The-Burg.com - Central Virgina's Arts, Culture and Entertainment Weekly

Joseph Cashore saw his first marionette hanging in a gift shop when he was 10 or 11 and on vacation with his family.

“I asked the lady if I could try it out,” he said in a phone interview last week. “She wouldn’t let me, so I went home and made my first marionette.”

Even he can admit that first effort — made from clothespins, wood, string and a tin can — was a bit crude, but it fascinated him.

“Every once in a while, by accident, it would move,” he said. “Just for a second, it looked like it was alive, and that’s what I remember.”

Stacy Sumpman has always been fascinated with movement.

Take, for instance, a piece the former dancer choreographed for Dance Theatre of Lynchburg’s Repertory Ensemble.

“Intersect” — which will be performed during Dance Theatre’s First Fridays reception this week — starts with a large group of dancers who then break off into smaller groups.

When it comes to her art, Edrie Bays says she just can’t leave well enough alone.

When Marc-Anthony Polizzi was a graduate student studying glass sculpting at Tulane University, he began creating art out of found objects in his spare time.

“(The glass work) is very methodical and process-oriented,” says the artist, whose work will be on display at Riverviews Artspace for the rest of the summer. “I started doing stuff like this to blow off steam.”

He began leaving the pieces all over campus — a kind of guerilla art, if you will.

“Nobody knew it was me,” he says, “until the cops came.”

Three hundred events. Twenty-eight days.

The Wintergreen Performing Arts Summer Music Festival, which kicks off on July 5, not only crams a lot of events into its month-long lineup, but also quite the variety.

This year, organizers will host concerts, dance performances, film screenings, lectures, art exhibits, cooking classes, wine and beer tastings and even a 5K race, all focusing on this year’s theme: Vienna.

When someone mentions black history, most people immediately envision Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, bus boycotts and marches through the tumultuous South.

But for 10 years, the Legacy Museum of black History in Lynchburg has worked to preserve the stories of the black community within Central Virginia.

Ali Ferguson has a serious problem on her hands.

“Mom,” she says nervously, “Mani’s leg is broken.”

Luckily, it’s nothing a little wood glue can’t fix.