WestVirginiaVille

OK, the headline is a bald-faced lie. Dean Martin, Glen Campbell and I have never ever hung out together, at least in person. But actually, we did spend a lot of time together, which is when I fell in love with singing.

So, if my mother had not died from Alzheimers, she’d have celebrated her 82nd birthday today. But she did die, in 2002, of this merciless affliction. Therein lies the explanation for this downloadable song.

A heads up if you’re within striking distance of Charleston, W.Va. This month’s free Charleston ArtWalk features a superb exhibit of remarkable historic West Virginia photos previously profiled in two audio slideshows on WestVirginiaVille.

My favorite sculpture in all of West Virginia sits outside the Huntington Museum of Art. The slightest breath of wind sends this exquisitely balanced sculpture into motion as seen in a music video for a friend who has moved on unexpectedly.

What do you do with news of a suicide? It has hung overhead me like a scud of thick grey cloud since I learned the news early Sunday morning via the new Western Union of modern life.

As an arts-and-culture blogazine based in the alternative mythical realm of WestVirginiaVille, we are pre-disposed to be intrigued by writers running for governor of the state of West Virginia.

Kate Long’s photographic portrait of Barbara Bayes may fool the eye at first blush. Is it a painting? At a glance, the lighting and composition recall something from a Rembrandt portrait.

Roller Derby cuts into Annie Knuckles knitting time, but she’s cool with that. A Q-and-A with the co-captains of the Chemical Valley Roller Girls, whose first home bout takes place Saturday at Charleston Civic Center.

Changes are afoot for Lewisburg-based Jessica Levine, who describes herself as a contemporary Appalachian environmental artist in this ‘Artist at Work’ video profile.

Video clips of the Chemical Valley Roller Girls practicing for their first bout in Charleston; Greenbrier County artist Jessica Levine’s multifarious work and Dreama Denver on living with “Gilligan” once he got off that island.

What do you do when the earthquake doesn’t get you but just shakes, rattles and rolls you? Laugh at it.

A video tour of some of the thousands of items and books in Huntington’s private Touma Medical Museum, from stylish ear trumpets to a tonsillectomy guillotine.

In the debut of ‘Artist at Work,’ a new series on new work connected to West Virginia, Thad Settle gives the lotus-inspired back story to a work with some enlightening connections.

“The Only Song” is a tune about lost love without reprieve or favor. Albert Perrone invokes Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco and others in singing about what happens “when love knocks the brake pads off of you.”

If you were to randomly ask: “Where, exactly, do you think of when I say ‘Clarinet player busking on a city street?’ I give you odds of exactly zero percent the answer would be “Uh… um.. West Virginia?”

A dip into David Stephenson’s surreal “My Decision” short film, winner of the 2011 FestivALL Charleston Silent Film Contest. Only this version isn’t silent. But you can always turn your speakers off.

One fine Spring day in southern West Virginia, Albert Perrone began painting a piece of public artwork in downtown Princeton, W.Va. This one goes out to artists and those who would censor their work.

So, this bright-eyed young fellow started showing up at the the weekly Meditation Circle of Charleston gatherings. He’d just got back from China and had three words for the rest of America: ‘solar water heaters.’

In the summer of 2007 I had already wanted my tattoo for four years. I could close my eyes and imagine it a part of me, but when I tried too hard to see it, it would slip away into the underbrush like a deer who senses your gaze.