The Works: It’s all in Megan Marlott’s head(s).

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

Monday 11/14

music

Baby Jo’s. Tunes from the seven-piece, New Orleans-inspired boogie and blues band. Free, 6:30pm. The Whiskey Jar, 227 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. thewhiskeyjarcville.com Berto & Vincent. Rumba rumba. Free, 7pm. South and Central Latin Grill, Dairy Market. southandcentralgrill.com Gin & Jazz. Brian Caputo Trio performs in the hotel lobby bar. Free, 5:30pm. Oakhurst Hall, 122 Oakhurst Cir. oakhurstinn.com Wind Ensemble. A program including Shenandoah, arranged by Omar Thomas, and Echoes, by Daniel Fisher. Free, 7pm. Hunter Smith Band Building, UVA Grounds. music.virginia.edu Yard Sale, Sleeping Jesus, Hot Spit. A night of live indie rock with three bands. Free, 7pm. Dürty Nelly’s, 2200 Jefferson Park Ave. durtynellyscharlottesville.com

words

Michael Méndez: Climate Change from the Streets. Dr. Méndez’s award-winning book provides an urgent and timely analysis of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into climate change policy. Free, noon. Online. arch.virginia.edu

Tuesday 11/15

music

American Authors. Since releasing its debut album Oh, What a Life in 2014, this New York-based pop-rock outfit has experienced milestones most bands only dream about. $20-23, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. thesouthern cville.com

Bill Cole & the Untempered Ensemble.

Cole is joined by Ras Moshe, Joseph Daley, Warren Smith, Olivia Shortt, Mali Obomsawin, Althea SullyCole, and Taylor Ho Bynum. Free, 5pm. Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, UVA Grounds. arts.virginia.edu Josh Mayo and The House Sauce. A rotating lineup of local musicians. Free, 9pm. Rapture, 303 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. rapturerestaurant.com Vincent Zorn. Olé. Free, 7pm. The Bebedero, 225 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. the bebedero.com

dance

Step Afrika! The professional dance company performs stepping, a polyrhythmic, percussive dance form that uses the body as an instrument. $29-44, 7pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net

outside

Playdates at the Playscape. See listing for Friday, November 11. $20, 9:30am. Wildrock, 6600 Blackwells Hollow Rd., Crozet. wildrock.org

etc.

Daily Tour of Indigenous Australian Art.

See listing for Wednesday, November 9. Free, 10:30am and 1:30pm. Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA, 400 Worrell Dr. kluge-ruhe.org Family Game Night. Enjoy dinner, refreshing cocktails, mocktails, and beers, and play a variety of games for all ages, including corn hole, jumbo Jenga, cards, and more. Free, 5pm. Dairy Market, 946 Grady Ave. dairymarketcville.com Geeks Who Drink Trivia Night. Useless knowledge means everything at this authentic homegrown trivia quiz. Free, 8pm. Firefly, 1304 E. Market St. fireflycville.com

Identity and magic

Megan Marlatt plays with our heads at Second Street Gallery

By Sarah Sargent

arts@c-ville.com

It feels like Carnival time at Second Street Gallery. Megan Marlatt’s vibrant paintings and eye-popping big head sculptures are on view and the space sings with boisterous energy. Festival themes loom large in her show entitled “Mummers,” and though Carnival doesn’t officially begin for a couple of months, its fall equivalent is happening right now. As we head into winter, we celebrate seasonal change with Halloween and Día de Muertos, which, like Carnival, feature magic and costumes.

For an artist like Marlatt, who has built her career as a painter, her big heads may seem like a departure, but from the moment she first saw a capgrosso (“big head” in Catalan), she was smitten. Her fascination prompted her to travel to Spain in 2010 to learn how to make capgrossos from renowned folk artists Ventura and Hosta.

“Through the big heads, I became very interested in the rituals of European carnivals,” says Marlatt. In 2018, she returned to Europe, this time to Belgium, where she studied Carnival culture at the International Carnival and Mask Museum.

“In Binche, Carnival participants carry little brooms, which they use to sweep the ground,” says Marlatt. “They’re sweeping away the evils of winter to make way for spring. If they don’t do this, winter will never go away. In Bulgaria, they use sticks to beat the ground, waking spring up.

“These are pagan rituals adopted by the church. So Lent ... coincides with the time when food supplies would be running low. When Carnival occurs, it’s not yet spring, the vernal equinox hasn’t happened. It’s the in-between time when it’s not one thing or the other, and it’s during this liminal period that magic happens.”

Transition is not just evident in the shifting in-between-time, but also in the act of donning a mask and changing one’s identity. For Marlatt, this is a powerful exercise in empathy. “What I love about masks (and big heads) is they‘re empathetic,” she says. “They erase age, species, race, gender. They allow you to play at being someone else, get inside their skin and empathize with their lot.” Marlatt explores these ideas further in her paintings of Wysteria Ivy, who, as a drag queen, both occupies a transitional space and assumes another identity.

On display are both animal and human heads—there’s a hare, a rooster, the Belgian painter James Ensor, sisters Salt and Pepper, and even a heavenly host of angels. Instantly appealing, the heads seem benign at first. But there’s something sinister and manic about them. Marlatt employs the masks in various ways: some are one-offs that she uses in her Big Head Brigade parades and performances, while others, she incorporates into her paintings, where they sometimes appear as masks

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Megan Marlatt paints between the lines of fantasy and reality in “Mummers,” her solo show at Second Street Gallery through November 18.

worn by figures. Some have entirely morphed into otherworldly creatures.

With its vivid palette and striking imagery, “Wysteria Ivy and the Woodland Creatures” is a captivating and glorious work that presents its subject lounging odalisque-like on a picnic table within a covered shelter. Perched astride the roof, a grinning red bunny sports track shoes, while two mischievous mice tiptoe around the sides of the structure. Marlatt conveys the atmospheric elements in the painting with complete authenticity, which anchors the work in reality.

We are coaxed by familiarity into accepting the fantastical elements as Marlatt creates a space of transition between reality and fantasy using ordinary references—the table and shelter and the familiar clothes her animals wear root the picture in the here and now. She performs a similar thing with her big heads, which each sport some real item—a crocheted hat (made by local artist Eli Frantzen), a scarf, or a bell—all of which enhance their immediacy.

“Near Gloaming” offers a crepuscular yin to the sunny yang of Wysteria Ivy back at the picnic grounds. The two paintings are the same size and each feature spindly trees that rise across the picture plane in dynamic vertical rhythm. Here, the fairy tale forest is alight with fireflies. Wysteria Ivy, holding a sunflower, crouches on the ground, gazing at the viewer warily. Disturbing the idyll, a figure wearing a hare mask stands to her right. Smudges of lemony paint between the trees suggests the sun’s last light, blurred by misty air.

In these two paintings, Wysteria Ivy is painted outdoors—an unusual place for her to be. According to Marlatt, Wysteria Ivy assumes her persona only in the safe space of her bedroom, interacting with the outside world exclusively online. In Marlatt’s version, she is able to step outside her protected realm and roam free.

While she acknowledges that her work possesses surreal elements, Marlatt resists being classified as a surrealist. Perhaps magical realism is a more accurate description of an artist who feels “the world is full of mythologies and miracles.”

“Those who would follow a hard stoic line of practicality and logic are just fooling themselves,” says Marlatt. “They think they’re above mystic thinking, but then often they acquire a drinking problem for all their logical realism. They believe they can get rid of mythology in their life, but all we really can do is replace one mythology with another.”