Subscribe to PopCultVirtuALL FestivALL Day Eleven
June 24, 2020 by Rudy Panucci
From now until the end of June we will post at least once a day with details on what you can experience at home during this pandemic year for Charleston’s annual festival of all arts. For 2020, FestivALL is when The Internet Becomes A Work Of Art. Every day we will bring you up to date on this year’s VirtuALL FestivALL, plus we will flash back to some of our video coverage from previous years, and I will dig into the archives for one post in the Monday Morning Art Exhibit, collecting some of my favorite pieces from the nearly fifteen years that I’ve been posting my original work here in PopCult.
Today’s big events include:
StreetWorks Urban Art Auction This year StreetWorks 2020 is a celebration of the drag culture in Charleston,WV; honoring both past and present drag queens through 12 custom made pieces created by local artists. Participants of the event will have the opportunity to win by purchasing raffle tickets. The event will kick off on June 24th at noon with an unveiling of the first 3 drag queens being honored and the 3 artists who will be creating the artwork. One video will be released each week revealing the next set of queens and artists. This event will continue into July, when the raffle drawing will be held. More details can be found HERE.
An Emmy-Award winning hour-long documentary about the Charleston Ballet’s history with exclusive interviews, rare archival footage and photographs, will debut as part of FestivALL online at 7 PM Wednesday. ANDRE VAN DAMME and THE STORY OF THE CHARLESTON BALLET will premiere Wednesday June 24th at 7PM and will be available on the FestivALL YouTube Channel for the remainder of FestivALL (through June 28th).
Other FestivALL events for today include being able to vote on The Artbus, check out the Art-for-ALL Kids’ Juried Art Exhibition look into the “Faces of First Responders” Tribute Mural and teens can participate in Life: Unedited. FestivALL is off to a strong VirtuALL start. You can also participate in the CAMC “Run For Your Life” virtual run/walk. The Virtual Art Fair will open on June 14th on the FestivALL website – check it regularly for the gallery and links to shop your favorite WV artisans this summer.
The FestivALL Flashback
Today we’re jumping back to some FestivALL video we accidentally skipped over last week. Back in 2010, the first year that Radio Free Charleston went all-out covering FestivALL, we meant to do a six-episode arc devoted to our summer arts festival, but discovered that we had enough material left over for one more show, which we dropped in September.
I billed this as “part seven of our six-part coverage of FestivAll 2010.” This show brings you more music from Brian Diller and The Velvet Nomads, plus extra music from Craig D’Andrea and Ron Sowell, and footage of the balloon sculptures at The Charleston Town Center. Another reason that this show happened was that I discovered that, back in the rush to shoot all of our shows in June, I had accidentally shot too many host segments. So I was able to crank out this show three months later without shooting anything new.
RFC 110 "FestivAll 2010 part seven" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.
The Monday Morning Art Exhibit
Our art today comes from a month-long series of surreal paintings of Chicago that I posted in May, 2018. “The Hole Building” has an interesting and totally-fabricated story behind it:
Known by locals as “The Donut Building,” This Chicago landmark was actually designed and built as a solution to a problem. The developer had purchased land to construct a suite of offices without checking to see if there were any special zoning ordinances. It seems he never realized that his land was directly in the flight path of O’Hare International Airport. Rather than reduce the height of his building, the developer had architects leave room in the middle for planes to fly through.
Click the image to see it bigger.