Your guide to openings, exhibitions, and art you just can’t miss! The star city is teaming with outlets of the artistic persuasion, some good, some bad, and some well… strange, but most worth a gander. Get out and experience some art! You just might get cultured! Gasp! Your Special February 2010 Art Attack, From the Margins is here…

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This month we are highlighting everything Marginal Arts Festival. The festival runs from Thursday, February 11th to Fat Tuesday, February 16th and includes some truly spectacular spectacular events! Passports (aka tickets) are only $20 and get you into EVERY event during the festival and may be purchased by visiting the website, Taubman Museum of Art or they may be purchased at any event location during the festival.

What is marginal?

Marginal is anything of, by or about the edge or periphery of something. Think Society, Culture, Art or Media. The Marginal Arts Festival is a festival that welcomes the excluded into the limelight, and pushes insiders to experience the extremes. TRY HARDER! ASK QUESTIONS! REJECT MEDIOCRACY!

Thursday, February 11th

Workshop with the Mosier Brothers
Time: Afternoon | Place: Music Lab at Jefferson Center | Price: FREE
A workshop for acoustic musical forms, banjo and bluegrass by Bluegrass giants Jeff and Johnny Mosier and local musician John McBroom.

Two Exhibitons to Open The Festival
Time: 5-7pm, Lecture at 6pm | Place: Eleanor D. Wilson Museum | Price: FREE
“When Janey Comes Marching Home.” Interviews/photographs of overlooked women veterans in Iraq. + “Stanley Lewis” explores the perimeters of the urban experience.

Open Doors Conversation
Time: 7pm | Place: Claude Moore Auditorium | Price: FREE
Join Roanoke’s Cultural Connector group S.T.A.R. for this interactive discussion seeking a broader understanding of the impact of difference.

Eugene Chadbourne
Time: 8pm | Place: Kirk Avenue Music Hall | Price: $5, FREE w/passport
Highly eclectic and unconventional, Chadbourne invented an instrument by attaching an electric guitar pickup to an ordinary lawn rake.

Friday, February 12th

Box Lunch Forum: South of the Clouds
Time: Noon-1pm | Place: Taubman Museum of Art | Price: FREE
Exploring 25 Minority Ethnic Groups of SW China’s Yunnan Province. Colette Fu traveled there to document and produce a pop-up book of those minorities.

Fleda Ring: Compilation 2010
Time: 5-7pm | Place: Fleda Ring Artworks, 7a East Church Avenue | Price: FREE
A collection of artworks ranging from printmaking and micro seed bead weaving to cut paper and wire installation creations with a serious focus on micro detailed handwork.

Cows in a Field
Time: 5-7pm | Place: Warehouse Row, 133 Norfolk Avenue SW | Price: FREE
Three artists (Jacob Smith, Dave Wertz, Sean Cuddy) address current trends towards simplification in the arts. Includiing photography, metal work and mixed media.

Sew Me Up
Time: 5-7pm | Place: Dialog Gallery, 208 4th Street | Price: FREE
Exhibition of work by nationally recognized artists using the marginalized media of embroidery and sewing. The work is intelligent, provocative and often explicit.

An Immersive Environment
Time: 5-10pm | Place: Community High School, 302 2nd Street | Price: FREE
A “collab fest” of activities, including a stuffed animal orchestra, dada poetry performances, exhibits of internationa mail art, sound performances, music and poetry.

Colette Fu: “We are Dragon People”
Time: 5-7pm | Place: Taubman Museum of Art | Price: FREE
PA artist Colette Fu’s meticulously detailed, beautifully crafted pop-up art books and photographs provide a glimpse into her ancestry and the culture of SW China.

Christine Carr: “Portal”
Time: 7-9pm | Place: O. Winston Link Museum | Price: Admission (free w/passport)
In this series of black and white photographs, Carr describes her work as investigating light as a signifier for transcendence and as a strategy for creating illusory space.

Jack Pendarvis & Nosferatu
Time: 7:30pm | Place: 434 Church Avenue | Price: $5 (free w/passport)
A night of literature, music, and film. Jack Pendarvis will titillate while Murnau’s Nosferatu will scare us into understanding German Expressionism.

The Marginal Arts Arena Spectacular & Circus Exposition
Time: 9pm | Place: The Water Heater, 813 5th St | Price: $5 costume, $7 no costume
”The GREATEST show in the 540!” One night only! Featuring Jake Winstrom and the Timlee3, and The Circus Practice.

