Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 14, 1990 TAG: 9007140324
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Muse is one of the artists who is painting the mural. Cubby, editor of Night Acts magazine, had the idea for a mural and served as the link between the artists and Iroquois owner Shirley Thomas.
The mural is painted on horizontal 8-by-14-foot panels on each side of the club's Salem Avenue entrance. It shows the Roanoke Valley at dusk, along with Indian village scenes and likenesses of some of the famous musicians who have performed at the club. Among them are Leon Russell, Bo Diddley and Bill Monroe.
"It's a mural for the general public but I did want to represent what goes on in here," said Thomas, who agreed to let the picture be part of recent improvements to the outside of the Iroquois. She said the Indian images refer not only to the valley's early history but to the Mohawk heritage of her husband, Ronald "Chief" Thomas. Muse is a Northern Virginia-born artist who has painted public murals in Greeley, Colo., and Baltimore. She got involved with the Iroquois project after plans fell through for it to be done by another artist. Painter Ann Miller also is working on the painting, which has been in progress about a month.
They are part of a new and an informal group of muralists called Picture This.
"This is our springboard piece," said Muse.
The group was brought together by Cubby. He said he hopes its members will find work when other private and public parties, encouraged by the Iroquois example, commission large paintings for high-visibility outdoor spaces around the valley.
Besides dressing up the city, he said, the murals would expose the work of artists and connect them with a community that has little public art.
"We have a wonderful community of artists," Cubby said, "but you could drive through this town and not know an artist had ever lived here."
August Wilson to visit
August Wilson, one of the dominant American playwrights of the 1980s, will visit Roanoke in October for appearances at the Harrison Museum of African-American Culture.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilson's works include "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson."
Melody Stovall, director of the center, said details of the playwright's visit still are being worked out.
RSO misses out on role
The Roanoke Symphony, which was one of three orchestras under consideration for performances at this fall's Virginia Festival of American Film, didn't get the gig.
Instead, the Norfolk-based Virginia Symphony will be taking part in the Charlottesville event.
Insiders say festival officials were excited by the Roanoke orchestra and its conductor, Victoria Bond, but decided in favor of the more affordable financial package offered by the Virginia Symphony.
"Music in the Movies" is the theme of this year's film festival.
Faint praise for tower
Writing about Roanoke's Dominion Tower in Inform, a newsletter for Virginia architects, editor Vernon Mays managed to keep a lid on his enthusiasm.
In comparison with the "more slender and elegant conjectural renderings" that were shown earlier, he said, the actual tower will be a "heavier, squat office building that tries to compensate for its bulky proportions with vertical piers that are Gothic in spirit."
Glowing praise for MMT
Physicians Lifestyle Magazine includes Mill Mountain Theatre in a nationwide survey of "The Best of Regional Theater."
Mill Mountain is one of just eight theaters mentioned in the article, which appears in the publication's June volume. Among the others are the famed Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, San Diego's Old Globe and the prestigious Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery.
Physicians Lifestyle is a seemingly unlikely source of theatrical coverage, but the folks at Mill Mountain aren't complaining. National publicity is national publicity.
by CNB