabby offices in the Temple Baptist Church’s education building, I kept thinking–“can it only have been six years since SEEDS was founded?” In that short time, Southeastern Efforts Developing Sustainable Spaces has become one of the […]
Posted inGuides
The Old and the New
Among all the seasons, fall is the one that most inspires thoughts about change and constancy; about the old and the new. At the autumnal equinox, recently passed, late summer still lingered. On that day, I saw the perfect symbol of the changing season in a roadside fruit stand out in the county: Beside summer’s […]
Posted inArt
A Transforming Silence
Some people may see the current small exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art as merely an interlude, falling as it does between the summer’s large Rodin exhibition and In Praise of Nature: Ansel Adams and Photographers of the American West, which opens this weekend. And while it may indeed be, as has been […]
Posted inArt
A passion for beauty
Adventures With Old Houses is not the kind of book TheIndependent ordinarily reviews: It’s a big handsome coffee-table book replete with color photographs of Richard Jenrette’s historic houses and their swank interiors, everything indicating serious money. But underneath the glossy crust of wealth and privilege simmers the meat of historic preservation, swimming in a rich […]
Posted inArt
Acknowledging the pull
The words we use to talk about race, like “tension,” and “bias,” often indicate a forceful pulling of thoughts and feelings, with the implication that the pulling draws away from the straight grain of a harmonious order. And to have tension, there must also be a resistance to the pull. In an extreme example, for […]
Posted inArt
Those who can
There’s an old saying that “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” It is especially popular among art students who feel that their brilliant work remains unappreciated by their teachers, who couldn’t possibly make anything as good themselves. I doubt, however, that many students at the Durham School of the Arts feel that way. […]
Posted inNews
Here Nor There
CULTUREWhat’s going on with the proposed Sanford Performing Arts Institute, the theater complex being planned to serve the Triangle and the state? Will it be built? If so, where? There are some clear answers to these questions. Unfortunately, they differ, depending on who’s doing the answering. The PAI is the brainchild of some imaginative people. […]
Posted inArt
The light in August
The light in August differs from the light of July or that of September. Some days it’s the joyful brilliance of full summer; other days it’s a scorching, sullen glare that belongs to this month alone. August is always the hottest month, yet the angle of the sun, mornings and evenings, foreshadows autumn, and the […]
Posted inArt
Greed of the Eye
Once upon a time, in my wasted youth, I rode in a Porsche with a risk-loving handsome man, cranked on cocaine. He drove very, very fast through the summer night, and it seemed quite likely I would die in a ditch in a matter of minutes. I wasn’t frightened, but I felt greedy to see […]