Mosier Brothers with Blue Mule
Time: 8pm | Place: Kirk Avenue Music Hall | Price: $15 (free w/passport)
Bluegrass giants Jeff and Johnny Mosier have played together for years most recently as Blueground Undergrass. Joining them is Blue Mule.

Saturday, February 13th

Sidewalk Chalk
Time: 8:45am | Place: Register at Center in the Square | Price: FREE
A chance to draw with (only removable) chalk and charcoal on the vendor tables around the Market. There will be prizes and cash awards up to $100!

2nd Annual Marginal Arts Festival Parade
Time: Assembly at 10:30am | Place: Campbell and 1st Street | Price: FREE
Calling all artists, musicians, performers, bicyclists, activists, and anyone interested in creating a public spectacle in the streets of downtown Roanoke.

Emerging Artists: Patsy Bessolo & Oinker
Time: 1pm | Place: Roanoke Main Library, Downtown | Price: FREE
Multi-genre visual artist Patsy Bessolo presents an experiential glimpse into her private life. With Oinker: postmodern punk.

A Postmodern Happening
Time: 10am-10pm | Place: Community High, Campbell and 2nd Street | Price: FREE
Interactive activities and underground art forms like Mail Art, Noise, Fluxus Performance, and scholarly lectures, performance art, poetry reading.

Living Sculpture: Mediating Veneers
Time: 7-10pm | Place: The Water Heater, 813 5th St | Price: $5 (free w/passport)
Experience dance through a web of media; radio headsets, paper mazes, light, projection and soundscapes with VA School of the Arts dancers.

Miss Lucy, Folk Opera
Time: 8pm | Place: Dumas Center | Price: $1 ( free w/passport)
Concert teaser of the forthcoming opera about Roanoke education pioneer Lucy Addison opening in May, celebrating local history and folklore.

Night Cafe
Time: 10:30pm | Place: The Water Heater, 813 5th St | Price: FREE
Following ‘Living Sculpture’ The Water Heater will transform into a Night Cafe where you may share coffee and ideas, experiences and thoughts with each other.

Sunday, February 14th

A Swarm of Arts
Time: Noon-10pm| Place: Community High, 302 2nd Street | Price: FREE
Noise performances, Mallarme reading/lecture, Oberiu (Russian Dadaist) poetry reading/lecture, ensemble poetry performance, interactive/collaborative activities.

The Year of the Tiger Celebration
Time: 2-5pm | Place: Taubman Museum of Art | Price: FREE
An intro to traditional Chinese New Year’s Day customs and crafts by local celebrity Pearl Fu. Learn paper cutting, paper folding and Chinese calligraphy. Bring the kids!

Pop up Postcard Workshop w/ Artist Colette Fu
Time: 2-5pm | Place: Taubman Museum of Art | Price: $10 (free w/passport)
”Pop-up Book Workshop for grown-ups” with Philadelphia Artist Colette Fu who’s books highlight 25 Minority Ethnic Groups of SW China’s Yunnan Province.

Corporeal Projections: Multi-media Installation
Time: 5-8pm | Place: The Water Heater, 813 5th St | Price: FREE
A dance  installation interweaving live and recorded camera projections with multiple video media devices exploring the interplay between bodies, space and time.

Michael Martone and Moire Crone
Time: 8pm | Place: Hollins University Library | Price: FREE
Two of the best American writers you don’t already know. Both Crone and Martone create fiction from material that’s deeply personal and wonderingly odd.

Monday, February 15th

Right to Shoes
Time: 3-5pm, 6-8pm | Place: The Water Heater, 813 5th St | Price: FREE
A shoe decoration and creation event. Bring your shoes, your materials, and your vision. This event is followed by an Art Shoe Auction on February 18th.

Participate! Potluck and Art Swap!
Time: 5-7pm | Place: 110 Campbell Avenue | Price: Bring artwork in a brown bag to swap
A potluck for artists and/or anyone interested in participating in MAF in the future. Katherine Devine will lead the construction of the world’s biggest bubble wrap sculpture.

Tuesday, February 16th (Mardi Gras)

Fat Tuesday Celebration
Time: 7-10pm | Place: Fitzpatrick Hall, Jefferson Center | Price: $10, (free w/passport)
Vaudeville artists and silk dancers, tables cascading with tantalizing desserts and devilish hors d’ouvres. Immerse yourself in a fantastical carnivale d’extrodinaire.